Evmos Grants Program Update
Last year we announced the Evmos Foundation Grants Program launch, a program dedicated to offering non-dilutive funding and support to individuals and organizations building public goods and services for the Evmos ecosystem.
The Evmos Foundation Grants Program was launched with the mission of lowering the barrier of entry and helping bootstrap teams and organizations building on Evmos. The Grants Program offered direct grants of up to $125,000 to prevent smaller projects and integrations from inefficiently allocating time and resources to undergo a lengthy formalized governance process to request funding from the community pool. That process is better suited to projects that already have a base of resources and has been fruitful for a number of community-supported initiatives on Evmos already.
As we begin this year, we’d like to update the Evmos community on progress and lessons learned, and also share some exciting news about the future of the Evmos Foundation Grants Program.
Grantee Updates
Over the past year, we have accepted fifteen grantees and received over one hundred applications to the Evmos Foundation Grants Program. Grantees passed stringent criteria to receive an Evmos grant. For example, grantees building a fork of code already existing elsewhere were only eligible for grants that funded novel innovations that are unique to their project. Note that funds were primarily distributed in Evmos tokens. While we have denominated the amounts in USD at the time of transfer, many grants are worth significantly less given the recent economic downturn. All Evmos distributions are locked for a minimum of 1-year from point of transfer.
Completed
Evmos Governance Workstream Funds — $50,000
The Evmos Governance Workstream is a community-driven initiative to facilitate, review, and oversee the proposal process from end-to-end. To date, the workstream has aided in the creation of 10s of proposals ranging from whitelisting token conversions, to sponsoring both digital and physical events (conferences, hackathons, etc.), to supporting community builders in their goals towards deploying their projects to Evmos. Read up on their efforts at https://evmos.community/.
Orbit Marketplace — $65,000
Orbit Marketplace has received and completed their grant to develop and launch the Orbit NFT Marketplace with features such as support for both ERC-721 and ERC-1155 token types as well as deep collection analytics and auction functionality. Users can currently browse and trade a variety of collections on the marketplace; check them out on Orbit Marketplace!
Bware Labs — $50,000
Bware Labs has completed their Evmos grant to support and integrate Evmos within its Blast API platform. Evmos users can also access 25 API calls per second for free per Blast account. Bware also supports the broader Evmos network infrastructure by offering high-reliability RPC and WSS support. Check out how you can leverage Blast API for your next dApp now!
Exswap — $30,000
Exswap is an Evmos DEX that hoped to develop a DeFi hub on Evmos. However, the Exswap team was forced to halt work on the project as they struggled to receive external funding for audits and other operational expenses after Evmos Proposal #30 failed to pass. We continue to support them in non-financial ways.
Skytale — $25,000
Skytale has completed its Evmos grant to integrate Evmos within its dashboard. Users can now connect their Evmos wallet, track, tag, and create notes on any of their on-chain Evmos transactions. Users can also export these transactions in CSV format or directly to Quickbooks. In addition to its tracking functionality, users can also complete cross-chain Evmos transfers via the dashboard! Check out Skytale now!
Skip Protocol
Skip Protocol has integrated Evmos within its MEV value capture solution and has completed its Evmos Grant. Using Skip Protocol, Evmos validators and delegators can capture value from MEV bundles! Check out the Skip Evmos Dashboard now!
Diffusion — 40,000 Evmos Tokens
The Diffusion team was rewarded with a retroactive grant as a thank you for their contributions to creating content to help onboard users into the Evmos ecosystem. The team created many guides to help users get started using Evmos as well as worked closely with the Evmos team to debug issues associated with the chain halt in March. We are very thankful for their contributions beyond the deployment of Diffusion.
In Progress
Earnmos — $15,000
Earnmos is building a yield optimizer for the Evmos and broader Cosmos ecosystem. While they have already developed and deployed a working yield optimizer, the team is currently working on completing the remainder of the grant. Check out Earnmos now!
Kinesis Labs — $125,000
Kinesis Labs is building a stablecoin exchange on Evmos. The grant funds novel innovations such as Kinesis’ dynamic fees feature. Kinesis has also announced a liquidity mining campaign approved via Evmos Proposal #67. Check Kinesis out now!
Evmos Tracker Tool — $50,000
Evmos tracker tool is building out a suite of analytics tools to allow users to view Evmos data streams, such as data from the incentives and revenue modules. The Evmos tracker tool team is making steady progress toward completing their grant!
Altermail — $70,000
Altermail is working on its Evmos grant to build out a variety of tooling, including integrating Evmos within its stake-to-access platform and its Alter Analytics platform. The stake-to-access platform will allow Evmos delegators to form a community with the validator(s) they have delegated to. In addition to the stake-to-access functionality, Alter is also integrating Evmos within its Alter Analytics platform to offer users deep analytics on different facets of the Evmos network. The team is making great strides toward the completion of its grant.
Li.Finance — $50,000
Li.Fi is working on an Evmos Grant to integrate DEXes on the Evmos network with its DEX aggregation solution; check out Li.Fi now!
Expanding Space — $30,000
Expanding space is working on an Evmos Grant to build an NFT marketplace on Evmos. Expanding space has recently launched its marketplace and is currently live on Evmos mainnet! Check out the Expanding Space marketplace now!
FortyTwo Finance — $60,000
4T2 Finance is building a yield optimizer for Evmos and the broader Cosmos ecosystem. The application is currently live on testnet and is working to launch on mainnet soon! Check out the 4t2 Finance dApp on Evmos testnet now!
Challenges and Learnings
While we have successfully supported individuals and organizations building on Evmos we have faced several challenges that have prevented the Foundation Grants Program from achieving the efficiency and broader impact we originally anticipated.
Managing a successful grants program requires significant resources and a dedicated team to promote the grants program to interested communities, help applicants through the application process, review applications, and then offer dedicated ongoing support each grantee deserves to achieve their maximum potential. Additionally, as a Foundation with US-based persons, there are a number of regulatory and compliance barriers that have hindered an expedient program. As an example, some projects have withdrawn from receiving a grant due to in-depth KYC/KYB requirements for all recipients.Without a dedicated and specialized team, we have been unable to achieve the throughput and reach that is important in managing a sustainable grants program.
What’s Next?
While we have been able to support numerous individuals and organizations building on Evmos via the Evmos Foundation Grants Program, we think the community is better suited to run the next iteration of the Evmos Grants Program with a decentralized, dedicated, and specialized team.
To this end, we will be sunsetting the Evmos Foundation Grants Program and are working with teams within the Evmos and broader Cosmos ecosystem to find alternative community-run initiatives.
However, we will continue to support existing grantees but have closed the foundation grants program to new applicants.
Community Initiatives
The community has already begun to pick up the torch and create grassroots initiatives to help foster the growth of the Evmos ecosystem. Supporting builders is a foundational piece of a thriving ecosystem and the community is sending a clear signal to all the developers out there.
The Encode Club has recently released a proposal showing interest in running a grants program for the Evmos community, and providing a clear path to bring more developers to build on Evmos. Leveraging high quality events such as education series, hackathons, accelerators, and bootcamps, the Encode Club is one of the most trusted and well known companies within the web3 space, known for delivery of top tier programs in partnership with the biggest names in the industry. Over the past two years their team has managed to successfully execute more than 90 events (both online and in-person).
Encode Club is a talent powerhouse. Their community consists of some of the brightest minds of tomorrow — actively participating in a wide variety of events, engaging with different technologies and most importantly — building. This program will be looking to award grants to teams that will be most impactful to the Evmos ecosystem.
We also have a group of members from an on-chain reputation protocol, Lighthouse, that have been working on DAO tooling throughout the industry and want to bring their expertise to Evmos to lead a grants initiative to fund teams working to bring clear value to the Evmos ecosystem. This initiative is focused on accelerating ecosystem adoption and growth by giving builders a support network. The goal of the initiative will be to identify community needs, vet and evaluate projects and teams, distribute grants and support and follow-up with projects to help jumpstart their mainnet deployments.
These grant programs and specialized teams will give builders the flexibility and proper support to be successful in the Evmos ecosystem. We look forward to these community-led initiatives, and the future endeavors they may inspire in others.
About Evmos
Evmos is an Ethereum Virtual Machine–based blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem and enables developers to launch apps that run smart contracts across any number of EVM- and Cosmos-based blockchains. It makes that process as simple and seamless as possible by allowing developers to continue creating apps in Solidity and Vyper like they’re accustomed to in the Ethereum ecosystem. Evmos opens a new frontier for blockchain applications, expanding the functionality of the EVM by enabling cross-chain applications that tap the liquidity and user bases of multiple blockchain ecosystems to provide a more unified experience.
Follow our journey below
💻 Developer Documentation: https://evmos.dev/
👾 Official Discord: https://discord.gg/evmos
🐙 GitHub: https://github.com/tharsis/evmos
🕊 Twitter: https://twitter.com/EvmosOrg
📯 Telegram: https://t.me/EvmosOrg
📄 Medium: https://evmos.blog/
🖥 Evmos Website: https://evmos.org
