DFK Day: Grant Program
Speakers: Dreamer, Sunbear, Frisky Fox
Dreamer:
So next on the program is a lot shorter, but it’s very relevant to all the builders here and the whole thing today talking about building. A recent program we have announced going live is the Grant Program. It’s great to have buy in from the team you’re looking to work with. The Grant Program lets us do that and provide money to build.
To start with, Harmony gave us $1 mil and we matched that to $3 mil. We want to help all the builders out there. The grants will be $10k, $25k to $50k. It may not stop there. We’re excited to inspire growth. Make your plan, submit your application, and we might not only support it, we might integrate it in. Anything is fair game. There are a lot of game ideas going on that I’m really excited about. I’m going to turn the time over to Sunbear. We are going to talk today about start to finish what the application process is. If you have any questions we are going to make sure those are answered.
Sunbear:
It’s a good day! I’m Sunbear and I am living and breathing the grant world right now. We launched our program about two weeks ago and already have about 45 applications right now. This is a chance for you all the dream big.
The application process is just the beginning. I want to help you get to the point where you have a solid grant proposal for our community. It’s going to look like a PDF with 5–10 pages with visuals and clear deliverables and milestones and timelines, how you’re planning to create this project. Really make it clear so the community can understand it. When we get it to that level we will post it to discord and the community will give feedback. After about a week we will vote as a community if we are going to fund this grant. I will help you to get that product clear to get the community excited on it. Once you get funded you will work with the team.
We need to start with an application. What’s your idea? What are you trying to do? A lot of these applications are quite good. Others I am not even sure what they are talking about. If you can back up and look at if you have a clear idea, maybe even have someone else read it for you. So make sure you have a clear description, rationale, who is your team? Who are you working with? The more you can show about what your team strengths are and how they are going to help the project. The more information you have the better.
My job is to process the applications as they come in and I recommend them to the DFK team from your application and they consult with me and sometimes we’ll move forward and get it out to the community and sometimes we will work together to refine it and make it solid. Another thing is what does this mean long term? What is your vision? We’re helping you build it but we’re not taking it, so you need to think about how you will maintain it and what’s your plan there to show to the community.
I’m really excited about this. We have a bounty we did last month and we learned a lot. We had some criticism from the community and also some successes. We’re excited to move forward. Do we have any questions?
Question:
Will you have devs available? Or do we need to bring our own Devs?
Dreamer:
The answer is both. For the building of the project part of the grant money is to pay for the devs to actually build. We’re open to share what we have already built to connect. Maybe that’s having the other platform interact with a smart contract to get experience through your game. For the building of what’s in the proposal it’s up to the team to find the devs and the talent, but to connect it to be successful in the DFK environment would be a team effort.
Sunbear:
Reach out and ask for what you need and we will do our best to help connect you.
Professor Tango:
We have met a lot of people in the community who are good developers without ideas or vice versa and the community is a great place to find those people to work with and there are a lot of people looking for opportunity.
Sunbear:
That is one thing I liked about the grant process. People shared information and teamed up and talked with each other.
Question:
I know you have the scholarship program in your roadmap. That is something I would like to help build. Is that something you are already working on?
Dreamer:
For those less familiar with the scholar program, this is how does someone get into the game without a lot of money? We’re solving for that, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be other ideas. Let’s connect and talk about our ideas, and you might hear that and say you have another option. Our idea doesn’t mean we can’t support other ideas as well.
Sunbear:
If you want to see good grant proposals go check out Harmony. We are taking a page from their book. They are all about putting money back into the community, and we love what they are doing and are learning from them.
Dreamer:
Sunbear is here to make sure people succeed. So if you get an email from him that he doesn’t understand, the community probably won’t understand. I hope you don’t take offense to us trying to make sure things are high quality and reach success.
Sunbear:
One other thing I’ll say is rationale is really important. Why is this a great product? Too many times I’ve seen the rationale be that $JEWEL will go up. Well that’s not enough. Just so you think outside the box there are proposals for DAOs, for music, for things that aren’t even related to DeFi Kingdoms but what to start.
Dreamer:
VR proposals, in-game messaging, continue to think and dream and we’ll try to help you make it happen.
Sunbear:
If you’re on discord there is a grants and bounties channel that has information about it, as well as a link to our web page which is where the application is.
Question:
Is the grant only for gameify?
Dreamer:
The grant is for anything that will add value to the DeFi Kingdoms experience. If it builds on top or adds value it’s definitely in scope. We are going to let Frisky have the last word.
Frisky Fox:
I appreciate that. As I’ve said 20 times today I have been really excited about the grant program from the start of the project. I used to play a ton of games in high school and spent a lot of time hacking them instead of playing and that’s when I realized I should probably be a coder. I used to build tools and extensions to augment games, and imagine having a game company that would pay developers out there to create tools for their games or things that users would find useful. There aren’t any out there. The blockchain is different and trying to empower all of us to build, and that’s what we’re trying to do to. If you have an idea and want to add something, that information to help you is all out there in the API. You could have that as a bounty to apply for. In-game chats, a way to connect people in the came. I’ve been looking at embedding discord chat into a browser. Just stuff like that, off the wall stuff that can add to the experience. We’ve got an exciting roadmap and we’re trying to build as fast as we can but we have a powerful community and we want to empower you to add those things as well. We are very willing to work with you in terms of smart contracts. Maybe you have an idea that allows heroes to spend their stamina and earn exp or stuff like that. We can make that happen. We’re very excited about that type of stuff. The sky is the limit. I’m super excited about this. Thanks!
Apply here:
