An Ethereum competitor is launching a $300 million fund to support decentralized finance (DeFi) innovation on its network.
Blockchain company Algorand Foundation is putting 150 million ALGO, worth $309 million at time of writing, into the Viridis DeFi Program in an effort to fuel the growth of development on its platform.
Sean Lee, chief executive officer of the Algorand Foundation, says the fund will help accelerate the adoption of DeFi across the project’s ecosystem.
“Creating the right infrastructure, application ecosystem, and liquidity will be key to ensuring that DeFi on Algorand is regarded as the world’s most energy-efficient, scalable and low-cost DeFi ecosystem.”
The first 100 million ALGO will be devoted to providing support and liquidity incentives to the Algorand DeFi ecosystem. The other 50 million ALGO will be earmarked for the development of DeFi infrastructure and applications (DApps).
ALGO has been surging in price this week as most of the cryptocurrency market suffers through a correction. The 18th-ranked asset by market cap is trading at $2.06 at time of writing and is up 68.4% in the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.
Popular crypto trader and analyst Lark Davis says the existence of these ecosystem funds is a bullish development for the sector overall.
“Most of the big chains have announced multi-hundred million dollar funds to bootstrap ecosystems over the last few weeks. No one is bullish enough!”
