Kava launches $750M developer incentive program

Kava’s DAO voted to allocate $750 million to a unique on-chain developer incentive. The funding program aims to continue onboarding the most innovative developers to the Kava Network according to a post on their website.

The first truly builder-owned network

Kava has the ambitious goal to become the first truly builder-owned network. According to the novel funding model, just under two-thirds of all block rewards will be distributed to developers building on the Kava co-chains, Ethereum (ETH/USD) and Cosmos (ATOM/USD). This level of distributed ownership is practically unprecedented.

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Developers are encouraged to both bring over most of their users and treasury rewards to the Kava Network and onboard their projects to maximize their earnings.

The KAVA token emitted is distributed as follows: 62.5% to developers and 37.5% to stakers. Nothing is left in reserve.

Program initiated with Kava 10 upgrade

The program, called Kava Rise, will be launched together with the Kava 10 upgrade, which will initiate both Kava co-chains. This will enable developers to deploy live versions of their Ethereum and Cosmos SDK-based dApps on the Kava Network.

The program will distribute 200 million KAVA to the top projects on Ethereum and Cosmos over 4 years, divided evenly between the two chains. Kava Rise funds will be allocated as follows:

• 5 million KAVA annualized for NFT and GameFi incentives on both co-chains
• 15 million KAVA annualized to DeFi protocols on the Cosmos co-chains
• 30 million KAVA annualized to DeFi protocols on the Ethereum co-chains

Eligibility

To be eligible to receive DeFi incentives on either co-chain, protocols must register with DeFi Llama, be deployed on either Cosmos or Ethereum at monthly distribution, and dispose of total value locked (TVL) of at least $10,000 at this time.

Distribution of rewards

Transparent criteria will govern all Kava Rise distributions, which will be subject to a Kava governance vote. The funds will be distributed on-chain to eligible protocols.

Rewards will be dispersed to the top 100 DeFi protocols monthly pro-rata based on usage, which will be calculated by the time-weighted TVL of the protocol as a portion of the top 100 protocols’ total TVL. Users are advised to use KAVA distributions as protocol incentives to increase relative TVL and earn more KAVA rewards moving forward.