Sports’ biggest blockchain is ready to shell out mega millions to grow its share of the crypto pie. The Flow blockchain — which is home to Dapper Studios’ NBA Top Shot, UFC Strike, and NFL ALL DAY — announced a $725 million ecosystem fund to support development.
The official Flow Twitter claims that the fund is “the largest joint fund made for any blockchain.” They also claim that access to the fund will be available for the 7,500+ current Flow developers, along with the unknown quantity of future ones.
On the chain’s new ecosystem-specific page, developers can apply for a number of funds. Among them are Developer Grants, Ecosystem Investments, Fundraising Support, and the $10 million Dapper Studio Ecosystem Fund, which supports people building for Dapper’s aforementioned suite of NFT platforms. Dapper Studio is separate (but related) to Dapper Labs, the team beyond Flow.
The fund was supported by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Digital Currency Group, Spartan, Coatue, Union Square Ventures, and others. As part of their pledge, they will receive the chain’s token ($FLOW) and equity in Dapper Labs, the developers of the chain.
Dapper Labs, the developer of the three aforementioned NFT platforms, was a first-mover in the NFT space. The company created the CryptoKitties, which was one of the first platforms to use Ethereum’s long-standing ERC-721 token standard. After recognizing congestion problems on Ethereum, the company decided to invest in building its own chain — which has become what Flow is today.
Some of the benefits of the chain? Well, it isn’t slow like Ethereum — and it won’t need a whole update (Eth2) to give it a shot at being faster. It also has prided itself on being more “developer-friendly” and standards-based. However, in spite of its benefits, it has long been-assailed as being “more centralized”, something which it claims to have resolved as of Oct. 2021.
$FLOW.X was down 22% today in spite of the news, but that’s to be expected given how poor the markets have been. The crypto was #52 in market capitalization as of this writing.