The Token Engineering Grants Round

The Token Engineering Commons (TEC) is pleased to announce the first ever Token Engineering (TE) Grants Round dedicated to funding projects that focus on TE education, tooling, and research. We are participating in the Gitcoin Program Beta Round, utilizing the newly developed Gitcoin Grants Stack. You can explore all the available rounds here.

The protocol itself allows for individual grant-making bodies to host their own Quadratic Funding and Matching Pool rounds. The TEC is allocating $25,000 to our Matching Pool for all approved projects within the round. If you would like more information on how QF works, or how the Matching Pool will be distributed please read more here.

This article is designed to provide all of our participants (Projects & Donors) with the necessary information to successfully take part in the TE Grants Round.

You can see this and more information about our round in our Token Engineering Grants Portal.

Quick Glance— Important Dates:

*Open Project Submission Period: April 12th — April 18th
Official Closing of Submission Period: April 21st
Open Donation Period Begins: April 25th
Open Donation Period Closes: May 9th
**Final Funding Distribution: Mid-Late May

*While the official closing of the grant round ends on April 21st, we highly encourage all interested projects to submit their proposal by the 18th of April to make sure there is enough time for your project to be reviewed and approved.

• *The Gitcoin Program Beta Round still requires some manual intervention regarding program multiplier boosts and matching allocations. Due to this we will provide an estimated timeframe for fund distribution providing the TEC Grants committee to announce final allocation funding amounts and distribution.

TE Grants Round — Project Applications

As this is our first attempt at holding a Grant Round using the Gitcoin Grants Stack, we wanted to provide information regarding the TE Grant Round and give TE Projects a small glimpse into the process of creating your own project and what to expect from your application experience.

Project Eligibility Criteria:

• Must be a public good project.
• Be primarily focused on education, tooling or research of token engineering (such as the design and analysis of cryptoeconomic systems)
• Have a verifiable Github and/or Twitter account
• Satisfy the Program Eligibility Policy in addition to the requirements stated above.

The Proposal Process

All proposal submissions will be created through Gitcoin Builder, a module designed for projects to apply to the TE grants round. The proposal process contains three broad phases: the Project Submission phase, the Project Review phase, and the Project Acceptance phase.

During the Project Application phase, projects will select the ‘Create Project’ button at the bottom of the Token Engineering Gitcoin Builder page.

Once you initiate your project, you will be directed to the Grants Round application and will be required to provide the following information:

Project Deployment Network*
Project Name
Project Website
Project Logo
Project Banner
Project Description
Project Twitter Account (optional)
Github Account (optional)
Github Organization Account (optional)

*Even though this round is running on Ethereum Mainnet, you can set up your grant in Optimism or Fantom and still apply. This will help you save on gas fees.

Once you have answered these questions, you will be redirected to review your Project’s Profile Page.

Please make sure all information and links are accurate before you publish it. Once you are ready, you can click on the Save & Publish button at the bottom of the page.

This will trigger a transaction in your wallet that will publish your project application for the TEC Grant Committee to review for approval.

Note: We highly recommend that each project select a single EOA for proposal submissions and to avoid multi-sig accounts. Depending on which network you deployed the project on, your proposal will incur different gas costs.

Getting Approved for the TE Grant Round

Once you have submitted your project, it will be reviewed by the TEC Grants Committee. If your project is approved, it will show up on the Gitcoin Explorer page. If it is rejected, you will be notified directly by our grants committee with proper justification for why your project was omitted from the round.

In the current state of the Gitcoin Grants Stack, projects can’t change information after they have applied to a round, which is why we highly encourage all interested projects to engage with the TEC Grants team in the TEC Discord Server. If you have questions, or want to know whether or not your project would be considered eligible before submitting your application, please reach out to us.

TE Grants Round — Project Donors

This section is dedicated to providing TE Grant Round Project Donors who are looking to support projects advancing the field of token engineering. If you are new to the Gitcoin donation process, we have provided the following information which will allow you to onboard directly into the Gitcoin Protocol.

Establishing your Identity

As a Donor within the Gitcoin Grants Stack, there are some very basic requirements that will help streamline your experience. The Gitcoin Grants Stack utilizes the Gitcoin Passport which allows you to verify your identity, help us prevent against sybil attacks, and allow for your donations to qualify for matching funds. Only donors with official passports will receive matching funds to their donations.

To create your Gitcoin Passport, please start here.

The Donation Process

Within the Gitcoin Grants Stack, all donors can explore approved TE projects for the round through the Gitcoin Explorer page. Each project listed will have a dedicated profile page for donors to evaluate before donating.

Once you connect your wallet (Gitcoin Passport), you will be able to add projects from the Explorer page into your own personalized shortlist. This shortlist allows you to keep track of proposals you might be interested in funding. You can add and remove projects from your shortlist at your own discretion.

When you have reviewed all the Projects you can view your Shortlist in the Donation Builder Page. In this page you will have the option of moving the projects you want to fund from the Shortlist into the Final Donations List. At the top of this list you will be asked for the amount of donations you would like to provide for the projects. You can apply this amount to each project or distribute the funds manually between the projects.

The currently accepted currencies within the Gitcoin Grants Stack are Dai and Eth.

After allocating your donations among your favorite projects, you will need to submit your donation through an onchain transaction.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. If you would like to review the Donor Guidelines in more detail, please read more here.

Create more Impact with your donations with TEC Boost!

The TEC will be applying a TEC Boost multiplier for all donations that qualify for matching. The multiplier adds on additional matching funds toward the projects of your choice. In order to qualify for this multiplier, you must hold at least 10 $TEC tokens or have previously finished an educational module from the TE Fundamentals Course hosted by the TE Academy.

To qualify, donors must hold either TEC tokens or a TE Academy Certificate in the same wallet address you are donating from.

For information on how to purchase TEC Tokens, please read more here.

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