Stacks Foundation to Spend 'Majority' of STX Token Fortune on Ecosystem Development

Grant ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 will be paid out in dollars. Once Stacks 2.0 goes live, the funding switches over to STX.

Sep 3, 2020 at 6:37 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 9:52 a.m. UTC

Executive Director Brittany Laughlin of the Stacks Open Internet Foundation (Stacks)

An army of Web 3.0 educators, developers and platform boosters can now secure funding from Blockstack’s nonprofit arm – so long as their blockchain projects focus on the Stacks ecosystem.

Under the Stacks Open Internet Foundation's beta grant program, projects will get between $1,000 and $5,000 to support their visions for Stacks blockchain tools, initiatives, evangelism and development.
Funding these relatively small-dollar projects will help grow Stacks' community and facilitate its mission of supporting a user-owned internet, said Brittany Laughlin, the nonprofit's chief.
For now, the foundation said it will dole out its grants in dollar form in lieu of stacks tokens (STX). That's a notable break from the crypto space's now commonplace practice of fostering development with grants in their target project's native token.
Stacks plans to switch over to STX payouts just as soon as the blockchain upgrade called Stacks 2.0 goes live, Laughlin said.
Her foundation has no shortage of the token. Last month Blockstack PBC turned 100 million STX tokens (worth $21.5 million at press time) over to Stacks, along with intellectual property rights to certain patented Blockstack technologies.
Laughlin said Stacks will pour most of its token fortune into "grants and ecosystem development."
"At least 30 million STX are dedicated to fund application development, as they were set aside for App Mining's next evolution, which will likely be awarded in the form of app development grants," she said.

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