The ultimate 2024 Polkadot grants and funding guide

Key takeaways

• Funding options available for individuals and projects at all stages of development covering VC, ecosystem-wide grants, development grants, community-driven funding initiatives, project-specific grants, and bounties
• Opportunities range from grants to multi-million dollar funds
• Focus areas include DeFi, gaming, infrastructure, and more

Calling all crypto visionaries, blockchain pioneers, and decentralized architects—your next big idea could be the missing piece in Polkadot’s expanding universe of interconnected chains. Polkadot’s flourishing ecosystem of interoperable chains and dapps offers a robust platform for your project and a wealth of funding opportunities to help bring your vision to life.

This comprehensive guide delves into the diverse funding landscape within the Polkadot ecosystem, covering grants, bounties, venture capital, and community-driven initiatives. Whether you're a solo developer with a revolutionary concept, a startup ready to scale, or an established team looking to contribute to Polkadot’s infrastructure, there are resources available for everyone.

Venture capital

Firms offering capital, industry expertise, and network access to accelerate high-potential Polkadot-based projects

Scytale

Scytale is an industry-leading digital asset manager and investment firm on a mission to accelerate early-stage blockchain and crypto projects. Their investment portfolio features notable Polkadot projects such as Astar, Mythical, Tanssi, and Centrifuge. Scytale has been recognized as a Decentralized Voice, a committed Polkadot ecosystem advocate empowered by the Web3 Foundation to advance inclusive, decentralized governance. At Decoded 2024, Scytale launched their dedicated Polkadot Ecosystem Fund, which aims to support early-stage projects building on Polkadot and its parachains.

Harbour Industrial Capital

Harbour Industrial Capital is a Polkadot-focused crypto fund dedicated to investing in the expansive ecosystem of DeFi, NFTs, and the metaverse built on next-generation blockchain technology. This fund is at the forefront of innovation, deploying capital strategically through Parachain auctions, which ensures their participation in promising projects from day one.

Ecosystem-wide grants

Broad-based funding supporting teams and individuals that contribute to the growth and value of the Polkadot ecosystem

Web3 Foundation Grants Program

The Web3 Foundation Grants Program provides funding for software development and research efforts related to Polkadot and Kusama. This program prioritizes technically focused projects that demonstrably add value to the Polkadot ecosystem and present a compelling long-term roadmap.

Eligible projects can include

• Research-oriented projects: Should show significance to the community and potential impact, such as through academic publications or community engagement metrics.
• Business-oriented projects: Must provide a comprehensive market analysis, including target audience, market size, competitive landscape, and go-to-market strategy.
• Open-source projects: Should demonstrate experience in building strong communities, evidenced by user adoption, active development contributions, and community engagement initiatives.

Polkadot Pioneers Prize

The Polkadot Pioneers Prize is an initiative aimed at encouraging talented individuals to tackle significant challenges in the Polkadot and Web3 ecosystems, with the opportunity to win up to 993,286.08 DOT in prizes. This effort is uniquely funded through Polkadot’s onchain Treasury, which is managed by the network’s token holders through an onchain governance system, OpenGov. Holding over 20 million DOT, the Treasury is dedicated to supporting projects that benefit the Polkadot ecosystem, representing a new paradigm in the decentralized financial agency.

Specialized protocol development grants

Grants focused on core protocol development and technical advancements in the Polkadot network

JAM Implementers Prize

The Web3 Foundation's JAM Implementers Prize offers 10 million DOT to encourage the creation of multiple client implementations of the JAM protocol. This initiative comes in the wake of Referendum #682, which empowers Polkadot Fellows to ratify the development of JAM, a protocol described in the Gray Paper as a potential replacement for the current Polkadot Relay Chain.

As Dr. Gavin Wood elaborated at Decoded 2024, this prize aims to increase network resilience and decentralization by supporting projects in various programming languages, including OCaml, Go, and Zig. The emphasis on multiple implementations helps distribute power and reduce single-point-of-failure risks.

While full JAM specifications are yet to be finalized, this initiative sets the stage for its development and potential future integration into the Polkadot ecosystem, subject to rigorous testing and community approval.

Community-driven funding initiatives

Decentralized funding platforms that empower the Polkadot community to fund and support promising ecosystem projects

Polimec

Decentralized, transparent, and regulatory-compliant crypto fundraising on Polkadot.

Polimec is a decentralized, community-led funding protocol on Polkadot that enhances value creation for projects by enabling stakeholders to participate in funding rounds and reducing asymmetry between participants and issuers. The protocol uses a unique reward mechanism to align the interests of participants and projects for sustainable fundraising. Polimec’s native PLMC token provides access to fundraising opportunities and features like staking, gamified social credit building, and more.

PLMC holders bond their tokens to participate in funding rounds, participating with accepted cryptocurrencies such as stablecoins, DOT, or KSM. Successful participants receive the project’s contribution tokens, while unsuccessful participants are refunded their contributions.

Polkaport East

Establishing a central hub for Polkadot in Hong Kong.

Polkaport East is poised to become a central hub for growth and investor relations in Hong Kong, one of the world’s leading financial centers. This initiative aims to create a permanent and vibrant Polkadot community, supporting existing Polkadot holders and investors while attracting new teams and institutional investors to the ecosystem.

Key Objectives of Polkaport East:

• Bringing new institutional investors to Polkadot and retaining existing ones: With Hong Kong hosting a significant number of family offices and crypto VCs, Polkaport East will engage these stakeholders through targeted events, encouraging continued and increased investment in Polkadot and its parachains.
• Attracting new teams to build on Polkadot: By organizing a series of events, Polkaport East will act as a funnel for Web3 projects transitioning to Polkadot. These events will highlight Polkadot’s technical prowess and facilitate collaborations with Parity Asia to support new entrants.
• Providing a physical “home base” for the local Polkadot community: Inspired by the vision of “Polkadot Hubs,” Polkaport East will offer a co-working space for the community. This space will host a regular Speaker Series and serve as a nexus for local and visiting Web3 developers.

To achieve these objectives, Polkaport East will set up a co-working space dedicated to the Polkadot community, organize monthly meetups to discuss advancements and opportunities, organize monthly fireside chats featuring key figures from the Web3 industry, arrange investor dinners to foster direct interactions between aspiring projects and VCs and organize an annual conference.

With its strategic initiatives and robust leadership, Polkaport East aims to firmly establish itself as a pivotal player in the growth of the Polkadot ecosystem in Asia.

Project-specific grants

Funding programs from individual Polkadot projects, supporting development and integration with their specific platforms

Acala Grants Program

The Acala Grants Program is designed for pre-seed and seed-stage startups to develop projects or tools that integrate with the Acala network and protocols. By contributing to the ecosystem's growth, these startups receive funding, technical support, and growth support.

Aleph Zero Ecosystem Funding Program

Aleph Zero’s Ecosystem Funding Program aims to support innovations from developer teams at all stages, offering funding across four tracks: Fast Track ($10-30K), Public Goods, Growth Track, and Nest, to enhance the blockchain's capabilities and adoption.

Avail Uncharted Grants

Avail Uncharted Grants supports developers building innovative, mission-aligned projects. It offers funding for RFP-based tool development and open-source contributions, initially focusing on infrastructure and community expansion.

Darwinia Grants Program

Darwinia Grants Program funds cross-chain development by offering grants to teams building on Darwinia Chain and Msgport at various development stages.

Hydration Grants & Bounties

Hydration Grants and Bounties, funded by the Treasury, can incentivize community contributions of up to $100,000 in HDX. It rewards bug finding, development, management, and translations to boost innovation. The Hydration Council oversees funding allocations to encourage ecosystem growth.

peaq’s DePIN Grant Program

Launched by the peaq Foundation, the DePIN Grant Program is an early-stage funding program aimed at developers building DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure network) dapps, layer 2 solutions, peaq network tools, and more.

Moonbeam Innovation Fund

Moonbeam, a cross-chain smart contract platform, launched a $10 million Moonbeam Innovation Fund with the aim of boosting development in gaming, real-world assets, and the Moonriver network. The fund allocates $10 million for innovative builders, $1.5 million for ecosystem grants focusing on RWA tokenization, DeFi, and infrastructure, and $1.5 million for Moonriver growth. This fund is part of Moonbeam's broader Moonrise initiative to strengthen its position as a leading Web3 platform.

Pendulum Grants Program

The Pendulum Grants Program seeks to support the development of AMMs, lending protocols, stable fiat tokens, yield optimizers, on/off-ramps, WASM forks, and more, in efforts to bridge the gap between fiat and DeFi on its fiat-optimized smart contract blockchain.

Bounties

Rewards for completing specific tasks or developing particular features needed in the Polkadot ecosystem

Polkadot DeFi Infrastructure & Tooling Bounty

The Polkadot DeFi Infrastructure and Tooling Bounty, with a substantial allocation of $4M, aims to streamline the distribution of treasury funds to develop and integrate critical tools, SDKs, UIs, and APIs essential for overcoming current barriers to Polkadot adoption. This initiative also focuses on funding the necessary infrastructure for AssetHub and BridgeHub. Backed by prominent community members with deep expertise, this bounty ensures that selected builders and service providers make effective and efficient use of the treasury funds.

The bounty simplifies grant disbursement for teams eager to collaborate on problem-solving within the Polkadot ecosystem. Grants will be offered to teams focusing on:

• Token Infrastructure
• Chain Abstraction
• Composability
• Seamless onboarding to Polkadot
• Tooling Maintenance
• Documentation

Interested teams are invited to apply for the bounty.

Dot Play Bounty For Gaming

The Dot Play Bounty is a strategic accelerator aimed at fostering a vibrant gaming ecosystem within Polkadot. A pivotal hub, focused on mass market, creator centric genres within gaming. Dot Play is building a ‘New Superstars’ community, providing through this program, tailored funding to promising game developers whose projects will enhance and contribute to the overall Polkadot ecosystem. Typically, funding is focused on ecosystem tools and game development, which require detailed planning and regular reporting to assigned bounty curators.

The Dot Play Bounty offers a new accelerator model, for passionate teams wanting to utilize Polkadot’s infrastructure to build the next global entertainment experiences . For more details and to learn more, visit the Dot Play teams portal.

Conclusion

As the secure and powerful core of Web3, Polkadot's expanding multi-chain ecosystem provides funding opportunities for projects at every stage. Launch your idea and build the next generation of cross-chain dapps, improve infrastructure, or pioneer new frontiers in DeFi and beyond on a truly interoperable network. Make the jump and bring your idea to life on the future of the free and open web. Start building on Polkadot today.