The United States Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced that it has awarded a total of about $2.25 million for research contracts to three blockchain startups.

According to the release by DHS last week, a total of $9.7 million was awarded to 12 small businesses for 13 Phase II contracts through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Each award contract received approximately $750,000 to develop a prototype based on the feasibility of the technologies that were demonstrated in Phase I completed in November 2016.

Three blockchain companies received the award namely BlockCypher, Digital Bazaar and Evernym. According to the reports by CoinDesk, BlockCyper has been awarded a grant for its ‘blockchain platform for multiple blockchains, applications and analytics’. The company also received a $600,000 DHS grant last summer.

The announcement stated that Digital Bazaar is working on a ‘Verifiable Claims and Fit-for-Purpose Decentralized Ledgers’ and Evernym on the other hand, is a decentralized key management that is using blockchain.

The DHS S&T SBIR Program was initiated in 2014 and is a competitive contract awards program designed to increase the participation of innovative and creative U.S. small businesses in the fields of federal research and development. It also aims to enhance private sector commercialization of SBIR-funded solutions.