Web3 Foundation Grants — Wave Two Recipients
As the second quarter of 2019 comes to an end, we are pleased to announce the most recent recipients of our grants program! We are humbled by the number of high quality grant applications we’ve received and are excited to help projects bring these technologies into reality.
If you are interested in applying for a Web3 Foundation grant then you will be happy to know that more funding is available, so we kindly welcome more teams to apply and submit their ideas. Details of how to apply can be found on our grants page.
Recipients
Most of the teams in this round of winners were creating new Substrate modules, which means more features for future parachains. We are hoping that many of the teams building these new modules will become parachains!
- Cap9 — A low-level security protocol and framework for smart contracts (GitHub)
- Substrate Java API — Java version of our JS API (GitHub)
- Starlog — A metadata chain for IPFS (GitHub)
- MixBytes — Benchmarking tool for Substrate and Polkadot (GitHub)
- Gunclear — Private secure data storage solution using Plasma Cash in Substrate (GitHub)
- ZeroChain — Zero knowledge transactions in Substrate (GitHub)
- Robonomics — Substrate modules for controlling robots (GitHub)
- Avado — Polkadot node deployment with consumer hardware (GitHub)
- Plasm — Plasma modules for Substrate (GitHub)
- HOPR — Substrate integration with this P2P messaging protocol (GitHub)
- Mailchain — a Multi-Blockchain Messaging Application (GitHub)
- Usetech — Polkadot C++ API (GitHub)
Future Grants
We intend to continue funding projects until the end of this year and perhaps even into 2020, so it’s never too late to apply! To get an idea of what we are interested in funding for our ecosystem, we invite you to look at our areas of interest.
One of the most important areas of interest for future grants is bridges. Please check out our current document on “Design Considerations for Bridging to PoW Chains”. We welcome proposals for bridges to other major blockchains.
How to Successfully Apply
The main purpose of our grants program is to get teams started on building cool technology that’s useful for our ecosystem. Please note, everything must be open source and we are only able to provide funding up to a maximum of $100k. The funding is non-dilutive, so we never take any ownership, but consequently we don’t try to sustain a business via our grants program. We are happy to cover building costs, but typically don’t pay for on-going maintenance costs (or similar).
Ideally the scope of the work fits within 3 months too. Here are the main criteria of our grants:
- Focus on Substrate / Polkadot related projects.
- Max $100k.
- Timeframe: up to 3 months is ideal.
- Open source license.
The application process itself is fairly easy, although most applicants find creating a good roadmap to be tricky. We recommend that the scope of the work can fit within a 3 month period and that teams structure their roadmap as 1 month = 1 milestone.
Below is a mock roadmap. It is always best to describe the functionality we should expect, plus how we can check that such functionality exists in the product. Please also note how your project is related to Substrate/Polkadot.
Milestone 1 — Implement Substrate Modules — 1 month — $10,000
- We will create a Substrate module that will <list the functions that will be coded for the first milestone>.
- We will deliver a working module, along with a simple tutorial that explains how a user can spin up one of our Substrate nodes. Once the node is up, it will be possible to send test transactions that will show how the new functionality works.
Milestone 2 — Additional features — 1 month — $10,000
- Describe the next round of features and functions that will be added.
- Explain how you will demonstrate that the functionality you built will work as intended.
Milestone 3 — Additional features — 1 month — $10,000
- Describe the last round of features and functions that will be added.
- Explain how you will demonstrate that the thing you functionality will work as intended.
Additional points
- Please include documentation (for example tutorials) in your milestones.
- Indicate if you accept partial payment in DOTs.
- We recommend providing a docker container for the delivery of your project. This removes the need to install specific dependencies on a per-project basis which can cause delays in having milestones assessed.
Since the milestones will appear in the grant contract, it helps to have as much detail as possible. Whenever milestones as delivered, we reference the contract to ensure that everything has been delivered as expected.
Get in touch
Should you have any questions about the grants process then feel free to reach out: grants@web3.foundation
We also have Riot channels for real-time discussions on Web3 and Polkadot:
