With a shared vision to empower the next generation of tech startups, Protocol Labs has formed a strategic alliance with Chainlink Labs, the primary contributing developer of the industry-standard decentralized computing platform Chainlink. Specifically, Protocol Labs will support the Chainlink BUILD program, which is designed to foster promising early-stage startups building across key sectors including DeFi, global trade and gaming.

"Providing founders with expert guidance and access to best-in-class infrastructure will give them key tools to flourish in this ever-evolving industry.”

– Ruben Amenyogbo, Partner at Protocol Labs Builders Fund.

“Chainlink and Filecoin, two key Web3 infrastructure protocols, have been built upon together by thousands of developers in the past and have created programs to support them. We hope to bring this rich history to the new Founders program and Chainlink BUILD strategic alliance to improve humanity’s technology set."

How Protocol Labs Supports Chainlink BUILD Members

With more than 600 tech startups, funds, accelerators, foundations, open-source projects, and service providers under its umbrella, Protocol Labs’ innovation network spans the entire R&D pipeline, across fields like Web3, AI, AR, VR, BCI, hardware, and more. Through this alliance, Protocol Labs can add real value to Chainlink BUILD projects in a variety of ways, including:

• Engineering support - for IPFS, Filecoin, FVM, libp2p, IPC & more
• Workshops & attendance at Partner Days
• Office hours with researchers & mentors
• Decentralized storage credits, including for Web.storage, NFT.storage, and other in-development services and tools
• Talent support (for selected participants)
• PL Founders Community invitation (for selected participants)

The Protocol Labs Builders Funnel features complimentary builder programming that will benefit Chainlink BUILD’s startup community. The programs include awareness campaigns, university activations, hackathons, grants, and accelerator programs. In 2023, the PL Builders Funnel continued to scale its support for builders and startups operating in the Filecoin ecosystem, including laying the foundations for development of the Filecoin Virtual Machine (opens new window). By the end of 2023, the Builders Funnel programming has supported:

• >63,000 hackers across 120+ hacks with 40+ partners, resulting in 4,500+ submissions and $1.6M+ in prizes
• 602 grant recipients across open grants, targeted grants, FRP and joint grants, and micro grants
• 316 teams that are either currently enrolled in or have graduated from one of PL’s 36 accelerator cohorts run to date with 23 leading technology partners
• Accelerator teams raising >$420M in venture capital
• Early-stage capital injections into 100+ Funnel startups

A Shared History of Support

This strategic alliance is the latest in a slew of builder-focused initiatives held jointly by Chainlink and Protocol Labs. Since 2021, for example, joint hackathons have led to innovative use cases, including certificates for learning systems, NFT games and insurance contracts for miners.

The next step led to joint grants that offered support for the Web3 ecosystem, such as to awardee Linkstorage (opens new window) to create a blockchain data storage protocol. Our support for BUILD is a natural extension of this growing support for early-stage startups in the ecosystem.

Meanwhile, Chainlink has enabled over $9 trillion in transaction value by providing financial institutions, startups, and developers worldwide with access to real-world data, offchain computation, and secure cross-chain interoperability across any blockchain.

The new alliance will ultimately help unlock and enable broader scalability of services and applications at the intersection of storage, compute, and interoperability.