ZK Tech Gitcoin GR13 Side Round Live on 9th March

ZKValidator, in partnership with 0xparc, brings you the Gitcoin ZK Tech Side Round for GR13 starting March 9th 2022.

TLDR

• ZKValidator and 0xparc bring you the upcoming ZK Tech Side Round GR13 along with amazing matching partners: Gnosis, Ethereum Foundation, Anoma, Polygon, Mina Foundation, Penumbra, Scroll, GeometryDAO, Aztec, and Aleo.
• This ZK Tech Side Round has a matching pool of $275K, up from $100K last time.
• The round starts on March 9th 2022 and runs for two weeks.
• ZK-focused projects that are early stage, open source or public goods, are invited to apply.
• Submit a grant at Gitcoin.co/grants and select the “zkTech” tag.

We are delighted to announce that once again we will be organising the ZK Tech Round for the GR13 round, this time in partnership with 0xparc. This side round will focus on zero knowledge applications, tooling, open source contributions and projects that improve the usability of zk tech.

One of ZKValidator’s key aims has been to promote and fund zero knowledge technology. With the ZK Tech Side Round, we have a chance to directly fund zk technology as well as generate an even larger pool of funds for zk tech projects with our partnering teams. Our matching pool in the previous side round was $100K which funded 19 grants. The write up from the previous round is linked here. Projects in the GR12 zk tech side round received $336,306 in public donations from 53,000 contributions out of 470,000 in the whole of GR12, making it the most popular side round. For the GR13 edition, the second ZK Side Round will have a matching pool of 275K, a 2.75x multiplier on the previous round matching pool.

Matching partners

For the zkTech side round in GR13 there are 12 matching partners contributing to the pool. Other than ZKValidator and 0xParc, the matching partners are Gnosis, Ethereum Foundation, Anoma, Polygon, Mina Foundation, Penumbra, Scroll, Geometry, Aztec and Aleo. Full details of the funds provided by matching partners are visible in the table. The funds provided by 0xParc are from the auctioned sale of a 2005 Youtube investment memo from Sequoia, minted as an NFT. 0xParc were entrusted with distributing these funds to the community, you can read the full story in their blog post here.

Funding provided by each of the matching partners.

There will be a 10% matching cap in this round meaning the most matching any one grant can receive is 10% of the total pool. This has been implemented to prevent a single project receiving a disproportionate amount of the matched funding pool. Reaching the limit of the matching cap would mean that a project receives $27.5k in matched funding which is still a substantial amount.

Eligibility and Setting up a Grant

To set up a grant, head over to https://gitcoin.co/grants/new and sign in to Github or create an account. To be in the zkTech side round, make sure you select the zkTech side round tag, as pictured below, to be considered for this side round.

Settings you must select to be eligible to be in the zkTech side round.

Projects eligible for matched funds are early stage ZK projects, currently without VC funding or a token sale. The amount to be distributed to each project is decided through the Gitcoin Quadratic Voting mechanism. This mechanism places a greater bearing on the popularity of a project than the amount of money pledged to it, signalling what is really valued and important for the community.

The focus of this round is on improving these three aspects of zero knowledge technology:

1. Usability — improving the user experience of zero-knowledge tools or applications, this could also be technical education and documentation.
2. Tooling — improving the developer experience or making it easier to develop applications utilising zero-knowledge proofs or technology.
3. Applications — technical implementations of zero-knowledge proofs and circuits, not simply applications built on top of zero knowledge roll ups.

Projects must also have been active on Github or social media in the past three months and actively under development. The full eligibility criteria for the zkTech side round is accessible through this document. We are excited about this new way that ZKValidator and 0xparc, along with other top ZK teams, can directly contribute to the builders of zkTech and support the development of these important tools.

If you have any questions about submitting a grant or getting involved, please contact Susannah from the ZKValidator at susannah@zkvalidator.com. To contribute to the zkTech side round, head over to Gitcoin and look for the zkTech tag, a link can be found here.

Lastly, follow us on twitter for more information about the grants and grantees. Happy funding!