Elevating the DeWi Grant Program

DeWi is investing more resources in the grants program to reinforce community driven innovation across the Helium stack.

In December, DeWi welcomed two new talented team members to support the growing number of grantees, advisors, and contributors to the grant program. Congratulations to Clarissa Redwine and Jess Mason who come on board as the foundation’s first grant managers.

Clarissa comes to DeWi as a recent NYU Law Fellow focused on open source hardware. She led Kickstarter’s Design and Tech outreach strategy across the US and served as Program Manager for the Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator. Jess Mason brings experience as a principal investigator of open data technology grants for the Cypher Philly Initiative and consulting for large grant-giving organizations including the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Clarissa and Jess will be instrumental in growing the program and enabling grant recipients to build incredible solutions leveraging the Helium Network. Clarissa will focus on ecosystem growth to expand the reach and impact of the grant program. Jess will drive a better experience for grantees as well as maintain and improve internal grant operations.

To further strengthen the DeWi grant process, we’ve entrusted a new Grants Committee to provide technical expertise to the rich collection of projects that DeWi oversees. The committee is composed of active community members, previous grantees, and additional advisorship from Bolt Capital.

If you’re passionate about Helium, LoRaWAN, or decentralized wireless networks, consider applying to the grant committee. We’re looking for more technical expertise on radio hardware, blockchain, and IoT verticals.

This enhanced grants process comes on the heels of the success from DeWi Grants Batch 1. While some Batch 1 projects are still in progress, multiple grantees have already delivered including, 5G Hotspots from FreedomFi, Coinbase Rosetta implementation, Mappers v2, ETL Improvements, and Kubernetes Validators, to name a few. Just months after launching the grant program, we’ve seen tremendous value from these community built projects and we thank the grantees for strengthening The People’s Network! Give some of them a try. Jump into Mappers to see realtime coverage data collection, get a more accurate snapshot with the new and improved Helium ETL, or check out time lapse coverage on Helium Growth.

At the end of August, with the assistance of the newly added Grants Committee, we reopened the grant program on a new rolling application basis — this means that applications are constantly open! Since then, we’ve been proud to issue twelve new grants and are currently evaluating a half-dozen other applications; including multiple cross-chain bridges (or bridge integrations) for HNT. The grants issued have fallen into three categories that our team is looking to grow in the future: infrastructure, use cases, and education. In addition to these categories, we’re very keen to continue funding other tools that will support both builders and users.

Hotspotty Team: hntscan.io, an Alternative Helium Transaction Explorer
DeWi is continually seeking ecosystem-growing opportunities, and an alternate block explorer built and managed by the community is exemplary of that growth. The already-accomplished Hotspotty team is back again with a new lightweight block explorer to surface new insights to the Helium blockchain. HNTScan.io is designed to be a lightweight, reliable, fast, and open-source alternative to the already fantastic Helium Explorer.

Evan Diewald: Graph-Based Modeling for Anti-Gaming and Coverage Analysis
In order to address gaming on the network, we must first understand the means and extent to which it is happening. This grant seeks to surface and quantify anomalous miners through the use of graph-based modeling.

Crypto Balloon: Helium API Python Library
Lower the barrier of entry to developers familiar with Python that want to integrate with the Helium APIs. This library will offer parity with helium.js, but in the Python ecosystem.

In the interest of further securing Proof of Coverage, we have funded two well-equipped teams in support of HIP22; which looks to bring secure concentrators to LoRaWAN Hotspots.

Paul Soucy & Rak Wireless: HIP22 Secure Concentrator
HeNet B.V.: HIP22 Secure Concentrator

The design and manufacture of secure concentrators are key in unlocking the objectives defined in HIP22; enabling ‘DIY’ hotspots and further securing Proof of Coverage. Through funding two separate approaches, DeWi is doubly invested in the future security of Proof of Coverage.

Steven Ditto: IoT Wildfire Research and Fire Detection
Using the Balcones Canyonlands outside Austin, TX and with support from St Edward’s University, Steven aims to create a “research station in a box” to improve operational efficiency surrounding ecological research.

Aeroshil Nameirakpam: End-to-end Supply Chain Food Traceability
Aeroshil and his team at Nibiaa Devices will develop a “track and trace” solution to reduce contamination in food supply chains. The project will yield a 4-in-1 hardware prototype for smart agriculture use-cases as well as integration to an Ethereum smart contract.

Dôr: People Counter Network
The Dôr Team is improving brick and mortar traffic analytics and will be integrating their service into the Helium Network. Their project will include open source firmware as well as test scripts and modules to validate and QA similar hardware.

Matthew Goodman: Space Monitoring and Satellite Tracking
This grant will support a worldwide network of observatories, The Exclosure, in their effort to track and catalogue objects around the Earth. Sensors will be deployed in remote locations for optimal imaging and surveillance practices. Reference documentation will be provided for similar sensor implementations.

Jeremy Ellis: Tutorials to bring Helium to the Arduino Portenta
With a deep background in teaching electronics in the K-12 setting, Jeremy seeks to bring Helium to the Arduino Portenta platform by introducing examples and documentation to both the Arduino project and the Helium Docs.

Chiu-Yuan Fang: Sensor Quickstart Documentation
This grant seeks to build in-depth documentation for an ambitious range of sensors from Seeed and Dragino. These contributions will be made to the Helium Docs and at the end of the project, Chiu-Yuan will distribute these sensors to the community through a giveaway.

Ivan Digiusto: Helium Onboarding Documentation for Large Companies
In his own work of leveraging Helium in a professional setting, Ivan recognized areas for growth in the Helium documentation that would make it easier for large companies to adopt Helium LoRaWAN into their businesses. This grant will deliver thorough documentation as well as a short overview document that will streamline the Helium adoption process.

Do you have the skills and drive to contribute to The People’s Network but don’t know where to start? Building LoRaWAN and IoT applications on top of Helium for an end consumer is an exciting way to strengthen the ecosystem. As we see the Helium network grow, our grants team is increasingly interested in funding projects that build applications in the following areas:

● Public Good
● Agriculture & Environmental Monitoring
● Smart Cities & Buildings
● Logistics & Supply Chain Management

We welcome grants for these ideas or anything else that will further the adoption and growth of the Helium Network. What will the future of IoT powered by Helium look like? Take a look at the Grant Project Inspiration list for a sneak peek. Grant proposals can be submitted as issues to the DeWi Grants GitHub project and you can reach out to our team directly at grants@dewi.org. Get in there!