Avalanche Foundation’s ‘Multiverse’ Incentive Program To Invest up to $290M

A non-profit fund for the Avalanche blockchain has rolled out an incentive program with millions of dollars earmarked for the proof-of-stake ecosystem.

Up to four million AVAX tokens, or about $290 million at the time of publication, will fund the program, also known as Avalanche Multiverse.

The initiative will aim to grow its “subnet” functionality, which helps develop application-specific blockchains on Avalanche. Subnets are natively integrated with Avalanche’s broader ecosystem, available in an unlimited supply and allow for custom implementations — or the ability to tack on features from other chains.

Avalanche Multiverse’s program and investments will be divided into at least six phases to support new cohorts and projects but will not be constrained to a specific time period. It’s a non-profit organization that is run separately from Ava Labs.

The first subnet to receive an investment from the program is DeFi Kingdoms, an NFT gaming project. It will get up to $15 million in incentives through AVAX tokens, as well as the game’s new Avalanche-native token CRYSTAL and existing token JEWEL.

Ava Labs, a core developer of Avalanche, will also partner with the Aave Companies, GoldenTree Asset Management, Wintermute, Jump Crypto, Valkyrie, Securitize and other organizations to build the subnet. This will allow regulated institutions that participate to leverage its subnets and access institutional DeFi (decentralized finance) after completing know-your-customer (KYC) checks.

“Avalanche Subnets enable us to create an ideal environment for institutions to migrate on-chain and experience the power of DeFi protocols first-hand as users rather than just as investors,” Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, said in a statement. “This is a significant leap toward a future where the barriers between traditional and decentralized finance cease to exist.”

In November, Avalanche launched a $200 million fund to support ecosystem growth on its blockchain. It also closed a $230 million token sale, backed by Three Arrows Capital and Polychain, a few months prior. 

Avalanche’s native token, AVAX, had a price of $75.39 as of 1:30 pm ET on Tuesday, according to CoinMarketCap data. The coin’s market capitalization is near $19.9 billion, which ranks the token as the 10th largest cryptocurrency, behind Solana (SOL) and ahead of Binance USD (BUSD), the data show.

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