If you are a developer who is currently working on an Ethereum-based project, there could now be additional funding available to you.
In a recent blog post, the Ethereum Foundation announced ÐΞVgrants (originally named ΞTHgrants): a program intended to support developers who are making significant contributions to the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to the announcement, written by grants administrator Wendell Davis, the goals of ÐΞVgrants are threefold:
- To provide developers interested in contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem the opportunity to spend significant time on their project in order to bring it to completion.
- To extend the codebase with useful components that are not the main focus of ΞTHDEV, but which would be very valuable to users of Ethereum generally.
- To increase outreach to other communities and the general public.
Grants are not part of a venture capital program, nor are they intended as bounty offerings. The focus is on projects that are already in progress, that show a clear direction and that have a methodology for reporting on progress and outcomes.
While businesses and developers need not be considered not-for-profit, projects must be open-source with a distinguishable public benefit in order to be eligible for consideration.
“Fueled by what can only be described as impassioned determination, developers from all walks of life have risked their time and credibility to pioneer in this radical and largely unknown domain of innovation,” Davis states in the blog post. “Today we are launching a new program to support and thank those who continue to take this journey with us.”
The size of the grants will range from USD $1,000 to $10,000 per project and will be determined by the ÐΞVgrants administrator and board through a two-step evaluation process. A ÐΞVgrants website is in the works. In the meantime, interested applicants can follow the @ÐΞVgrants Twitter account or contact the ÐΞVgrants administrator at grants@ethereum.org.
Funds for the grant program will come from the monies raised in Ethereum’s Ether sale, held over a 42-day period last summer. Ether is the “fuel” necessary for operating the Ethereum system and is used to pay for all operations of processing and storage performed by the network.
The sale of 60,102,216 ETH raised 31,531 BTC, worth approximately $18,439,086 at the time.
Ethereum is a next-generation smart contract and decentralized application (Dapp) platform. Dapps that will run on the Ethereum platform will include financial applications (subcurrencies, financial derivatives, hedging contracts, savings wallets, wills, full-scale employment contracts, real estate), semi-financial applications (self-enforcing bounties for solutions to computational problems, insurance), and nonfinancial applications (online voting and decentralized governance, file storage).
Other potential Dapps could include secure auctions and prediction markets, decentralized customer matching services (along the lines of Uber and AirBnB), and a host of Internet of Thing apps.
