Concordium Free and Open Grants for developers

We are happy to announce that Concordium is launching today an open and free grants program.

This ambitious program is running in an open-source way and aims to fund projects that support both the Concordium Ecosystem and the RustLang Ecosystem.

Introduction

The Concordium Free & Open Grants Program seeks to allocate resources to open-source developers and projects that are beneficial to the advancement of the Concordium ecosystem.

The Concordium Free & Open Grants Program focuses on technology grants up to USD $20k for initial grants and USD $75k for follow-up grants, which are tracked transparently on GitHub and disbursed in GTU or Fiat money.

The Concordium Foundation aims to sponsor free open-source developers, on an ad-hoc basis, for their contribution to both Concordium and the RustLang ecosystem.

You can find a list of areas in the Concordium Technology Stack that demand particular development here.

Additionally, the builders’ program feedback board may contain some useful ideas for grant projects.

We also consider applications for any other project that furthers the general usability, adoption or functionality of the Concordium ecosystem or for the porting of projects onto the Concordium blockchain.

The Concordium Free & Open Grants Program Committee

The Committees consist of the Concordium Foundation representatives and the Concordium Foundation appointed individuals who will ensure that the funding priorities of the Concordium ecosystem are met.

The committees evaluate quarterly grant applications and provide feedback on these applications.

Here is the Committees structure:

Executive Committee

• Michael Jackson — Former Skype COO and Mangrove Capital Partner
• Suhas Hegde — Concordium Tech Community Programs Manager
• Beni Issembert — Concordium CMO
• Ernest Kissiediu — Concordium Rust Developer Evangelist
• Dr. Torben Pedersen — Concordium CTO

Steering Commitee

• Lone Fonss-Schroder — Concordium CEO
• Jørgen Hauglund — Concordium CFO
• Prof. Ueli Maurer— ETH Zurich
• Prof. Hans Gersbach — ETH Zurich
• Dr. Ales Bizjak — Concordium Senior Software Engineer
• Dr. Thomas Dinsdale-Young — Concordium Senior Researcher

Project ideas

A non-exhaustive overview of ideas and broad project ideas we would potentially be interested in funding can be found here.

Soon a complete list of accepted applications will be available too.

Applications represent concrete and employable ideas for projects that we aim to see running on top of Concordium. Teams are encouraged to apply even if another team has already applied to implement a certain project, we invite you to proceed anyway if you are interested.

Last but not least, you don’t need to start your project from scratch to be able to apply for a grant. Some teams working on other chains are willing to port their existing projects to Concordium, where the relevant licenses allow of course. Some of these teams are interested in contributing to an existing open-source reject. In this case, you should check in advance that the maintainers of the project are willing to onboard you.

Application

We recommend checking out the technical grant template. It gives an indication of what a good roadmap should look like, plus it outlines the criteria of what we look for in an application.

If you choose to apply privately you’ll need to fill out the Google Form by clicking the following link: Apply Privately here.

Review

The Committee will review the applications received, determine if more information is required, and potentially schedule a call with the team.

Third party experts may also assist in the review of applications.

Decision

The Committee will notify the applicants of whether their proposal has been accepted or not.

If an application is accepted, further communication will be required to determine some specific details around timelines and payment schedules.

Follow-up

Once progress has started, the Committee and the relevant teams will have follow-up conversations to see how the project is progressing.

A weekly meeting at least will be mandatory for each granted team.

Payment

The Committee makes the payment to the GTU address specified in the initial application or to a FIAT-based bank account, subject to normal full KYC and proper due diligence.

Grant applications can be amended at any time, necessitating a reevaluation by the Committee.

Up to 4 weeks after the acceptance of an application, funds will be wired.

A fully compliant “receipt” will be asked in return.

Licensing

In order to successfully receive grant funding for your application, it is necessary for the project to have open-source code. We prefer Apache 2.0 but the GNU GPL v3 license is also acceptable.

Documentation

To ensure ease-of-use we require all projects to create comprehensive documentation that explains how their project works.

At a minimum, written documentation is required for funding.

Tutorials or videos are also helpful for new users to understand how to use the product.

Code of conduct

Our “We have a Dream”

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

Our Standards

Examples of behaviour that contributes to creating a positive environment include:

• Using welcoming and inclusive language
• Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
• Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
• Focusing on what is best for the community
• Showing empathy towards other community members

Examples of unacceptable behaviour by participants include:

• The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or advances
• Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
• Public or private harassment
• Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission
• Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

Our Responsibilities

Concordium is responsible for clarifying the standards of acceptable behaviour and are expected to take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any instances of unacceptable behaviour.

Concordium has the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, or to ban temporarily or permanently any contributor for other behaviours that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.

Scope

This Code of Conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community. Examples of representing a project or community include using an official project e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event. Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers.

Enforcement

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by contacting the project team at grants@concordium.com. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response that is deemed necessary and appropriate to the circumstances. The project team is obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard to the reporter of an incident. Further details of specific enforcement policies may be posted separately.

Attribution

This Code of Conduct is adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 1.4, available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct.html

For answers to common questions about this code of conduct, see https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq

Get started with Concordium: https://developer.concordium.software/en/mainnet/

Discord: https://discord.gg/MZyHgfw

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ConcordiumNet

Telegram: https://t.me/concordium_official

Github: https://github.com/Concordium/

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Concordium_Official

Learn more: https://concordium.com

Concordium Blockchain Research Center Aarhus (COBRA):https://cs.au.dk/research/centers/concordium/