The Stone Ridge startup accelerator is an 8-week program that will run four times in a year with its focus on Bitcoin Lightning Network and the Taro protocol.
Stone Ridge, the parent company of Bitcoin company NYDIG, has created In Wolf’s Clothing (Wolf), the first startup accelerator that focuses on the Bitcoin Lightning Network and the Taro protocol.
The accelerator consists of 8-week programs that bring the top company founders and teams from around the world to New York City while covering their lodging and travel expenses.
A $250k investment is promised to the teams that apply and are selected for the program. At the conclusion of each program, one team will be selected by a panel of judges to earn an additional $500,000 in financing for the demonstration day.
The programs will run four times a year, with the first one beginning in April of the following year and accepting applications right now.
One-on-one mentorships and access to a variety of specialists are two other advantages of the program, according to Kelly Brewster, CEO of Wolf.
The Lightning Network has continued to experience tremendous expansion in its capacity over the past year, recently surpassing the 5,000 BTC milestone after having barely reached 4,000 BTC in June, despite macroeconomic headwinds and a significant decline in the price of Bitcoin.
The layer-2 solution known as the Lightning Network, which is built on top of Bitcoin, enables users to send satoshis—the smallest unit of currency that Bitcoin can be divided into—at faster rates and with cheaper fees.
The Lightning Labs-developed Taro protocol, which is powered by Taproot, enables the transfer of assets created on the Bitcoin blockchain to the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
Taro, in other words, enables the Lightning network to develop into a multi-asset network with Bitcoin as its central component.
The network’s capacity is currently sitting at 5,140 BTC, according to data from 1ml, which represents a rise of 5.43% over the previous month. Median transaction fees are also far below 1 millionth of a cent per satoshi.