How to Pick Your Chain and Get Grants for Your Blockchain Project
This is Part Seven in an 13-part Alpha Growth series breaking down the problems every blockchain project has and needs to solve to grow and scale. New to the series? Start here.
Here’s one thing that’s not talked about enough in crypto: your chain is a choice.
That choice fundamentally drives what happens as you build, launch and try to scale up over time. Yes, everything you do as a founder is a choice. But picking your chain is a foundational choice that can lead to long-term sustainability or getting rekt.
Even if you start out building on one chain, there will come a point where you and your team need to proactively choose the best chain for your project, even if it means switching chains. What makes a chain “the best” for you? Simple:
It’s the chain that’s going to give you the best chance of future success.
A huge part of that is grants. Before we get to that, here’s a quick recap of what we’ve covered previously in this series. Most blockchain projects are going to follow a similar trajectory:
- You start by choosing the problem you want to solve
- Next, you create a narrative on the solution
- Then you start building a team to solve the problem
- You make friends and find investors
- You grow a community
- You host events
Soon, you will bump up against the next problem every blockchain project encounters as they grow and scale:
Problem seven: you need to pick a chain and get grants
This problem may even be one you run into more than once. In your project’s earliest days, you will have to pick a chain to get started on. But as you get closer and closer to launch, you will need to choose again. That might mean staying where you are. But it can also mean you leave and go to the chain that’s going to offer you the best chance of survival.
It’s not uncommon to start building with one chain and then switch to another because of new learnings or circumstances like:
- A war starts and your investor pulls out
- You need funding and the chain you’re on is pausing its grants program
- Some crazy situation emerges in your chain’s ecosystem that leads to extreme volatility
- You see another chain with more signals around long-term stability and decide to move pre-launch
So how exactly do you choose?
First, let’s look at why grants are the standard funding structure in the space. Because of regulatory restrictions, most layer ones and layer twos operate much like non-profit foundations instead of for-profit companies. These foundations exist to grow the ecosystem surrounding the chain or layer. In that way, they are operating for the public good of the entire system surrounding a certain protocol. As part of that, they offer grants to encourage builders to enter the ecosystem, generate utility and stick around.
When you’re picking your chain, you’ll be looking not only at that protocol’s track record, reputation, leadership, growth and surrounding community. You’ll also look at its grants process — and which chain is going to be able to give you the most funding.
To find grants, start by looking at on foundation web sites and in the community forums for different protocols. They are often publicly posted there.
It’s most common to discover more about the grants process in one of the following two ways:
- There’s a problem that needs solving in the ecosystem. This problem is made public via its web site or forum. You and your team create a project to solve that problem. You apply for a grant to execute on the solution.
- You and your team are aiming to solve a problem you see. You’re looking for the ecosystem that can provide the most funding via a grant to help you execute on the solution.
As you begin to explore different chains and the opportunities they offer for grants, pay close attention to the public information that’s available about the projects that are already getting funding. You need to know:
- What kinds of projects they’re funding
- How much funding is typically granted
- What information they require in the grants process
- Whether there are different verticals for different kinds of grants in the ecosystem
I can’t underscore this enough: look at what’s already been funded before you apply. This is the best indicator of what is likely to get funding. Do not skip this step, bro.
If you do, here’s what will happen: you’ll go in, ask too much or too little and you’ll automatically be denied — unless you already have a pre-existing relationship. If your project is unusual or unusually esoteric or difficult to grasp, you will need to have a pre-existing relationship or conversation with the grants team.
So you’re ready to go out for the grant. What do you need in place before you make the ask? Here’s the bare minimum:
- A team
- A problem that you’re solving
- A reasonable ask
You need to show you are 1) solving a problem that needs to be solved 2) you have what it takes to solve it and 3) you are going to be able to do it with the funding you’re asking for.
Making a convincing argument and ultimately securing the grant is always going to come back to solving the problems we’ve covered so far in this series. Do the things I’ve walked you through in parts one through six of this series, and you will be far more likely to get the funding you need to take the next steps.
When you get that grant, what’s next? You know what’s coming: another problem. That problem is money. Specifically, you will need more of it to stabilize your upcoming launch. In Part Eight of this series, we’ll talk more about why you need it and how to do it. See you next week.
If you’re interested in learning about more growth strategies for your project, we encourage you to connect on Twitter @bryancolligan. Join our Telegram for members-only alpha on projects we’re watching and DYOR resources for creating growth, credibility and engagement for your project.
