Ethereum’s scalable sidechain Matic Network has set aside $5 million for a new incubator fund aimed at attracting decentralized finance (DeFi) projects to build straight on its protocol.
Matic said Monday the grants would incentivize promising DeFi projects to build on its protocol, rather than directly onto Ethereum.
Grants will be paid in matic, a native staking token currently trading at $0.02, according to CoinGecko.
Matic has already given out more than $1 million in grants, although it hasn't revealed any of the beneficiaries.
Matic Network is an Ethereum sidechain that can handle up to 65,000 transactions per second; it raised $5 million in an initial exchange offering in 2019.
In a statement, Matic said building a DeFi space on its protocol would give projects scalability with ready access to the Ethereum mainnet.
In a speech in June, Matic COO Sandeep Nailwal said the company had already had some DeFi projects move to its protocol.
Crypto derivatives platform FTX said last week it was building a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana, another scalable network that would be interoperable with Ethereum.
As with Matic, FTX said building a DEX on Solana gave it sufficient throughput while remaining plugged into the Ethereum DeFi space, worth over $4.2 billion at press time.