Opyn Ecosystem Grants
Today we’re announcing the launch of the Opyn Ecosystem Grants: Round 1.
Since the mainnet launch of Opyn in February 2020, users have traded more than $150mm of notional volume in options with Opyn, and the amount of developers building on top of the gamma protocol has increased steadily.
We want to continue and encourage this growth in the Opyn Ecosystem, supporting individuals, entrepreneurs, and teams of all sizes, where a grant can help them #BUIDL.
Grant details
Opyn has allocated $150,000 in USDC for funding grants. The program will run from March 26, 2021 to December 31st, 2021. The grants program was created after a community discussion on the Opyn Discord.
⚖️ What’s eligible for grant funding?
Protocol and parameter development
We’ve been blow away by the community’s acts of stewardship and generosity, and we want to continue to facilitate more members to propose technical updates to the protocol and Opyn interfaces. One example of a significant community contribution even led to a full-time role at Opyn (see the interface work done by Anton Cheng on Gammaportal & Opynmonitor). Our goal is for gamma protocol to innovate as quickly as possible in a dynamic and competitive market. To encourage community members to propose changes, the program will fully or partially pre-fund development and audit costs. In doing so, we hope to encourage more proposals, which will lead to more innovation and as a result, a far better Opyn for all of us. Options are imperative for DeFi’s maturation and eventual mass adoption, and our focus is on enabling more innovation within the space.
Integrated Smart Contract Code audits
Making technical updates to the protocol is risky business: smart contracts are immutable and control billions of dollars in user funds. An error in a technical update can have serious consequences. Because of this, it is considered best practice is to have an auditor review the proposed update for soundness prior to its submission. Unfortunately, these audits are expensive, particularly for individual contributors who need to pay for them out of pocket. We intend provide grants that subsidize audit costs for the smart contracts of soon-to-be proposals. We hope this will encourage more individual contributors to propose technical updates to the protocol.
Business development and integrations
Making technical updates to the protocol is risky business: smart contracts are immutable and control billions of dollars in user funds. An error in a technical update can have serious consequences. Because of this, it is considered best practice is to have an auditor review the proposed update for soundness prior to its submission. Unfortunately, these audits are expensive, particularly for individual contributors who need to pay for them out of pocket. We intend provide grants that subsidize audit costs for the smart contracts of soon-to-be proposals. We hope this will encourage more individual contributors to propose technical updates to the protocol.
Hackathons
It’s very likely that there exist uses for Opyn that haven’t been explored yet. Hackathons are a fantastic way to explore design spaces, and the program intends to sponsor them.
Other improvements
It’s difficult to know ahead of time all of the grant applications that will come through. Just because an application does not fit neatly into one of the above buckets doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to the Opyn ecosystem. So long as an application benefits Opyn directly, we will consider it for a grant. Applications for miscellaneous improvements to Opyn fall into this bucket. Because the scope of this bucket is broad, we consider it to be low priority compared to the narrowly scoped buckets above.
Project Ideas
Many of the best community ideas we’ve supported have been ones that surprised us, not ones we were waiting for.
There are, however, some developer projects that we’re very interested in seeing. Please view this page for updated developer community project ideas, which outline some of those ideas in general terms. If you need more inspiration, please view this blog post.
How to apply
This is quite an open-ended grant program, so as long as your project contributes to the Opyn ecosystem or helps Opyn ecosystem participants in some way, you can apply.
Start a discussion about your idea and/or fill out this application on Github to apply for a grant from the Opyn Grants Program.
Opyn Community
At Opyn we value our community and we strongly encourage anyone to contribute in improving Opyn. There are several ways you can contribute:
- 🐞 Participate in the Bug Bounty. Security is one of our highest priorities, so you can participate to v2 Bounty Program with rewards up to $100k. Learn more on https://opyn.gitbook.io/opyn-v2/get-started/security#bug-bounty-program
- 👩🚀 Become an Opynaut: members of the Opyn Community who share our values and are eager to take the responsibility to Spread the Knowledge! More info on https://medium.com/opyn/calling-for-opynauts-eaf8703fa8e5
- 🍄 Join Opyn. We’re hiring! You can find the available positions here: https://angel.co/company/opyn-4
- ✍️ Give us a feedback. We wouldn’t be here without inputs of the community. Join #feedback channel on Opyn Discord
Resources
Opyn v2| FAQ | Github | Security
