Web3 entrepreneurs, take note! Here are 5 large-scale and open funding programs summarized: Grants

2024/1/15

In the previous bull market, many project teams had ample funds, giving rise to many grant projects. LXDAO compiled five relatively open funding projects for Web3 entrepreneurs lacking resources to refer to.

This article avoids some projects that are merely working for funded projects, and instead presents several larger-scale, more open funding review projects that are more helpful for early-stage projects. Web3 entrepreneurs should definitely not miss out on them.

Table of Contents

Mainstream Grants Categories

Prospective Grants: Typically appear early in the ecosystem, an open grant model to attract more developers, sometimes even earlier than angel rounds. A good proposal can receive funding, although the amount is usually small and more of an encouragement.
RFP Grants: If the funding party's project already has a clear roadmap, they will issue an RFP and fund developers to solve problems. Funded projects should be able to address real issues on the roadmap, more suitable for developers deeply involved in the ecosystem. For example, the Web3 Foundation's Grants Program.
Retroactive Grants: Mainly to support projects that are already live, to help them expand their impact and scale further. For example, Optimism's RetroPGF.
Abusing public goods? How should Web3 public goods be sustainably managed based on Optimism's funding program?
Quadratic Funding: Determining fund pool donations through democratic governance. By using public fund pools, when a donor contributes, it amplifies the funding effect for the benefiting projects.
Research Grants: Funding for basic foundational technology and cutting-edge theoretical research, focusing on long-term returns.

Ethereum Foundation

Types of Grants

Prospective Grants
Retroactive Grants
Research Grants

Organizational Background

The Ethereum Foundation was created to support the development of the Ethereum ecosystem. Over the years, various support methods have been attempted, leading to the current Ecosystem Support Program ESP and funding formats run by other teams. The Ethereum Foundation has various channels to fund ecosystem project development.

ESP: Provides two different funding levels for applicants, namely Small Grants and Project Grants.
Other Ethereum Foundation teams: Funding directly for projects contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Specific technical areas: Collaboration with external organizations for funding in specific areas such as zero-knowledge technology, developer experience, etc.
Third-party funding: Direct funding to external organizations like 0xPARC, Nomic Foundation, and ETHGlobal, which can decide fund allocation.

Application System

Here's an example using the ESP program:

Application Submission Website
Small Grants: Less than $30,000, decision time is generally within two weeks.
Project Grants: Over $30,000 with no funding limit, decision time is two to three months.
After funding allocation, the funded party delivers progress updates to designated evaluators with no restrictions on delivery format.

Related Requirements and Impact Measurement Standards

ESP's funding scope is broader with no strict regulations and more open funding periods.
The Ethereum Foundation does not establish impact standards for projects but places importance on the project's own roadmap, continuously monitoring milestones to ensure project completion.
Less funding for Dapps or frontend services, but educational products are usually an exception.
No funded projects have been publicly disclosed.

Previous Funding and Transparency References

Past ESP Funding Disclosure: Includes community, conferences, hackathons, and various sponsorship records.
There is currently no plan to disclose past funded projects, only disclosing fund allocation through quarterly reports.
In the first half of 2023, a total of 113 projects were funded, totaling $22 million, averaging $200,000 per project.

Solana Foundation

Types of Grants

Prospective Grants
RFP Grants

Organizational Background

The Solana Foundation was established in 2019 to support the Solana ecosystem. Besides traditional grants, it also engages in convertible investments in Mint and VC venture capital, as well as hosting hackathons.

Application System

Application Submission Website
The review team conducts initial reviews daily, filtering projects into relevant vertical areas such as DAOs, NFTs, DeFi, and then holds a meeting with funded teams and technical team SMEs in the vertical area.
Initial review results are generally available within a week. If passed, a meeting with relevant members, funded team/expert team, is scheduled in about ten days, with funding usually completed within a month.
Technical team decides small-scale funding, funding team decides medium-scale projects, and the executive committee decides large-scale funding projects.

Related Requirements and Impact Measurement Standards

Solana Grants Guidelines: Projects need to be open-source, serve the public interest, make unique contributions, and have clear financial planning.
Solana Foundation's reviews are more utilitarian than Ethereum Foundation's, focusing on whether funded projects meet urgent needs in the Solana ecosystem, thus having corresponding evaluation standards that are non-quantitative.
Reasonable project milestone design.
Impact assessment method: Defined jointly with the funded party, with the funding team assessing their performance.
Positive externality: How beneficial the impact of this funding is to others in the Solana ecosystem, whether it addresses issues beyond the funded party's goals.
Sustainability: Whether the funded party is sustainable in the Solana ecosystem.

Previous Funding and Transparency References

There is currently no unified public reporting process, but efforts are being made to submit quarterly funding reports to the community early this year.
Previous funding: Over 300 projects funded, a 6% acceptance rate, with a committed donation of $160,000 unlocked by milestones.

Uniswap Foundation

Types of Grants

Prospective Grants
RFP Grants
Research Grants

Organizational Background

The Uniswap Foundation was established in August 2022 and shortly after its approval, created the Uniswap Grants Program UGP, with two years of funding but relatively less funding. Based on past records, UGP focuses on the development of the Uniswap ecosystem.

Uniswap aims to establish a physical foundation with a budget of $70 million over three years, with polarized community opinions.

The project currently has two main types of funding projects, Prospective Grants for external projects and RFP Grants and Research Grants for internal team needs.

Application System

Application Submission Website: Currently, applications for V3-related projects are suspended, and V4 Grants are still in the planning stage, so no applications can be submitted at the moment.
It is not yet clear who will be part of the management team for their grant program, and the responsibilities are not well-defined. The Uniswap Foundation is even recruiting a Grants lead, so all reviews are currently done through community proposals.
Response time: One to six weeks as all grant requests now require community governance.

Related Requirements and Impact Measurement Standards

Uniswap focuses on projects related to its ecosystem and pays particular attention to:

Liquidity Provider Tools: Enhancing liquidity provider efficiency and reducing participation thresholds, such as centralized liquidity tools, efficiency improvements, or frontend interfaces.
Developer Tools: Enhancing developer efficiency in building projects, such as constructing SDKs for easy integration of trading functions.
Governance Tools: Encouraging active community governance, such as improving relevant tools for decentralized governance.

They also invest in valuable article outputs, hackathon events, and other projects.

Regarding RFP Grants, in 2023, there are four RFP Grants prepared for the V4 project:

Provide liquidity widgets under Liquidity provider tools and resources
Open-source design for Uniswap’s LP user experience under Liquidity provider tools and resources
Research – what bad hooks look like under Developer tools
Proof of concept – hooks and developer documentation under Developer tools

Previous Funding and Transparency References

Past funded project disclosures: Link.
Previous funding: 176 projects funded, totaling around $9.8 million.

TON Foundation

Types of Grants

Prospective Grants

Organizational Background

Originally developed by the Telegram team, the network project was terminated due to legal issues and later continued by other teams. In May 2022, the Grants program was launched with a total of $2 billion, managed by Questbook.

TON Foundation's funding leans towards public welfare. Although its mission is to identify projects beneficial to the TON core infrastructure and introduce new practical applications, it provides considerable support for open-source technology projects and collaborations with other ecosystems.

Application System

Application Submission Website: Currently managed by Questbook.
After submitting an application, the funding team conducts initial reviews, followed by expert reviews to decide on funding allocation.
Average review time is 7 to 10 days, with approximately five grants announced monthly.

Related Requirements and Impact Measurement Standards

TON Foundation's funding program focuses on Prospective Grants and generally does not provide additional funding to previously funded projects.
Areas of interest for the TON Foundation include DeFi, GameFi, inclusive finance, developer tools, cross-chain, scientific research, optimization standards, and dDAO-related tools.
The foundation emphasizes milestones. Grant disbursement standards focus on whether the project reaches the first milestone and meets all milestones set in the funding plan to determine subsequent disbursements.
Additionally, new evaluation metrics have emerged recently, exploring statistics related to on-chain data such as TVL and active user numbers.

Previous Funding and Transparency References

Past funded project disclosures: Link.
Previous funding: Over 100 projects funded, with an acceptance rate of over 80%, committing a total of $1.2 million in donations, indicating relatively lower funding for individual projects.

AGD AAVE DAO

Types of Grants

Prospective Grants

Organizational Background

Initially, AAVE focused solely on the Ethereum ecosystem until it released protocols on networks like Polygon and Avalanche in 2021, expanding its ecosystem empowerment scope.

The initial AAVE grant program was individual Grants projects; due to increased adoption, two ecosystem grant programs were held. In 2021, the community-based subsidy program Aave Grants DAO was launched.

Application System

Application Submission Website
For grants less than $20,000, only desk reviews are required and funding is quick. If the first review passes, approval is sent within a few days.
For grants between $20,000 and $80,000, an interview and internal review are required.
For grants over $80,000, applicants need to share proposals on the Aave community forum. AGD cannot authorize but will guide applicants on how to share proposals directly on the Aave governance forum, with final proposals decided by community Snapshot vote.

Related Requirements and Impact Measurement Standards

The impact of funded projects will be measured in various ways, including assessing whether the funded parties complete assigned tasks and providing monthly and semi-annual reports. Aave's focus indicators include:

TVL or other protocol metrics
Expanding Aave platform functionality
Providing understandable and novel insights to the community
Attracting new users and increasing retention of existing users
Strengthening the utility of stablecoins in GHO.

However, these conditions are not absolute, as Aave believes any project will have a positive impact on its ecosystem.

Previous Funding and Transparency References

Past funded project
DEFI APPLICATION
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