Polygon Labs Launches $90 Million Fund to Fuel Ecosystem Growth

Polygon’s development team Polygon Labs is reigniting network growth through a relaunched grant program featuring over $90 million in funding for aspiring Web3 founders.

Per a blog post from the company on Thursday, the “Polygon Village 2.0” grant program will offer startups a share of 110 million MATIC tokens, alongside strategic support, mentorship, and introductions to venture capital. As of Friday, MATIC traded for $0.83 apiece. 

“Polygon Village is reimagined with the direct input and feedback of developers, becoming a home for founders of all levels to start building, learn, connect, get funded, get mentored, scale, and grow exponentially,” wrote Polygon Labs. 

The grant program will be accessible for all Polygon projects, no matter their stage of development. Applications can include “app chains, gaming, infra, social,” and DeFi, among other things.

While later-stage projects can expect direct grants of up to 2 million MATIC, early-stage projects will be open to “quadradic funding,” which invites community members to donate to projects and effectively “vote” on where Polygon Labs should allocate funds. 

The company has already provided a list of project ideas for founders, for which teams can expect “1:1 mentorship and support” if teams build on one of their ideas.  

Founders may also apply for vouchers offering fee discounts on various services and benefits provided by Polygon’s partners. Some categories include security and smart contract audits, storage solutions, compute solutions, and tooling for DeFi.

What is Polygon 2.0?

Polygon Labs announced plans in September to upgrade its protocol to “Polygon 2.0” – a  roadmap for revolutionizing the network’s architecture through interoperable layer 2 blockchains powered by zero-knowledge proofs. It will also replace the existing network’s governance token “MATIC” with “POL.”

The network will feature a shared bridge between different Polygon chains that will no longer require “wrapped” tokens (ex. Wrapped Bitcoin) to move assets between networks, ultimately improving user experience.

1/ The wait is over. Polygon 2.0 implementation kicks off now with the release of 3 Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs), and a roadmap for Phase 0.https://t.co/gk7FW0zCpc pic.twitter.com/YJo3BtQy4y

— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) September 14, 2023

Polygon itself is an Ethereum scaling solution leveraging sidechains to enable faster, cheaper transactions while benefitting from Ethereum’s settlement assurances. According to Polygon Labs, Polygon 2.0 will help create the “value layer of the internet” by “providing unlimited scalability and unified liquidity.”

“Implementation will begin as early as Q4 of this year if the community endorses these proposals,” wrote Polygon Labs in September.