Polkadot has committed $21 million to ecosystem development in order to establish itself as the blockchain network with the lowest carbon impact.
Polkadot, a popular blockchain protocol, has announced the allocation of more than $20 million in DOT to foster the growth of its ecosystem and the highly anticipated Web3.
Polkadot Commits $21 Million to Ecosystem Development
Polkadot said in a news statement shared with CryptoPotato that the prize proposal, called the Polkadot Pioneers Prize, is a series of challenges designed to drive technological innovation on its network.
The first two challenges will be announced later this year and will focus on zero-knowledge research and development as well as the Polkadot infrastructure.
The blockchain project has so far distributed around 993,286 DOT, its native coin, valued at nearly $21 million. The monies will be divided amongst the first two categories of challenges and future ones.
Polkadot plans to support the Pioneers Prize programme via its on-chain treasury, which will be administered by the network’s token holders through on-chain governance.
The treasury presently houses around 20 million DOT tokens and is intended to finance Polkadot ecosystem-related initiatives, such as the Pioneers Prize incentive scheme.
The Pioneers Prize seeks to solve the problem of how the Polkadot on-chain treasury is underutilised, given the lack of bold ideas for how to spend the monies. The concept aims to demonstrate how the community may increase its autonomy by repurposing on-chain treasury monies in novel and innovative ways.
The Polkadot Pioneers Prize will be managed by an elected curator, with members from the on-chain treasury council, Parity Technologies, the Web3 Foundation, and other external ecosystem partners likely to participate.
Polkadot’s Carbon Footprint
Meanwhile, Polkadot was designated the blockchain network with the lowest annual power use and overall carbon emissions by the Crypto Carbon Rankings Institute (CCRI) in a recent study report.
The CCRI examined six blockchain networks that use the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus process to assess their energy consumption and carbon emissions. Solana, Polkadot, Tezos, Avalanche, Cardano, and Algorand were among the blockchains evaluated.
For the longest time, energy consumption by blockchain networks has been a source of contention. Tesla, the electric vehicle maker, ceased taking Bitcoin payments last year owing to concerns about energy use.
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