The Substrate Builders Program has kicked off in full swing with 17 total teams already joining the program. The Builders Program identifies, supports and mentors select teams that are building Substrate-based blockchains. The large number of high-quality applications is a great indicator that the Substrate ecosystem is quickly growing.

The Builders Program offers business development, technical and community support. In particular the chat and office hours have been very popular, with both English and Chinese support available.

Of course, the builders themselves are the most important component of the ecosystem. Program participants have built blockchains for anything from developer/social infrastructure to very specific applications. Current participants include:

• Centrifuge - Financial supply chain platform
• Moonbeam - DeFi developer platform
• DataHighway - Inter-chain IoT data network
• Phala Network - Confidential smart contracts platform
• Plasm - Scalable dapp platform implementing layer2 solutions
• Laminar - Synthetic asset and margin trading platform
• Acala - DeFi network for multi-collateralized stablecoin and staking liquidity
• Subsocial - Protocol and web UI for social networks and marketplaces
• Polymath - Security token platform
• ProChain - Tokenized advertising platform
• KILT protocol - Credentials and identity for Web 3.0
• Nodle - IoT connectivity network
• Valibre - Decentralized remittances network
• Transparent Systems - Payment network for businesses
• SparkHealth - Healthcare platform
• Edgeware - Smart contracts platform
• Stafi - Protocol for staking asset liquidity

The Builders Program is turning out to be larger than we initially anticipated, which shows the increasing maturity of our builder ecosystem as Substrate 2.0 and Polkadot draws near. Many teams in our ecosystem are doing great work, but with the complexity of rolling out a blockchain and building a community, communication with Parity and closer technical support have definitely been welcome.

ProChain cofounder Roy Young says, "As we are near mainnet launch, we found it extremely useful to participate in the Builders Program and get fast communication and technical support from Parity." ProChain is using Substrate to develop a Web 3.0-native advertisement system where advertisers in any social media platform can directly reward users for their participation.

The strong variety of projects that are building on Substrate demonstrate the versatility of Substrate as a blockchain development platform. In addition, many of these projects intend to connect to Polkadot. The future of blockchain interoperability is looking bright indeed.

Applications to the Builders Program are open on a continuous basis. To learn more about the program, please visit https://builders.parity.io/.