In 2017 Blockstack announced the Blockstack Signature Fund. The Signature Fund
is aimed at growing an ecosystem of decentralized applications on Blockstack.
The fund releases funds through a Signature Bounty program. This is a global
bounty program using a contest model. Teams from all over the world submit
products and a set of judges determine who wins the prize for the best product.

In addition to the bounty program, Blockstack supports an application mining
program. This is an early stage program for developers. In this program,
application developers register their application on App.co. Then, each month,
application developers get paid depending on their application
quality ranking. The ranking is determined by a set of application reviewers.

Application mining differs from the venture model or the app studio model
because the rewards are in cryptocurrency. Blockstack PBC administrates both the
review and delivery of these monthly payments.