Over the past 2 decades, funding from the VC has been a major driving force behind creation of new companies. These companies who went on to be called as Startups in the tech lingo dominated the world of innovation. They created solutions for the problems they faced and sometimes created solutions to perceived problems which did not actually solve anything in the real world. But the VC money ensured that the young minds were willing to take chances and risks resulting in fast paced innovation. Every few years the world was dominated by a new Unicorn and the rise was as rapid as the replacement. There has been remarkable progress in this short span and young and obsessive creators have dedicated themselves to finding out new solutions.
One key factor that has not changed much during the last decades was how the startups had accessed to funding at the Seed stage or say Series A. The access to VC money depends on lot of factors and there is no predictability whether one will have access to it or not. It is this hustle that keeps this space interesting but it is also this hustle that sometimes demotivates founders from pursuing their dream. Very little innovation had happened in this space until the outbreak of ICOs. ICOs changed the scope completely and all of a sudden anybody and everybody was raising millions of dollars with a promise of building the future. It was a wonderful departure from the past of access controlled VC money. But there is a reason why it was called an outbreak earlier. Scams became common and eventually ICO outbreak was contained and it is a lot more realistic.
Bounty programs were launched by various blockchain companies. These enthused the developers to develop on their platforms by providing them incentives. One such program is the app mining program of blockstack. They have a dedicated fund that is parked for developers building on blockstack. It has been more than a year and more than 200 apps have taken the benefits. Dapps like Dmail, Arcane Docs, SpringRole, Graphite, Pden, BitPatron, etc. hold good potential for the future. It is encouraging to see newer apps entering the platform every month and trying to make a mark in the decentralized world. These bounty programs enhance the ease of access for startups to gain access to funds at an early stage. But whether this quantum will help in sustaining the interest of the apps in the bounty programs like app mining will be answered in times to come.