The amount allocated is down from a budget of $40 million in 2023.
Switzerland-based Interchain Foundation (ICF), the core developer behind the cross-chain communications protocol Cosmos, will allocate $26.4 million for maintaining the said ecosystem next year.
According to a Dec. 13 announcement seen by Cointelegraph, the ICF 2024 roadmap “prioritizes funding for the Interchain Stack’s optimal functionality.” Out of the amount, $3 million will be allocated to CometBFT, Cosmos’ Byzantine fault-tolerant engine for state machine replication. Meanwhile, $4.5 million will go toward the Cosmos software development kit, and $7.5 million will be allocated to Cosmos’ native inter-blockchain communications protocol (IBC).
The remaining $4.155 million will go toward smart contract framework CosmWasm, digital library CosmJS, and ecosystem security audits. “This year’s funding program is designed to fortify the free-to-use, open-source Interchain Stack, serving as a catalyst for enhanced blockchain interconnectedness,” said ICF board director Maria Gomez, adding, “The role we play in the ecosystem is that of a steward that aids the interchain to achieve its goal of interoperable sovereignty.”