We propose the launch of the Akash Developer Program and Community Awards, a new source of funding and support for promising developers and teams. The goal of the program is to grow the developer community, encourage collaboration, and build the tools necessary to make Akash easier and more accessible for the community. Inspired by startup programs AWS Activate and Y Combinator, Akash is offering funding and support for a large number of developers with benefits including technical guidance and marketing. The program culminates in a series of Demo Days, when the chosen developers present their projects to the Akash community. The projects awarded will be featured in blogs and live streams to amplify attention to apps powered by Akash. All developers are encouraged to register for the program and apply for awards. You must have a Github or Gitlab account to be considered a developer. Awards will be announced every month. All awards will be made in AKT tokens. This funding is non-dilutive. We do not take equity in projects with the awards. The program has four tiers of funding in order to support all types of projects large and small. The four award tiers are $100 Activation Award, $1,000 Seed Award, $10,000 Incubator Award, and $100,000 Accelerator Award. The amount of the award is dependent on the project milestones achieved, and the impact demonstrated by previous awards. The purpose of the smallest awards are to support developers running their first app on Akash. The awards must be used to deploy and run applications on Akash. If a developer sends the award to an exchange, they will be ineligible for more awards. Only those developers that have demonstrated a commitment to consistent development will be considered for top tiers of awards. The developer will be asked to share a detailed plan with the community, open source their project for the community, and present their project in a recorded video. A limited number of awards are available at the higher tiers. Milestones for each project will be set as part of the application process. Awards will be made based on milestones that are met. A milestone is a goal such as the development of a feature, the release of a working beta, and the completion of the work. A typical project should be completed within 2-4 months. Projects that complete their milestones will present to the community on a scheduled Demo Day. We are committed to a transparent and clear process. Applications will be reviewed by a Community Awards Board. The board will include at a minimum five members including Akash core team members and community members such as validators, providers, tenants, advisors, or app developers. To nominate someone to participate in the Community Awards Board, please send a message to [email protected]. Being a member of this board requires active participation. Each week the board will meet to review the submitted applications and begin accepting submissions, deny funding, or recommend the developer re-apply. For the first phase, we propose 100,000 AKT to be spent from the Community Pool and sent to a wallet controlled by the treasury of Overclock Labs. The community pool is currently over 960,713 AKT. The timeline is immediate, registration will begin in August, awards will be announced every month until funds run out. This program is expected to continue through 2023 if further spend from the community pool is approved by future proposals. The projects to be awarded by the Community Awards Board will be selected based on the impact to the Akash ecosystem and growth of the network. Here are examples of projects that we encourage to submit: Developer tooling for Akash including SDKs and APIs, Open source developer tools e.g. Homebrew, Creator platforms (CMS, Podcasting, Blogging, Forums, GitLab), Decentralized web services e.g. (Handshake DNS, OpenRegistry), Backend as a service / “Hasura on Akash”, Platform as a service / “Heroku on Akash”, Open source communications (Chat, Email), Desktop deployment interface, Hosted deployment interface, Wallets with deployment capabilities, App Store interface / “OpenChannel on Akash”, Storage integrations, Research on developer projects and their impact, Secure VPN Services, Validator operations tools, Mining operations tools. This proposal was written by Colin Lowenberg in collaboration with Overclock Labs and ChandraStation