On July 17th, Chinese blockchain firm VeChain announced that it will begin subsidizing individual developers and startups using its platform to encourage growth. The company will half the transaction fee developer and startup users of its enterprise-focused platform, VeChainThor, for three months.
The public pay-to-use platform is already used in projects with Walmart China for food traceability, in BMW’s care mileage app, and with logistics firm DB Schenker’s quality assessment program, among others.
The announcement highlights an issue that the costs of using blockchains can potentially be a barrier to entry for lone developers and small startups.
Transaction fees vary widely in the blockchain space. They are calculated by some platforms, including VeChain and Ethereum, based on gas, which measures how much work each transaction needs to be done.
This makes sure that fees are based on network usage share rather than the value of the transaction or how long the input code is. So, gas can be preferable for developers, who aren’t really trading value.
VeChain claims that it has been “proven” that the transaction cost of using its platform is outweighed by the value it creates. Though the firm admits that when starting out, developers do have to invest transaction fees before they see any income. This might discourage smaller startups from using VeChainThor.
So the firm announced yesterday it will launch the VTHO Subsidy Program. Individual developers and early startup projects who are using VeChainThor to build apps will only have to pay 50% of the blockchain’s token VTHO for transactions. The program will run from the July 22nd to the October 22nd this year.
“VeChain has always put developers first and center, the introduction of the new bounties are just the latest examples of the broader efforts that VeChain has made to bolster dApp development,” the statement reads.
The firm, founded in 2015, has also extended its existing Supercharger program, which delegates fees for some developers. They can now apply for an award of 3 million VTHO to boost their projects.
VeChainThor is growing; it boasted over 1.1 million transactions in a single day this month.
Neither the author nor Ledger Insights team own VeChainThor tokens
