Too Many Chains, Too Many Mercenaries
YPSONO
0x6d76
February 13th, 2025

The Grants Dilemma

There are 111 L2s listed on L2Beat, 224 chains listed on CoinGecko and most of them have grant programs.

The purpose of grants is to get projects to build on the chain. However, with the current landscape, a lot has changed and requires our adaptation.

Grant Program References

  • Avalanche X Gitcoin

  • Sui Hydropower Accelerator

  • Sei Creator Fund

  • Aptos Foundation Grants Program

Here’s what matters:

Speed of grant distribution

Last year, the chains that received projects are those which processed grants fast. Chains like Sei can go through the entire process of speaking to the project, drafting a grant proposal and sending in the first cheque all within 1 month. It was how their gaming sector thrived towards Q3 2024.

Minimise Grant Surfing/Mercenary Developers

At the same time, chains learnt their lessons as well. Mercenary developers are everywhere and grant surf a lot. Most of the grants we issued with exclusivity agreements are not held up as it doesn’t even make sense to go through the legal trouble.

Many chains went towards milestone based grants to avoid being over farmed but we end up fighting with other chains on the grant size anyways. Those that are willing to give more upfront end up getting the projects. A race of $ is zero sum.

The solution to this is less about exclusivity agreements and restrictions.

It is more human than I thought too:

Building close & consistent relationships with the builders

If we were to properly execute this builders’ program, it can’t be just going through applications and giving projects money and ignoring the ones that we filtered out.

There needs to be continuity of relationship, regardless if they receive a grant from us or not..

Beyond Grants

Chains are approaching things differently now.

The one thing that a prominent chain was told to make clear is that: there are no grants.

Every week they are given a check-in call and in the process, funnelled into various tiers which are invisible to the projects themselves.

The better ones will be pushed to join the upcoming hackathons and of the, a few would walk away with sizable prize money from their raise and various VCs investing in the chain’s ecosystem.

Any less, they are given lower touch points but still significant enough to show that the team cares about anyone who’s interested in building on their chain.

At every crypto conference, they also host builder specific events for their projects to provide VC connections and help build partnerships within their ecosystem. Projects help projects.

In the near future, they will be having a physical Startup Hub where their builders can come in weekly to use a co-working space and attend workshops held by projects and VCs. It will also become a community hub of sorts. This is with the sole purpose of strengthening their relationship with their builders and anyone who’s even slightly interested to build on the chain.

TLDR: give and you shall receive. The more you take care and show that you care, the more likely they will build on you.

Builders’ Hub Framework

Phase 1: Feature Parity

Vanilla grants program with a theme that matches apple farm/racing related.

Project Categories: DeFi, Gaming, AI

Builders’ Hub Benefits: Grants, Ecosystem Support, Dedicated BD owner, VC intros, workshops from prominent projects

Phase 2: building a builders’ community

Online workshops: Bi-weekly workshops with prominent teams and internal resources

Check-ins: Weekly calls with the various projects, connect them within the ecosystem

provide additional resources: AWS cloud credits, OpenAI API credits, etc

Developer Support: Prompt replies from developer relations teams to overcome any hurdles of getting the projects on the chain

Phase 3: In-person Presence

Builder houses: In partnership with VCs/other chains, should set up hacker houses at key conferences, inclusive of speaker sessions, food & drinks and work stations

Reference: Sui Hacker House in BKK & Babylon Hacker House in BKK

Hackathons: 10-20k price pools for budding developers to build on the chain and to be rewarded.

Reference: Monad Hackathon

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