Huobi Global seeks to become key player in Polkadot ecosystem. Two announcements by Huobi Global on Friday suggest that the cryptocurrency exchange is on the verge of becoming a central player in the development of the Polkadot network.
In a pair of blog posts, the Seychelles-based exchange revealed a Polkadot Sponsorship Program as well as a $5 million Tether stablecoin Fund from the Huobi Innovation Lab to help “developers, event organisers, content creators and ambassadors” around the Polkadot ecosystem.
The Sponsorship program permits individuals to recommend Polkadot projects for listing in the “Polkadot ecological zone,” a special asset listing section of the Huobi exchange. Sponsors are also reportedly granted an invite to Huobi’s annual conference, as well as to other offline events.
In order to apply, sponsors are expected to have a major vested interest in the success of Polkadot. Minimum specifications include 300,000 DOT tokens (over $1.5 million), half of which must be locked into Huobi’s asset certificates.
Huobi’s investment follows a pair of related announcements from Polkadot on Thursday. The network introduced a decentralised financial-focused partnership, whose founding members include the Chainlink Oracle Provider and the Plasm two-tier network.
Additionally, the Web3 Foundation announced the launch of the “Thousand Validators Programme,” which will provide education, support, and funding aimed at increasing the number of network validators for the platform.
The infrastructure and ecological investments come after Polkadot creator Gavin Wood argued on Thursday that Polkadot and Ethereum can co-exist. In comments made at the Polkadot Decoded summit, the programmer, who also co-founded Ethereum, dismissed the idea that there is only enough room for one layer-1 protocol.
“If Ethereum ends up being a chain that is sort of bridgeable […] I think that there’s a very good chance that Polkadot and Ethereum will happily coexist,” said Wood.
However, layer-1 platforms looking to sap developers and projects from Ethereum might be making some false assumptions about network effects.
[image: Huobi Blog]
