- Okcoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, has announced its collaboration with the Stacks Accelerator and Stacks Foundation for introducing a grant program with $165 million in funding.
- The aim of the project is to replace Ethereum as the go-to blockchain for decentralized applications or dApps with Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency by market cap.
- A bunch of projects will be selected to offer assistance from the already present blockchain companies in the organization under the grant program dubbed Bitcoin Odyssey.
In an announcement today, Okcoin, a cryptocurrency exchange, revealed that it is partnering with the Stacks Accelerator and Stacks Foundation to launch a grant program that has funding of around $165 million, dubbed Bitcoin Odyssey. The aim of the project is to surpass the second leading cryptocurrency, Ethereum, and establish Bitcoin as the go-to blockchain for decentralized applications.
The goal is to encapsulate all the elements of Web3, including play-to-earn crypto games, DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and the metaverse under Bitcoin. All this while, Ethereum is the top blockchain that is preferred while creating decentralized applications or dapps. But, it doesn’t sit right with some Bitcoin developers, and through Stock as a platform, they wish to achieve it.
Stacks was founded by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea in 2016. It is an open-source protocol for developers to deploy smart contracts, a set of programs that automatically executes software and non-fungible tokens or NFTs, unique tokens that exist on the blockchain and cannot be replicated on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The mainnet of Stacks was released in January last year. As a result, the STX coin climbed to its all-time high market cap of $3.7 billion. The current market cap of STX is $1.84 billion.
According to the coinmarketcap data, the coin was trading at USD 1.43, up 33.65% in the past 24 hours. The circulating supply of STX coins is 1,302,623,684 STX coins and a maximum supply of 1,818,000,000 STX coins.
What Will Bitcoin Odyssey Do?
Selected projects to Bitcoin Odyssey will be provided assistance from organizations already present in the blockchain industry, in addition to receiving funds. Alex Chizhik, head of listings at Okcoin, and Kyle Ellicott, partner at the Stacks Accelerator, co-chair the Bitcoin Odyssey.
Digital Currency Group, GSR, and White Star Capital are the participants in the fund and will provide money and resources to projects building on Stacks.
Bitcoin Odyssey will also provide funds for projects that are behind the development of CityCoins, such as MiamiCoin, a digital asset created to use the stacks protocol, launched on June 8th last year.