To be honest, when I saw that the ecological fund accounted for 25% (250 million AT) in APRO's tokenomics, my first reaction was: with such a large sum of money, I hope it won't be used for 'market value management' again.
The crypto circle has seen many so-called 'ecological funds'—on the surface, they claim to support developers and subsidize users, but in reality, they are just small treasure troves for the project parties to manage the market, pump, and dump. By the time the bear market arrives, the fund is still unspent, the project is done for, and a pile of tokens is left collecting dust in wallets.
But after carefully studying the ecological fund usage plan of @APRO-Oracle, I found that its approach is completely different—it's not a scattergun method, but a targeted demolition style of precise deployment. The goal is very clear: to use this 250 million AT to open up a gap in the RWA and AI Agent tracks.
First, let's talk about RWA. The biggest problem in this sector right now is not "no demand", but "too high costs".
A project aiming to tokenize real estate faces compliance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars—hiring lawyers to study state laws, hiring auditing firms to verify assets, and hiring technical teams to develop smart contracts. By the time all this is done, half the funds may be burned, and they haven't even started real operations.
What can APRO's ecological fund do here? Lower cold start costs.
How to reduce costs? For example: An RWA project wants to use APRO's AI nodes to validate audit reports and monitor reserve ratios. At market prices, this service might cost several thousand dollars per month. But if this project meets APRO's "ecological partner" standards (such as a certain TVL size or exceeding user thresholds), the ecological fund will subsidize the service fees for the first six months—allowing the project to use it for free, with APRO paying the node operators using funds.
What happens after six months? If the project starts running and becomes profitable, it will naturally continue to pay for APRO's services (because it is already deeply integrated, and the switching costs are high). If the project doesn't succeed, APRO will only lose a few tens of thousands of dollars in subsidies, which is manageable risk.
This "free first, paid later" strategy is common in the SaaS industry, but in the Web3 oracle field, APRO may be the first to do this. Chainlink never offers free trials—if you want to use my services, you must pay with LINK tokens. But APRO dares to do this because it has a 25% ecological fund as a backup.
From existing cooperation cases, this strategy is proving effective. Plume Network, a dedicated RWA chain, has APRO as its core data service provider. Projects on Plume (such as tokenized government bonds and real estate funds) are using APRO's AI verification capabilities. These projects may have received subsidies from the ecological fund in their early stages, but once they scale up, they will become long-term paying customers of APRO.
Now let's look at the AI Agent sector. This direction is still in its early stages, the demand is still in the cultivation phase, but the potential is enormous.
In 2026, APRO is set to launch the Agent Broadcast Layer, which is essentially an "AI Agent data stream platform"—AI programs can subscribe to specific topics (such as "DeFi arbitrage opportunities", "news sentiment changes", and "large on-chain transfers"), receiving multi-modal data streams in real-time.
But the question arises: Why would AI Agent developers use APRO instead of collecting data themselves?
Because of costs. If an AI Agent needs to monitor the liquidity of 50 DEXs, parse 100 news websites, and track 1,000 on-chain addresses, the monthly API call fees and server costs could be tens of thousands of dollars. However, if using APRO's Broadcast Layer and subscribing to a "DeFi arbitrage" channel, it may only cost a few hundred dollars per month.
The role of the ecological fund here is to subsidize early developers.
APRO can launch the "AI Builder Grant"—outstanding AI Agent projects can apply for funding. The support includes: free data stream subscriptions (for the first three months), GPU power subsidies (if AI models need to run), and technical support (the APRO team helps with optimization).
In exchange, these AI Agent projects need to open-source part of their code, share usage data, and become case studies for APRO. When the AI Agent economy truly erupts (possibly in 2026-2027), these early supported projects will become APRO's "seed users"—they will actively promote APRO's services because their businesses are built on APRO's data streams.
Some in the community question: 25% of the fund, with 5% released at TGE (12.5 million AT), and the remaining released linearly over 48 months (4.94 million AT per month). Is this pace too slow, risking missing market opportunities?
My view is exactly the opposite: being slow is correct.
What would happen if APRO released 25% at TGE? The project party would have several hundred million dollars’ worth of AT, making it easy to act impulsively—subsidizing this project with 1 million today, sponsoring that event with 500,000 tomorrow, spending money quickly, but the results might not be good.
The linear release over 48 months means APRO only has 4.94 million AT to spend each month (approximately $670,000 at the current circulation price). This amount is not much, forcing the team to be frugal—every subsidy and every collaboration must be carefully evaluated for ROI (return on investment).
Moreover, the long cycle of 48 months gives APRO enough time to adjust strategies. Suppose the RWA market doesn't take off by 2025, but the AI Agent explodes, APRO can shift more funds towards AI; conversely, if AI doesn’t take off, they can redirect funds to RWA. This flexibility is not achievable with a one-time release.
From the existing fund usage, APRO's strategy is "deep binding of large projects + broad net of small projects".
Large projects are deeply bound: APRO is willing to invest heavily in top partners like Lista DAO and Plume Network—not only subsidizing service fees but possibly directly exchanging AT for the other party's tokens (establishing a community of interests), jointly developing customized features, and co-hosting events. Once these large projects succeed, APRO's brand value will grow exponentially.
Small projects cast a wide net: attract a large number of long-tail developers through hackathons, Builder Grants, and community incentives. Although each small project may receive little in subsidies (ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of AT), accumulating small amounts can quickly expand APRO's developer ecosystem. Moreover, small projects may hide "future unicorns"—just like Ethereum early funding for Uniswap, Aave, and other later DeFi giants.
Another point many overlook is: the ecological fund not only "spends money", but can also make money.
How to earn? Through investment returns. Suppose APRO invests in an early RWA project (exchanging AT for 5% equity or tokens). If this project’s valuation increases tenfold in a few years, the APRO fund's investment will also increase tenfold.
This is equivalent to APRO treating the ecological fund as a "Web3 venture capital fund"—not simply burning money for subsidies but making strategic investments. The AT spent could potentially flow back at a higher value in the future (whether through project buybacks after success or token appreciation).
In the long run, the greatest value of the ecological fund is not how much money was spent, but how many dependency relationships were established.
Every project receiving subsidies from the APRO fund will deeply integrate APRO's data services. Over time, this creates "path dependency"—switching to other oracles becomes too costly (requiring rewriting contracts, retesting, and re-optimizing), so it’s better to continue using APRO.
This dependency is the real moat. Why can Chainlink maintain its position as the leading oracle? It's not because the technology is advanced (many new oracle technologies are better), but because early integrated projects like Aave, Compound, and Synthetix have become deeply reliant on Chainlink, making the switching costs too high.
APRO's 25% ecological fund is replicating this path—only the battlefields it chose are RWA and AI Agent, not traditional DeFi.
Those who are still mocking APRO for "throwing 25% of the fund around" may not have understood this game. By 2027, when the RWA market scales beyond 100 billion dollars and AI Agent becomes a mainstream Web3 application, you will find that those projects that received subsidies from the APRO fund have grown into leaders in their respective fields—and they all rely on APRO's data services.
The 25% fund is not a cost, but a strategic investment. It’s not just spreading pepper, but targeted demolition. APRO is using four years to blast open the moat between RWA and AI. @APRO Oracle $AT
