📢 The Web3 Foundation Open Grants Program focuses on technology grants of up to $30,000 for initial grants and $100,000 for follow-up grants, which are tracked transparently on GitHub and disbursed in Bitcoin, USDT or DAI. For larger grants, payments in fiat and private submissions, please see our General Grants Program.
As part of our commitment to promoting the Web3 ecosystem, we offer comprehensive grants programs focused on funding software development and research efforts related to Polkadot, Kusama and Substrate. For more information about the Web3 Foundation, please visit the About page on our website.
The Open Grants Program tries to achieve the above while being:
- fully transparent,
- simple, and
- effective.
Anyone is welcome to apply for a grant. Projects funded through our programs are broad in scope, but our focus lies on strong technical projects that add value to the ecosystem.
Generally, your project will have better chances to get accepted if:
- It presents a well-researched or tested concept, for which ideally you are able to show some prior work.
- You can demonstrate that the project will be maintained after completion of the grant, be it through an obvious commitment to the technology from your side, additional funding sources or an existing business model.
- Your team has proven experience with the relevant languages and technologies and/or a strong technical background. We ask you to provide the GitHub profiles of all team members as part of your application and will examine these for past activity and code quality. Naturally, you can also link to projects on other platforms.
- Your application is rich in technical details and well-defined.
- You can clearly present how your project stands out among competitors or implements technology that doesn't exist in the ecosystem yet.
Additionally, it must fulfill the following requirements:
- All code produced as part of a grant must be open-sourced, and it must also not rely on closed-source software for full functionality. We prefer Apache 2.0, but GPLv3, MIT or Unlicense are also acceptable.
- We do not award grants for projects that have been the object of a successful token sale.
- As a general rule, teams are asked to finish a grant before applying for another one.
- Lastly, we do not fund projects that actively encourage gambling, illicit trade, money laundering or criminal activities in general.
In addition to the information provided on your application, note that your project will need to comply with our Guidelines for Milestone Deliverables. In particular, we require all projects to create documentation that explains how their project works. At a minimum, written documentation is required for funding. Tutorials or videos are also helpful for new users to understand how to use your product. If your team's background is purely technical, consider hiring a freelance or part-time technical writer as part of the grant.
We also have Announcement Guidelines for grant-related communications.
Finally, we take licensing and the right of all teams in and outside the ecosystem to be recognised for their work very seriously. Using others' work with no attribution or indication that this was not your own work as part of a milestone delivery will lead to immediate termination. Please reach out to us before submitting if you have any doubts on how to comply with a specific license and we'll be happy to help.
An overview of existing projects in the Web 3.0 Technology Stack along with broad project ideas we would potentially be interested in funding can be found here, as well as a list of previously accepted applications here. Additionally, the Substrate Builders feedback board may contain some useful ideas for grant projects.
Requests For Proposals (RFPs) represent concrete ideas for projects that we would like to see implemented. Several teams may apply for the same RFP, so even if another team has already applied to implement a certain RFP, we invite you to do the same if you're interested.
Finally, you don't need to start your own project in order to be elligible for a grant. Instead, some teams choose to port existing work to Substrate, where the pertinent licenses allow, or even to contribute to an existing open-source project. In the latter case, you should check in advance that the maintainers of the project are interested in your contribution, and the acceptance of the milestones will generally be tied to the inclusion of your work in said project.
If you have a good concept of the technical challenges that your idea entails and would like feedback before applying, you can send us an email and tell us about it.
The scope of our Grants Programs consists of funding and feedback on delivered milestones. This means that we do not provide hands-on support as part of a grant, but if you face specific issues during development, we will do our best and try to direct you to the correct resources. If this sounds like something you would like however, you may also want to apply to Parity's Substrate Builders Program, which provides hands-on technical, ecosystem and strategical long-term support and access to extensive resources. You can find general documentation and more information on Substrate on the Substrate Developer Hub, and we encourage you to join the community in order to get help with specific issues or to stay up to date with the most recent developments.
For questions about the grants program itself, see our FAQ.
The committee consists of individuals who know the funding priorities of the Polkadot ecosystem, and is responsible for evaluating grant applications and providing feedback on these.
In cases where a niche expert opinion is desirable, one of the committee members may request such a review.
- Aeron Buchanan
- Gautam Dhameja
- Marcin Górny
- Robert Hambrock
- David Hawig
- Sebastian Müller
- Aleixo Sánchez
- Reto Trinkler
- Benjamin Weiß
- Gavin Wood
Evaluators are individuals able to evaluate the technology delivered as a result of the Open Grants Program. The committee has the right to add or remove evaluators on the basis of supermajority.
The Operations Team takes care of legal documents, invoicing and remittances.
- Application
- Fork this repository.
- In the newly created fork, create a copy of the application template (
applications/application-template.md). If you're using the GitHub web interface, you will need to create a new file and copy the contents of the template inside the new one. Make sure you do not modify the template file directly. - Name the new file after your project:
project_name.md. - Fill out the template with the details of your project. The more information you provide, the faster the review. To get an idea of what a strong application looks like, you can have a look at the following examples: 1, 2, 3, 4. Naturally, if you're only applying for a smaller grant that only consists of, say, UI work, you don't need to provide as much detail.
- Once you're done, create a pull request. The pull request should only contain one new file—the Markdown file you created from the template.
- You will see a comment template that contains a checklist. You can leave it as is and tick the checkboxes once the pull request has been created. Please read through these items and check all of them.
- Sign off on the terms and conditions presented by the CLA assistant bot as a Contributor License Agreement. You might need to reload the pull request to see its comment.
- Application Review
- The committee can (and usually does) issue comments and request changes on the pull request.
- Clarifications and amendments made in the comments need to be included in the application. You may address feedback by directly modifying your application and leaving a comment once you're done. Generally, if you don't reply within 2 weeks, the application will be closed due to inactivity, but you're always free to reopen it as long as it hasn't been rejected.
- When all requested changes are addressed and the terms and conditions have been signed, someone will mark your application as
ready for reviewand share it internally with the rest of the committee. - The application will be accepted and merged as soon as it receives the approval of one third of the committee (currently 3 members), or closed after two weeks of inactivity. Unless specified otherwise, the day on which it is accepted will be considered the starting date of the project, and will be used to estimate delivery dates.
- Milestone Delivery and Payment
- Milestones are to be delivered on the Grant Milestone Delivery repository. You can find the delivery process here.
The grant application can be amended at any time. However, this necessitates a reevaluation by the committee. If your application has been accepted and, during development, you find that your project significantly deviates from the original specification, please open a new pull request that modifies the existing application.
Additionally, we try to enforce the code of conduct and based on this may block users.
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| W3F Website | W3F Twitter | W3F Medium | Polkadot Wiki | Web 3.0 Reddit | W3F YouTube |
We have Element channels for real-time discussions on Web3 and Polkadot. Join the conversation.
Some funding sources might be more and some less suitable for your project throughout its various stages. We encourage you to explore alternative funding options listed below. Please note, however, that you should not seek to fund the same scope of work from multiple sources and that any team found doing so will have its Web3 Foundation support terminated.
The treasury is a pot of on-chain funds collected through transaction fees, slashing, staking inefficiencies, etc. The funds held in the treasury can be spent on spending proposals. Both Polkadot and Kusama offer everyone the opportunity to apply for funding via the treasury. See:
For larger grants, payments in fiat or partially private submissions, please see our General Grants Program.
From time to time, Web3 Foundation and/or Parity organise hackathons to promote quick prototyping of Polkadot related ideas. We highly encourage you to participate in these hackathons. Bear in mind, however, that you cannot submit the same work for a hackathon and the Grants Program. If you have worked on a project for a hackathon, your grant application should either propose a new set of features or otherwise build on top of your previous work. The same applies in reverse, although that will likely be less common.
The best way to find out about upcoming hackathons is by following Polkadot on the various channels, such as Element or Twitter.
Below is a list of other grant programs in the Polkadot/Substrate ecosystem:
- Darwinia Grants Program
- Moonbeam Grants Program
- Edgeware Grants and Bounties
- Crust Grants Program
- HydraDX Grants and Bounties
- Plasm Network Builders Program
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