The DFINITY Foundation, the not-for-profit developing the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) — the “world’s first” web-speed, internet-scale public blockchain – has announced up to $100K in grants “for female developers and entrepreneurs.”
The grants aim at encouraging women “to build on the ICP ecosystem providing them with easier access to resources and fast-tracking grantees through key milestones in the development process.”
According to a recent survey by Kucoin, “approximately 1 out of 4 professionals working in Web3 are women, 33% of which are working full-time in the space.” However, only 27% of women have “started their own web3 projects, compared to 41% of men, reflecting the lack of female developers and entrepreneurs entering the industry.” Over 30% of women mentioned the “bro” culture of Web3 as “an impediment to engage in Web3.”
Through the grant program, DFINITY Foundation aims “to inspire and support women to start building decentralized apps (dapps) on the Internet Computer blockchain.” DFINITY grantee and Supernova Hackathon winner, Bernie Snell (known as Bertie Spell on Twitter) expressed the importance of Web3 scholarships for women in a Twitter thread.
Snell is founder of the dapp Signals, “a location-based chat app for making connections, creating communities, and discovering events.’ In further posts, Snell reiterates “the need for financial support for female developers to encourage more participation in the ICP ecosystem and in blockchain development.”
Lomesh Dutta, VP of Growth DFINITY Foundation, said:
“The Web3 movement is all about democratizing access to opportunities. We are really excited to see female entrepreneurs leading the charge, but we also recognize the need to provide more special resources and support to women in this industry and to promote diversity in the Web3 space in every way possible. By launching these targeted grants, we look forward to welcoming more female builders to the ICP ecosystem and working together to build our vision of a user-owned, decentralized web on the Internet Computer blockchain. ”
Today’s ICP ecosystem “has women-led projects like Distrikt (decentralized Social Media platform with 110k+ users), Signals (location-based dapp for making connections, discovering local events and creating decentralized communities, watch demo), Factland DAO (working to slow the spread of misinformation online), and more.”
These dapps operate “with zero reliance on a central cloud service like AWS or Google Cloud and offer the associated advantages of data security, safety, and a lack of deplatforming risks.”
According to Electric Capital, in 2021 the Internet Computer “became one of the fastest-growing developer ecosystems in Web3.” The Supernova hackathon “attracted a record-breaking 3,700 developers, who made more than 400 submissions. ICP is also the number one blockchain with regard to GitHub commits.”
As the ICP ecosystem is growing, “so is the number of women involved.” To spread the word further, Fastblocks — “powered by the Internet Computer is the official media partner at the Women-Led Web3 Summit, Miami.”
As noted in the update, the Internet Computer claims it is “the world’s first web-speed, internet-scale public blockchain, developed by the DFINITY Foundation.”
The Internet Computer “overcomes the limitations of traditional blockchains and smart contracts for better speed, storage costs, security, and scalability, offering Web2 performance on an infinite Web3 platform.”
As a 100% trustless network, the Internet Computer is “the only public blockchain in the world that offers end-to-end decentralization and uses no centralized cloud nodes.”
Furthering its decentralization, the Internet Computer is “governed by the Network Nervous System (NNS), a protocol-integrated DAO where token holders have the power to vote on the future of the network.”
The Internet Computer mainnet was “launched in May 2021, following years of strategic research and development, by a team of more than 200 world-renowned cryptographers, distributed systems engineers, and programming language experts at the DFINITY Foundation.”
