EOS Foundation Wants to Give $50,000 to Devs to Deploy on Its EVM

The EOS Network Foundation, a community-led organization that had previously wrestled control of the EOS Network from Block.One, is launching an incentive program to bootstrap adoption of its new-fangled EOS EVM.

The project sees the EVM as the key to restart the battered network. Once hailed as the most promising of the "Ethereum killers," the project failed to capture developer attention during the 2021 bull market. At the same time, its founding company Block.One was largely pursuing unrelated ventures such as the Bullish exchange and the Voice social media platform.

At the end of 2021, tensions reached boiling point as the community supported the ENF in booting Block.One's stake from the network. Having received over $20 million in funding, the ENF set out to direct a new strategy for the EOS network. They identified an integration of Ethereum's EVM as the most logical path to pursue, as it would allow developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and for users to use the wallets they were used to.

By that point, EVM had clearly cemented its dominance as dozens of alternative layer-1 and layer-2 networks were using it to quickly bootstrap developer activity. EOS used its own programming stack based on the C++ language, which isn't too familiar for blockchain developers, and it required putting in a significant amount of work to enable EVM smart contracts.

In April 2023, the EOS EVM launched with a gradual Beta rollout. Now, the ENF and the community are ready to kickstart the network with the EOS EVM Incentive Program, or EEIP.

Full-stack funding for EVM developers

The EEIP offers up to $50,000 in incentives to anyone who simply deploys a dApp to the EOS EVM. The dApp must first be approved, respecting certain criteria based on how useful it is to the network. Anyone can apply through a simple form, which will put the team in touch with the Foundation.

In addition to the money, the ENF is focusing on marketing and developer support to teams accepted in the Incentive Program. This can help smooth the way for deploying and growing the project on the new network.

The EEIP complements a large list of other funding avenues for EOS EVM teams, including the ENF Grant Framework, designed for both infrastructure and early dApp funding; Pomelo, a community-led quadratic funding platform; and EOS Network Ventures, which offers venture funding for the ecosystem's projects.

With the investment climate souring in the past year and a half, the program can be useful to teams struggling with funding. Many other networks had to go into conservation mode as they splurged in the bull market, while EOS appears to be one of the few new networks on the offensive.

The EOS EVM stacks up quite favorably among other similar chains, offering an impressive one second block time, much faster than some of the leading L1s and L2s, without sacrificing the capacity of each block.

EOS is experiencing a renaissance, leveraging its powerful core technology while improving many of the UX and governance aspects that plagued it in the past. With the network currently commanding an $850 million market cap, it has all of the cards on the table to become a major contender for DeFi and other dApp activity.