Polygon has unlocked more than 600 million dollars to subsidize blockchain developers over the next 10 years through its Community Treasury.
The first 22 million are already on the way thanks to season 01 of the Community Grants Program (CGP).
Summary
Polygon: The funds for blockchain developers
Technically, the unlocked funds consist of one billion MATIC tokens, the native cryptocurrency of the Polygon ecosystem.
At the current market value, they correspond to just over 600 million dollars, but the price of MATIC is volatile so the dollar equivalent will certainly vary over the next ten years.
Of this billion MATIC tokens allocated, 35 million have already been made available for the Community Grants Program. At the current market value, they correspond to approximately 22 million dollars.
The overall supply of MATIC is approximately 9.9 billion tokens, so one billion tokens in ten years corresponds to more than 10% of the entire supply.
Instead, the 35 million tokens already made available correspond to just 0.35%.
The token MATIC
The price of the MATIC token today is down, but in line with the decline in the price of other criptovalute.
It does not seem, in fact, that the allocation of 35 million tokens to be distributed shortly to the developers has had a significant impact on the price.
The most recent significant drop, moreover, was not even yesterday’s, but that of Friday the 7th, so much so that compared to a week ago it is losing 13%. However, this is a perfectly in line drop with that of other cryptocurrencies, therefore at this moment the price trend of MATIC is following the general trend of altcoins.
What is most concerning, however, is the -35% since the beginning of the year, given that many other cryptocurrencies are instead largely in the positive zone compared to the end of 2023.
In particular, the current price of the Polygon token is still 79% lower than the all-time high of 2021, despite the numerous positive news released since the beginning of the year.
The minimum of the bear-market of 2022, that is 0.4$, is still far, but not too much, given that the current price is just above 0.6$.
Moreover, the annual peak of 2024 ($1.27) turned out to be lower than the annual peak of 2023 ($1.48), and this gives a good idea of how 2024 for MATIC is anything but good.
Among the main cryptocurrencies in the world, only ADA of Cardano has similar numbers, while all the other top 15 cryptocurrencies are recording better numbers over the course of the year.
Only in the last 30 days has the price trend of MATIC resumed following the general trend of altcoins.
If we then take the price of MATIC in ETH as a reference, the situation is even darker, given that it is at its lowest since April 2021.
Polygon: The season 01 dedicated to blockchain developers
The season 01 of the Polygon blockchain developer grants program will distribute 35 million MATIC to projects based on its chain.
The applications to request a grant have already been opened.
100 million POL tokens will be made available each year, while 35 million MATIC tokens have been allocated to season 01. The Community Treasury accumulates POL, but given the ongoing token upgrade, grants for season 1 will be disbursed in MATIC.
The grants will be overseen by an independent committee of the Community Treasury, and applicants will need to adhere to a funding framework. A portion of the grants for season 01 will be distributed by professional grant allocators.
To be admitted to the grant program, it is necessary to meet certain conditions.
The projects in fact must be based on Polygon, or willing to migrate to Polygon, and must build for the long term.
Among the projects that have already started thanks to Polygon grants are Quickswap, Keom, Jokerace, and Intraverse.
The Polygon team advises submitting grant requests in advance, as such requests are reviewed on a rolling basis. They anticipate an average grant delivery time of about four weeks. Applications can be submitted until August 31.
The two paths
This inaugural season of the Community Grants Program offers applicants two distinct paths.
The first is the so-called General Grant Track, aimed at anyone who wants to develop on Polygon, as it does not impose strict limitations on eligible projects.
The second is instead the so-called Consumer Crypto Track, which focuses on projects that can promote the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies.
In this path, the use cases aimed at consumers are favored, such as games, gamified commerce, decentralized social, AI/blockchain integrations, NFT innovations, content co-creation, digital/physical intersections, and distributed communities (the so-called scenecoin).
It is, however, only the first season, and future ones might also adopt different criteria.
On the other hand, the 35 million MATIC tokens distributed in this first season are only 3.5% of all the funds allocated for the program, which will be distributed over a period of ten years.
