Stacks Grants Program
Developers are building what the world needs next: a user owned internet.
We fund builders and developers tackling the problem of data ownership.
Tools and Services.
Are you a web developer interested in building tools that make the protocol easier to interact with? Are you interested in increasing decentralization, data resiliency, and data portability?
Can you build tools and services that make it easier for miners, developers, and tokenholders to interact with STX? Examples: a Rosetta API gateway, STX Stacking wallet, STX custody solutions, alternate explorer, custom mining tools / dashboards, chain visualization / analytics, etc.
Education, Evangelism, and Collaboration.
Are you experienced in communication, marketing, community or creative? Create resources that support or grow the community.
Examples: videos, documentation, tutorials, workshops, working groups, etc.
Core Protocol Development.
Are you a blockchain developer or computer science researcher? Build core infrastructure that helps progress a user-owned internet.
Examples: alternate implementations, contributions to stacks-blockchain reference implementation, etc.
Wish list or Wildcard.
Ready to contribute but not sure were to start? We're crowdsourcing ideas from across our ecosystem that best serve our mission.
Check out our wish list for ideas or create your own proposal for a project you believe will add value to the ecosystem and explain why.
Grants Application
Grants Proposals are created by and for the community, so the evaluation is purposefully open for feedback from the STX ecosystem. Sharing your ideas with peers is a great way to get input, feedback, and find collaborators.
Final decisions on funding are provided by the Grants Committee, but evaluation on the scope of the proposal is open to everyone for comment. Currently, the grants committee is comprised of members of the Stacks Foundation: Raffi, Brittany, Jude and Ryan.
Evaluation Criteria
- Grant applications should clearly outline the project's purpose, who benefits, how the project will serve the mission, a measurable outcome, relevant experience from the individual/team, risks, and links to community input, research, or supporting work relevant to your project.
- Community feedback is strongly encouraged. Applicants may benefit by presenting their idea in a blog post, video demo, or forum discussion to get more input on their proposal from the community. It can also kickstart the path to sharing proposal progress and final deliverables with the community over time.
- Grantees must verify their ID and sign a contract to obtain funding in USD, restrictions may apply to citizens of OFAC countries.
- Grants are generally forward looking. Work created in the past is not eligible for a grant.
- We like to see scoped deliverables that can be completed in 2-12 weeks.
- Please ensure milestones are included e.g.
- Milestone 1: $X
- Design the UI/UX and review it
- Identify key technical problems to solve
- Deliverable: Visuals shared with the community
- Milestone 2: $Y
- Implement Solution 1.0
- Implement Solution 1.1
- Deliverable: App shared with community for testing
- etc...
- Milestone 1: $X
Development Criteria
- Projects must be open source or use a permissive license (where required). This includes any software dependencies or third-party libraries.
- Projects must be developed in a public online setting, such as Github, in order for the community to interact with the project as it is being worked on.
- If the project will store user data, then it must store the all of the user's data on the user's Gaia hub. In addition, all user data must be stored in a well-documented format, so other programs may read and write it.
- If the project will perform any non-trivial computation from user data, then it must perform all computation on the user's device. Generally speaking, this excludes project implementations that require server-side computing.
How to Apply
- Create a profile on https://grants.stacks.org/ and verify your email
- Submit. Submit a proposal by clicking “Start a Proposal” in the top right.
- a. Submit a new Proposal. If you have an idea of something you're excited about, we want to help you make it happen! Use the Grants Template to create your Proposal as an issue and review our guideines on the grants homepage.
- b. Respond to a wishlist proposal. Check out the wishlist issues, and respond as a comment with your proposal to the one you'd like to work on.
- Feedback. Receive feedback from the Grants Committee within 7 days. We review updates batched every Tuesday at 2 PM EST, so keep that in mind if you want us to review your updated proposal within a week.
- Community. Your proposal will be open to the community for feedback and comments as well. We encourage you to share your proposal in Discord, Telegram, the Forum, or to other parts of your community to solicit input from your peers.
- Review. Completed applications are reviewed by the Grants Committee during the weekly review on Tuesdays. Committee assesses if the application is : accepted, passed, or needs more information. Feedback, comments, and status updates are provided publicly in Github comments.
- Contract. Completed applications require a contract to finalize funding, it will include details on funding, delivery date, and impact if funding is not delivered.
- Deliver. Submit deliverables by the agreed upon time in within the Github thread, and tag the committee. If the grant is broken into milestones, we'll continue to update on this thread.
- Celebrate! Share your wins and your progress with the community. It's a great way to grow support of your work over time. We're all rooting for you!
Applicant Resources
- Discuss your grant proposal with peers through the #grants Discord channel
- Share your proposal through Telegram or the Forum
- Grants Program Beta Foundation blog post