Grant Funding For Quality Projects
Submitted by: Unicircle, a Scroll Delegate
Category: Grant Programs
Your idea (in no less than 4 sentences).
We propose creating a Quality Projects Grant Fund that funds only the strongest 10–15 % of applicants. Grants are released in tranches as projects hit predefined milestones. To qualify, a project must already show real traction on Scroll or other chains, and can even receive funding retroactively for past achievements only if they are live on Scroll.
How will this idea help ecosystem growth
A targeted grants programme would pull more builders, and therefore more projects, onto Scroll. Base’s On-Chain Summer shows the impact: daily active addresses jumped from roughly 77 000 right after launch on 9 Aug 2023 to over one million by 24 Aug 2024, a surge driven largely by its grants incentive campaign.
Required budget for the idea in SCR.
To begin, grant $20,000 to each of the top 20 projects, with funds released on a milestone basis. This structure ensures builders continue working toward deliverables in order to unlock additional funding.
Cost: 1.4 M Scroll tokens (≈ $400 k at the current price of $0.30)
Who would need to be involved?
- Scroll Foundation
- Project Evaluation Council
2 Likes
Thank you, @Samater, for the RFI on a Quality Projects Grant Fund.
In the past quarter, based on community discussions and careful consideration of current priorities, we’ve decided to pause the direction of developing new grant programs for now. We had previous proposals, such as the DAO DeFi Grant Program proposal, which was paused in order to redirect focus toward other strategic initiatives.
Something currently being actively pursued by the Scroll Foundation - and which may align with the spirit of your proposal - is Scroll Open Campus, part of the broader Open Economy initiative. This program also focuses on supporting builders and high-quality projects, though through a different structure than traditional grants. More will be announcing in the coming weeks.
Additionally, we’re interested in hearing your thoughts on metrics and sourcing/review. As metrics have come up in previous discussions, we’d appreciate any insights, frameworks, or resources you can share to help refine how we measure impact across programs like these for the future.
When it comes to sourcing and review, do you have thoughts on how this program would get quality projects applying and who would perform the review of these applications?
Thanks again and looking forward to hearing back from you.
2 Likes
On behalf of Unicircle, here is our thought:
How can the impact of builder programs be measured?
To measure the impact of initiatives like this, a clear metric should be defined, such as fostering developer tooling, liquidity, or AI-driven projects. Some metrics that could be considered are:
- Deployment and Adoption: Number of projects deployed on Scroll mainnet, with user engagement (e.g., transaction volume, active users, TVL for DeFi projects), tracked via on-chain analytics (e.g., Dune).
- Tooling Utilization: Adoption of developer tools via GitHub metrics (e.g., stars, forks) and on-chain usage (e.g., developers integrating tools into Scroll projects).
- Ecosystem Growth: Increased developer activity (e.g., GitHub commits, hackathon submissions) and new use cases (e.g., AI applications).
- Long-Term Impact: Retention rate of projects building on Scroll, evaluated quarterly.
Impact should be assessed on a rolling basis, with transparent, public reports to inform future iterations. Frameworks like OKRs or Ethereum Foundation’s grant metrics can guide measurement.
How can these programs attract quality projects?
To source high-quality projects, different approaches can be used:
- Hackathons: Partnering with neutral organizations (e.g., Gitcoin, universities) to host hackathons. Winners can be offered funding on a milestone basis to ensure long-term commitment.
- Builder Residency Programs: Funding and collaborating with builder residency programs. Most of these programs already have a pipeline of quality builders and projects that Scroll can easily tap into. One example would be the Magma program(https://borderless.africa/).
- Request for Proposals (RFPs): DIfferent ideas that aligns with Scrolls direction can be posted (e.g., cross-chain tools, privacy solutions) and teams requested to submit RFPs. These teams will need to be evaluated for expertise and the idea for its feasibility.
- Social engagement: The programs should be actively publicized on relevant social media platforms and should highlight success stories of other builders in order to attract new builders.
- Incentives: Incentives shouldnt just be tied to funding, room should be made for technical mentorship, infrastructure access, or co-marketing to complement funding.
How will application review be conducted, and who will perform it?
The application process should be broken down into various stages to enable better assessment and filtering.
- Application Process: Projects can pitch during public ecosystem calls or submit proposals on the governance platform. Community members can then ask questions where things arent clear. After this, the project goes to the next stage which is the voting stage.
- Voting: Delegates vote on projects based on technical feasibility, team experience, and alignment with Scroll’s goals. Winning projects then proceed for review by a committee elected by the DAO.
- Review Committee: A DAO-appointed committee, including Scroll Foundation members, community delegates, and Web3 experts, conducts due diligence (e.g., KYC, technical audits) and oversees compliance.
- Transparency and Accountability: A public dashboard tracks project progress and milestone-based fund disbursements, ensuring accountability and long-term development.
These ideas can be refined further based on feedback and improved upon.
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