Written by: Web3 Foundation
Building a thriving ecosystem requires a thriving community. This is why we created the Web3 Foundation Grant program to help management and support teams build decentralized technologies for the future of Web3.0. Today, we are happy to announce and celebrate an important milestone in achieving this goal: we funded the 100th project.
Projects funded by the Web3 Foundation to date
Since we first announced the grant program in December 2018, we have received a steady stream of grant applications and accepted 100 projects in 5 applications. Funded projects include development teams for various applications and real fields at each layer of the Web3 technology stack. At present, significant development progress has been made, and 25% of projects have completed all work within the scope of grant.
The continued success of the Grant program demonstrates the vision and motivation of the relevant teams, and the growing awareness of the need for a new network technology paradigm, a paradigm that protects user interests and provides a more efficient and safe environment for market prosperity. We are proud that so many teams want to play a role in building the future of distributed networks.
Projects already funded
The Web3 Foundation funds software development related to the Polkadot and Substrate blockchain framework. We have granted grants to teams that build a series of decentralized technologies, from finance to gaming, Crypto identity, privacy, Internet of Things, supply chain management, social networking, and others.
The following are some of the many projects funded, listed according to different categories:
Finance: Financial projects funded include LaminarChain [1], an open financial platform for integrated asset and margin trading, Centrifuge [2], and Acala, a decentralized stablecoin platform.
Identity / Ownership: Another major case of distributed technology is autonomous identity and verifiable ownership. Funding projects in this scenario include KILT agreement [3], Selfkey [4] and Encointer [5].
Privacy: Privacy-focused projects funded by the grant program include ZeroChain [6], which brings zero-knowledge transactions to Substrate, Zinc [7] by Matter Labs [8], a zero-knowledge programming framework, and SubstraTEE [9] , Which provides a trusted execution environment for Substrate-based blockchains for confidential state transitions.
Internet of Things: Grant recipient Nodle [10] is a promising representative of the Internet of Things case. Nodle has the world’s largest ecosystem of connected devices and allows Substrate-based blockchains to safely identify, authenticate, and verify IoT devices.
Social Network: Subsocial [11] developed by DappForce is an open protocol and Substrate module, which provides front-end UI elements for decentralized social networks and markets. This is a promising project that showcases social network cases.
Funded projects also include all levels of development in the Web3 technology stack, from low-level infrastructure to ecosystem components such as wallets, parallel chains, two-tier extension solutions, bridges, and developer tools.
So far, the largest part of grant recipients belongs to the category of runtime modules and chains, with a total of 35 projects. Many of these teams are building Poka’s core infrastructure and parallel chains (Poka’s local blockchain). Among the promising projects in this category are scalable solutions such as Plasm [12], Bitcoin Bridge Interlay [13], Ethereum Bridge Centrifuge Chain [14], and Libra Bridge pLibra [15], and Polkah runtime Alternative implementations such as Chainsafe [16] (implementing GO language) and Soramitsu ’s Kagome [17] (C ++).
The second category with the most funding is developer tools. These projects are designed to improve the developer experience and make it easier for teams to build Web 3.0 solutions. Funding projects for creating developer tools include Ink! Playground [18], a browser-built IDE for developing Ink! Smart contracts.
You can view the full list of grant recipients here [19].
Future projects to be funded
The Web3 Foundation funds software development related to Polkadot and Substrate. Currently, our highest priority is the component of the Polkadot stack [20], where we see the least amount of development to date. One of our top priorities is to use the Substrate framework to build a blockchain. Other areas we would like to see include user-friendly development tools, zero-knowledge proofs, blockchain games, file storage solutions, and universal naming systems. This list must not be exhaustive, and we welcome teams of other building components that have not been mentioned yet. For more information on funding priorities, please see here [21].
Grant application is open, how to apply
We have been accepting new grant applications and there is no deadline for applications. You can apply through these two different channels:
- For teams seeking US $ 30,000 or less, the fastest way to apply and obtain approval is through the open grants program [22], which is entirely on github. Applications submitted through this channel can be approved in just 24 hours.
- Teams with more complex applications, as well as those seeking greater funding or increased privacy, are welcome to apply through the General Grants Program [23], although this method will take longer to be approved. Generally speaking, the best way to get your application approved is to submit a complete development roadmap.