The DeSo Foundation is committed to supporting the decentralization of social media, with a strong focus on supporting the DeSo blockchain, the first blockchain custom-built to scale social applications to one billion users.
To support its mission, the DeSo Foundation has over $200 million in backing from Sequoia, Social Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and many others. Now, as our first major initiative, we are proud to announce that we are launching a $50 million developer fund that we're calling The Octane Fund.
Why Octane? Because this fund is all about fueling and accelerating the already-rapid growth of the DeSo developer ecosystem. Even though the DeSo blockchain has only been in beta for six months, there are already over 100 apps building on DeSo, including Flick, created by Nigel Eccles, co-founder and former-CEO of FanDuel, Pulse, backed by Social Capital, and Polygram.cc, a first-class NFT marketplace.
After just six months, the DeSo blockchain has more developer traction than any other protocol I've ever seen at this stage, and I can't wait to see everything accelerate even more now that the developer ecosystem has a committed source of capital behind it.
- Nader Al-Naji, Head of the DeSo Foundation
How to Apply for Funding
Now, armed with $50 million in cash, the Octane Fund will focus on the following initiatives:
- Backing founders who are in "idea" stage at very favorable terms. To be considered for this funding, you must ideally build a demo that uses the DeSo blockchain in some way and submit your info to this very short form here.
- Backing existing companies that are considering integrating DeSo features into their product. To be considered for this funding, please apply here.
- Running multiple global hackathons focused on building out key components of the DeSo ecosystem, with large non-dilutive cash prizes and even larger equity investments for winning projects.
And the Octane Fund is only the beginning. In the coming weeks, we are excited to announce separate initiatives geared toward funding NFT artists on the DeSo blockchain as well as smaller creators via their social tokens. Stay tuned!
.png)
