Akash, a decentralized cloud network, today announced the launch of the Akash Developer Grant Program, a community-driven source of funding and support for promising developers and teams.

The purpose of the program is to expand the Akash developer community, encourage collaboration, and produce open-source projects to further the adoption and usage of Akash Network’s decentralized cloud.

Inspired by programs like AWS Activate and Y Combinator, the program offers funding, guidance, support, and marketing for developers including:

• Grants: Developers can apply for grants in amounts ranging from $100 to $100,000 paid in $AKT.
• Office Hours: Office hours from Akash’s community and core development team to provide guidance and best practices as they build and test.
• Collaboration: Every project funded will be open source and will have its own channel on Discord to communicate with the Akash community.
• Powered by Akash: Promising projects will be featured on the forum and website to amplify attention.
• Demo Days: The top developers will present their projects to investors, advisors, and other developers in the Akash community via blogs and Akash branded live streams.

Eligibility for Grants

All software developers and engineers with a GitHub account are eligible.

What can I do with $AKT tokens?

Holders can use the grants for infrastructure services provided on the Akash Network:

• Deploy container-based apps on managed Kubernetes.
• Host websites on the Akash open-source cloud hosting platform.
• Build web apps or API backends on robust infrastructure.
• Apply for up to $100,000 from the Community Pool.
• Users can securely lease out their data center as a provider.

How do I get help with Akash?

• Guides and tutorials by the community are available to help get started deploying on Akash
• Technical support for all developers is free regardless of how much AKT is spent, staked, or owned. Technical support is available here.
• Have a question about Akash? Join the discussion on Akash’s active community forum.

Explore the Tiers

The Developer Grant Program has a wide range of award tiers, from $100 to $100,000. The amount of funding received depends on the milestones achieved and funding tiers unlocked.

Four award tiers have been set up to support all types of projects large or small:

1. $100 Initiate Grant: The purpose of this funding is to support a large number of developers in running their first apps on Akash. If a developer sends these tokens to an exchange, they will be ineligible for future funding, as well as the next tier of funding.
2. $1,000 Seed Grant: The Seed Grant requires a developer to create a detailed proposal for their project and share this with the community for public comment and questions. Developers are expected to open source their project for the community, publish a detailed guide, and answer questions from the community.
3. $10,000 Incubator Grant: The Incubator Grant is awarded only if progress is made by the developer to meet the milestones in their proposal. The developers may be asked to present their project in a recorded live stream and answer questions live from the community.
4. $100,000 Accelerator Grant: The Accelerator Grant is only awarded to developers that have consistently met their milestones, demonstrated improvements, and shown a willingness to remain open source and collaborate with the Akash community.

All grants are paid in $AKT to the developer’s Akash account address. To prevent fraudulent activity, the account is linked to the developer’s accounts on Discourse, GitHub, and Discord.

This award is a non-dilutive donation, and Akash’s treasury and community do not gain equity in projects with the grants. The grants must be used to deploy and run applications on Akash Network.

Milestones

Milestones for each project will be determined as part of the grant application. A milestone is a goal such as the development of a feature, the release of a working beta, and the completion of the work.

A typical project should have 3-4 milestones and be completed within 2-4 months. Projects that complete their milestones will present to investors, advisors, and developers in the community on a demo day.

What types of projects will be funded?

The Akash team is committed to a transparent and clear process and wants to set expectations for the types of projects that will be considered for funding.

Projects that apply for grants from the developer program will need to outline how their project will contribute and add value to the Akash ecosystem.

Below are some examples of projects that the Akash team hopes to see submitted:

• Developer tooling for Akash including SDKs and APIs.
• Open-source developer tools (Homebrew).
• Creator platforms (CMS, podcasting, blogging, forums, GitLab).
• Decentralized web services (Handshake, DNS, OpenRegistry).
• Backend as a service (Hasura on Akash).
• Platform as a service (Heroku on Akash).
• Open-source communications (Chat, Email).
• Desktop deployment interface.
• Hosted deployment interface with wallet integration.
• App Store interface (OpenChannel on Akash).
• Persistent storage integrations (Sia, Skynet, Filebase, Arweave, Filecoin, Storj, Coldstack).

How are projects accepted?

Proposals will be reviewed by the Akash Community Awards Board (CAB). Each month, the CAB will meet to review proposals submitted by developers and craft on-chain proposals for the community to vote on.

All meetings will be recorded and minutes will be shared publicly with the community. The CAB is open to Akash customers, validators, providers, investors, advisors, employees, and former employees. If interested in nominating someone, post it publicly on the community forum’s Grant Applications.

Being a member of this board requires active participation to review developer applications and be involved in the decision-making and proposal writing process. Initially, voting requires attendance.

Referral Rewards

The central goal of the Developer Grant Program is to attract talented developers. If interested in inviting a developer to the Akash developer program, create an invitation and share it. Each month, the community members with the most successful invitations will be awarded $100 or $1,000.

Incubators, accelerators, and VCs

Akash will be partnering with other startup funds to provide free hosting on Akash. If a venture capital firm, accelerator, incubator, or other startup-enabling organization is interested in providing Akash developer grants to startups, contact [email protected].

How will this be funded?

In order to scale the program quickly, the initial grants will be awarded by the Akash Treasury.

Akash is currently funding developers through five coding challenges. In the last 3 months, the Akash Treasury has awarded over 80 developers over 7,000 $AKT. Seven developers were winners of the Solana hackathon, and as part of the Sovrython hackathon, 37 developers received $100 of $AKT.

Grants over $1,000 will be proposed by the CAB to tap into the Community Pool. The CAB will work with developers to create proposals to fund projects and encourage voting by the community.

Currently, the community pool is over one million tokens (1,008,789 $AKT). The CAB may propose to award these grants directly to developers to reduce complexity or propose to award a grant to multi-signature wallets, managed by community members.

How to Apply for Developer Grants

Follow the 10 steps listed on the forum to install Akash, create an account, and propose a project.

Akash Network is a decentralized, open-source cloud that accelerates deployment, scale, efficiency, and price performance for high-growth industries like blockchain & machine learning/AI.