$40m grant launches to reward developers for building Layer 1 blockchains on Avalanche

IN an ongoing effort to empower developers building on Avalanche, Retro9000 - a $40 million retroactive grant program - has been launched as part of Avalanche9000, the largest upgrade to the Avalanche ecosystem.

Retro9000 has been funded by the Avalanche Foundation, with the goal of rewarding developers for testing and launching foundational ecosystem building blocks on Avalanche.

“Avalanche9000 is the culmination of years of development work to build a platform that can support fast, scalable and connected L1s,” said Luigi D'Onorio DeMeo, Chief Operating Officer at Ava Labs.

“Leveraging this moment, the Retro9000 incentivised testnet program attempts to bootstrap an L1 ecosystem and provide the earliest and most engaging developers incentives to build their product."

Retro9000 will specifically reward developers building L1 blockchains and related, critical developer tooling on the Avalanche9000 testnet. Submissions are ranked on a public leaderboard, driven by community votes informing retroactive grant allocations. Retro9000 encourages developers to build publicly, earn community support, and test and ship projects to get rewarded.

"The forthcoming upgrade will remove the requirement to validate the primary network, massively reducing the cost of deploying and maintaining an L1 blockchain in the Avalanche Network," said Martin Eckardt, Director of Developer Relations at Ava Labs.

"L1 validators will no longer have to stake high amounts of AVAX for entry, giving thousands of projects access to a custom, interoperable blockchain built on a battle-tested tech stack at a low cost."