Web3 Foundation Grants Program Reaches 500 Projects Milestone
As we continue our steadfast mission to cultivate a decentralized web, we are thrilled to announce that we have achieved yet another remarkable milestone — signing an astounding 500 grants through the Web3 Foundation Grants Program. This accomplishment is a testament to the growing ecosystem and the dedication of talented teams working tirelessly to advance the future of Web 3.0. As with the 100, 200, 300, and 400 grants milestones, we want to seize this opportunity to take you behind the scenes and share insights into the progress made thus far.
A brief history of the grants program
The Web3 Foundation Grants Program focuses on developing decentralized protocols and promoting an open, decentralized web. The best way to do so is to fund open source software and open access research. But we also decided to make the whole application and review process open, and now process more than 90% of all grant applications and milestone reviews publicly on GitHub. This openness has led to more scrutiny, particularly around funding decisions, but also greater trust.
The Grants Program maintains strong relationships with other grant programs, both inside and outside the Polkadot ecosystem. The program has successfully encouraged innovation and growth in the decentralized ecosystem by providing initial funding for projects. Many of these projects go on to get more support from sources like VC investments or on-chain treasuries.
Successful parachains like Moonbeam and Astar, which received W3F grants funding early on, are great examples of this success. But this is only a small part of the long list of small projects that developed into successful parachains: roughly three-quarters of the parachain teams on Kusama and Polkadot signed one or more grants with us, and 60% of them successfully completed at least 1 grant.
The program’s achievements can also be seen in the large quantity of repositories with high engagement, such as WasmEdge, Hyperledger’s Solang, Gossamer, or the Open Runtime Module Library, to name a few. Due to the transparent nature of the current setup, the grants program could also be transferred on-chain at a later point and therefore is an ideal playing field for a decentralized system.
Since the program’s launch in December 2018, we have received an impressive 1238 applications, with 532 being accepted. To date, 230 dedicated teams have successfully completed their projects, and 410 have completed their first milestone. To explore the full list of accepted applications, please see here.
Current project areas
To date, the signed grants encompass every aspect of the Web3 technology stack. Over half are dedicated to runtime modules and development tools. The rest involve components such as UI development, wallets, smart contracts, deployment tooling, APIs, and more.
The teams are working on a wide range of decentralized use cases, including digital identity and privacy, IoT, games, data storage, and finance, among others.
Global grantees
As the Web3 movement gains momentum, it’s clear that this is a truly global community. Web3 Foundation grantees come from all around the world, with the largest economies, the US and China, continuing to dominate the space with 15.9% and 11.5% of applicants respectively. Notably, smaller countries such as Singapore and Switzerland are also making their mark, contributing 7.4% and 5.6% of applicants. This diversity and range of ideas is part of what makes the Web3 ecosystem so exciting, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds.
Get in touch
For more information about the grants program, join our Matrix community channel, visit web3.foundation/grants or head over directly to our GitHub repository or its dedicated frontend. To find out how to participate or contribute, there’s a page for that as well.
We also have Element channels for real-time discussions on Web3 and Polkadot:
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