Yes, Hedera runs programs and uses hbars to encourage developer adoption. Building a new technology has challenges and financial risk. Hedera Heroes and Hedera Boost are two current developer-focused programs intended to jumpstart ecosystem education, participation, and utilization of the Hedera network and hashgraph technology.
Hedera may, through other initiatives and/or agreements, provide larger amounts of hbars to enterprises, developers and other third parties that are able to drive network growth, development, and decentralization. Hedera also may pay some developers for services (e.g. tools, data analytics, advertising) and those payments may be in hbars, some or all of which those developers can then use to pay for API calls or other goods and services on the Hedera network. All such programs and distributions are subject to Council review and approval.
Hedera Boost
Developers can earn up to $1,000 per month in hbars for the first three months after deploying their application on the mainnet in order to subsidize their transaction fees on the network. For some select third party applications, with high transaction volume, larger grants (currently expected to be up to approximately $10,000 per month in hbars over a three-month period) may be available to subsidize transaction costs, scale customer acquisition, and importantly, provide feedback, analytics and insights that can be used to improve network services.
Hedera Heroes
This program aims to encourage developer collaboration by compensating those who create and share content that is helpful to other developers. Participants may receive payment in hbars (currently approximately $100 worth) for each submission that is published on Hedera’s blog related to helping other developers, such as how-to articles, tutorial videos, lessons learned, and other informative content.