Fortified

Congrats to African teams building on Solana for making the cut; @henryduckw of Agridex (raised $5M) and @myazahq, where transaction activity is now largely driven by Solana 🔥 Two Solana teams made the cut last year; two more this year. No better signal of Solana’s growing execution strength and market share across Africa 👏🏽

Building the future of programmable money takes real builders shipping real systems. We’re excited to announce the first cohort of 2026 Circle Developer Grant recipients: @AgriDexPlatform @BeeezoHive @BlockradarHQ @BuFi_Global @CashmereLabs @ArrelTechnology (DAPL - Digital Asset Platform) @dzap_io @flezpay @gcrx_io @HurupayApp @myazahq @OpenVPP @payritHQ @rebelfi_io @usesfxmoneyapp @thurmanlabs @TidesHQ @trumarket_tech This group stood out for technical depth, execution velocity, and clear paths to production across: → AI financial agents → Payments & treasury → Capital markets & FX → DeFi & liquidity → Real-world assets Many are already integrating Wallets, Gateway, and CCTP, with early Arc experimentation underway. We’re proud to back teams that are already demonstrating real-world utility on stablecoin infrastructure. Beyond funding, we’ll work closely with these founders as they build—offering resources, guidance, and hands-on support as they integrate Circle products like Wallets, Gateway, and CCTP (with Arc on their roadmap). Read the blog: circle.com/blog/announcin…

And for my $DEEP points this week I’ll be; ~ depositing in @abyssdotxyz ~ using @_deeptrade