Axelar Network, a decentralized interoperability platform, has announced a $5 million developer grant program for building the future of interchain connectivity using the network’s Virtual Machine.
What Axelar hopes to achieve
The grant program aims to work with selected teams to scale building new connections across ecosystems, improve security, and design interchain orchestration templates on the Axelar Virtual Machine.
Axelar Network is a blockchain overlay network that connects over 30 chains, processes hundreds of thousands of cross-chain communication calls, and unites users from distinct communities.
The network’s mission is to scale the ecosystem of the decentralized Web by simplifying developer and user interactions across many systems.
The Axelar Network is agnostic and timeless, with a single mission at its heart: to streamline and accelerate connectivity across heterogeneous systems.
The Virtual Machine is a programmable interoperability layer that allows developers to program interoperability across chains and compose each other’s functions.
Axelar introduces the notion of programmable interoperability, powered by the Virtual Machine. With the introduction of programmability at the interoperability layer via the Virtual Machine, developers can define and program new interchain properties beyond the simple passing of arbitrary messages.
The Interchain Amplifier and Interchain Maestro are two key products designed to scale interoperability using the Virtual Machine. The Interchain Amplifier enables developers to permissionlessly set up connections to the Axelar network.
Developers gain access to Axelar’s interconnected network of chains and can “amplify” their resources by paying the cost equivalent of developing only one connection.
Simplifying interchain dApp deployments
The Interchain Maestro introduces a new paradigm for building in the interchain: build once, run everywhere. It is a set of orchestration contracts, and templates to help design, deploy, and manage your dApp across multiple chains.
Axelar’s Virtual Machine developer grant program aims to work with selected teams to scale building new connections across ecosystems, improve security, and design interchain orchestration templates on the Virtual Machine.
The ideal applicants should have a deep understanding of consensus protocols and cryptography, and a strong software engineering background.
The platform’s approach to interchain connectivity is hub-and-spoke routing + programmable interoperability. Hubs like the Axelar network can offer one-to-many routing properties.
At the cost of developing a single connection, a chain can access N other interconnected ecosystems. In this model, connecting a light-client or a ZK chain to the hub is the most economically practical approach.
Axelar’s programmable interoperability layer at the network level allows developers to program interoperability across chains and compose each other’s functions.
This enables faster and more seamless expansion of new connections, customization of the interop layer, and simplified interchain deployments.
Axelar’s Virtual Machine developer grant program aims to work with selected teams to scale building new connections across ecosystems, improve security, and design interchain orchestration templates on the Virtual Machine.
The Interchain Amplifier and Interchain Maestro are just two examples of the features that can be developed using the Virtual Machine.
With the introduction of programmability at the interoperability layer, the possibilities are endless. Axelar’s developer grant program will help scale the development of new interchain properties beyond the simple passing of arbitrary messages.
A growing list of partners is integrating with Axelar Virtual Machine to build programmable interoperability at all layers of the Web3 stack. Projects like Celestia, Centrifuge, Coinbase Base, MobileCoin, NEAR, Shardeum, StarkWare, zkSync, and others are working on integrating and expanding their ecosystems.
