Digital asset development company RockX has launched a $20 million investment program to support the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem over the next five years. The funding, capped at a maximum of $500,000 worth of DOT tokens per project, will be provided alongside technical support from the team’s developers. In return, the firm will receive tokens or equity from supported projects.
RockX, which currently runs a node for Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, Oasis, and Terra, was co-founded by Alex Lam, who also runs Asia based Bitcoin (BTC) mining facilities RockMiner.
CEO Lam said that the program is being launched with financial aid from a number of individual investors, who have asked to remain anonymous. He described the mystery partners as prominent DOT holders who are also long-term supporters of Ethereum (ETH) stating:
"They are guys who have been in the Ethereum community since 2015, and have supported the Ethereum ecosystem in the past via investments and building projects."
Despite their financial contributions, they will not provide any influence over which projects are to be accepted into the program — a decision that will be made solely by the RockX team.
Although structured as an investment program, the team will also consider awarding no strings attached grants to certain projects in the future. Although no project has yet been accepted into the program, RockX is already in preliminary discussions with some teams.
The announcement comes just one week after Polkadot established the Polkadot Treasury, and although the investment program “has no connection with the Treasury”, it shares a similar vision to help “build and promote projects” on the Polkadot network. Lam said:
“With a strong technical background, RockX will also build and contribute technically to Polkadot.”
The largest crypto fund in South East Asia Signum Capital is an investor in RockX. Managing partner John Ng Pangilinan said that RockX is doing more than simply safeguarding the Polkadot network as a node operator:
“RockX is taking a step further to help blockchains grow by leveraging its technical capabilities and investor networks. This will set up a new collaborative model for the industry."