We have reached the first round of fund allocations for the Kipu Impact Support Program pilot. This article shares what we learned, the first grantees, and the new application conditions.

Kipu Impact Support Program v1

The Genesis

As we had anticipated in the launch article, this first stage of the Kipu Impact Support Program would be a pilot to understand how best to allocate resources. This made sense since the program's antecedent was the quadratic funding rounds.

The rounds of quadratic funding were an experiment that took place in some communities in collaboration with PSE teams: MACI team and Quadratic Funding Incubator. Although the rounds are fun, they are challenging to organize, and voting is still difficult. This created some friction in the process. Moreover, resource allocation always ended up favoring the most popular teams or those who secured more and better donors, but... what happened to quality teams that were not as well-known?

The answer is simple: they received few votes, translating into less funding. The effort required was significant, as it involved applying, asking various communities to vote (it’s always challenging to maintain the fine line between blatant shilling and promoting a legitimate project), organizing showcases, explaining how to vote, and then hoping the goodwill of voters would translate into votes.

This didn’t seem fair to us, as it involved a considerable effort from small or inexperienced teams that wanted to contribute to Ethereum, but these instances demotivated them.

That’s why we set out to create a different mechanism with more predictability for applicants: traditional grants.

Some Numbers

We opened the calls in Spanish and Portuguese on July 1st. We received submissions from 6 individuals and 17 teams from 11 countries. As mentioned in the call article, the evaluation is ongoing, so some are still being evaluated. Some other numbers:

Number of Initiatives:

• 23 received

• 11 under review

• 5 approved

• 7 rejected

Number of Initiatives by category:

• 8: Education

• 6: Onboarding

• 4: Events

• 3: Tooling

• 1: Research

• 1: DeFi

Our Learnings

Before launching the call for the Kipu Impact Support Program, we immersed ourselves in several previous experiences: CLR, Gitcoin, Uniswap Grants, Retro Public Good Funding, Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook, Metapool, and other experiences from the traditional world. We also considered our own experience as grantees of the Ecosystem Support Program. Based on that, we considered dozens of mechanisms, complex forms, budget templates, execution timelines, etc., until we decided to launch a simple form that was easy to fill out and easy for us to process.

Why did we decide this? We could copy the best grant structure from any protocol or chain, but we would copy a frame. Experiences are non-transferable, and we would not experience our grant program's natural iteration and improvement. We would encounter contradictions from an external system, execution gaps, and solutions, among other unpredictable scenarios.

So, we decided to make mistakes and learn. Because in the correction process, the evaluator's internal criteria are formed. Only then does one gain the confidence that experience provides.

What did we learn about selection criteria?

These learnings make sense within the ETH Kipu team and can serve as experience for other teams going through the creation of a grant system. That is our motivation for sharing them, but we do not intend for them to be adopted as an approach, as each vision construction is unique to each team.

• Preference for initiatives that prioritize onboarding: Although this is a general guideline, it has its exceptions, as it is also essential to support initiatives that strengthen what has already been built within our niche. However, at ETH Kipu, we are trying to attract talent to Ethereum, and we believe that having this criterion in the program is also essential.

• Preference for specificity over generality: Our budget is limited, so initiatives with extensive and costly deployments are beyond our means. For example, we prefer to support a “reading circle on sequencers” with specific results for a small group of individuals rather than funding a large conference whose impact on a large crowd dissipates.

• Support proposals that complement each other: Although each initiative is unique, we were first informed in mid-August that selecting and supporting grantees with a holistic perspective was possible.

• Support proposals that suggest documentation of processes for later replication in other cities or countries: In Ethereum, we have developed specific formulas that more or less ensure the success of our projects. For example, there are processes for having a successful hackathon, a successful meetup, and a successful boot camp. However, all these actions occur within the community. We need new actions with new audiences, and we need to document these actions to execute them better in the future. For example, at ETH Kipu, we are doing this by introducing the teaching of Ethereum and Solidity in high schools in Buenos Aires and later sharing this experience in other cities and countries. We didn’t find previous precedents for executing similar actions from which to draw.

What did we learn about the call and operational matters?

Despite our efforts, we must continue working to reach new communities and individuals in Brazil. We received only one initiative from that country.

We have contacted different research groups in the region. Although students and teachers are interested, providing prior support and encouraging them to research is necessary.

We must structure a proposal so our grantees can continue or scale their initiatives within Ethereum. Although we can support them in a phased execution (Q3, Q4, and so on), we must prepare coordination with grants driven by the Ethereum Foundation, protocols, and other Layer 2 solutions. Thinking long-term gives us perspective as evaluators and the grantees as builders.

Our first grantees

We are very proud to support the first selected participants of our program.

The funds from the Kipu Impact Support Program are held in a multisig and distributed to the selected teams. We have replicated the modality used by the Ecosystem Support Program:

1. Wallet confirmation.

2. Sending a test amount (1 USDT).

3. Confirmation of receipt of the test amount by the beneficiary.

4. Sending the total funds.

Below is a list of our grantees until the closing of this edition of the article. Note: All hyperlinked transactions were sent with 1 USDT less because, before sending the total allocated amount, we securely sent 1 USDT as a test amount, as described above. If we allocated 500 USDT to "Project E," we sent 1 USDT and, after confirming receipt with the beneficiary, sent the remaining 499 USDT to complete the amount. The test amounts can be viewed on Etherscan associated with each recipient’s address).

Seal, Colombia

Assigned Budget: $2,324.00

When we started the KISP pilot, we had certain expectations and desires. But Seal was one of those initiatives that made us rethink how we would approach the second round of grants. Should the Kipu Impact Support Program support products? What type of products? At what stage?

After several deliberations, we decided that Kipu Impact should support any individual or group building a prototype or MVP of a tool or product intended to be a public good. This is a first step in accompanying these initiatives to other grant programs with larger budgets or supporting them in a phased execution from the Kipu Impact Support Program.

Seal supplements academic certification based on validations through attestations and NFTs. This system allows LMS (Learning Management Systems) to perform a secure and transparent verification of their certifications, using blockchain technology to prevent fraud and forgery.

ETH Bolivia Buildathon 2024, Bolivia

Assigned Budget: $2,200.00

The ETH Bolivia community is one of the most prolific communities in the region. They have managed to maintain a regular schedule of events, meetups, and training sessions for two years since their inception. They have active communities in La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba.

At ETH Kipu, we thought it was essential to support the work of this community, which was born in 2022 ahead of Devcon VI and has grown in both quality and membership.

Cypher Radio, Colombia

Assigned Budget: $1,500.00

We support Platohedro's initiative, Cypher Radio. This space shares information about blockchain technology and the different things happening in Ethereum. It has been active since July 2023 in collaboration with the Palco Association, an NGO in the city that manages the community radio station “La Esquina radio,” 104.1 FM in Medellín.

At Kipu Impact, we believe it is essential to support this initiative to maintain the continuity of past actions in that community. Most of the audience is not technical but ordinary people who learn about technology daily through these community spaces.

Cryptography Blog, Argentina

Assigned Budget: $1,200.00

Lucas Cardacci can be defined as an outsider. He joined the Ethereum community just over two months ago through the Core Program, an initiative of the Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) team in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Originally from Córdoba, he is an advanced student of Mathematics at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. His final thesis is on KZG and polynomial commitments.

Lucas's blog will be aimed at mathematicians and computer scientists who need a more theoretical approach to the concepts. This seems crucial to our ecosystem's attraction of talent.

W3DT, Argentina

Assigned Budget: $1,000.00

W3DT stands for Web3 Didactic Tools, an initiative that proposes pedagogical-didactic mentorships aimed at professionals in the Web3 industry.

Sergio Rieznik is a teacher from Buenos Aires with thirty years of experience. He has been present in the ecosystem for several years. He came to us with an initiative that we believe is very necessary: to begin helping Ethereum speakers and educators improve the structuring of their classes and talks from a pedagogical perspective.

We have great minds and talents in our ecosystem, but teaching and transmitting content is always a challenge. Incorporating a pedagogical perspective could help us identify how to teach Ethereum better to new audiences.

At the end of the program, we will upload reports of all the executions of the grant initiatives, with more details and learnings from the grantees as well as from us as a team.

How to Apply to the Kipu Impact Support Program v2?

The following article contains the terms and conditions for applying. We have applied new filters to make the review more agile and to shorten the evaluation and response processes for applicants.

Spanish:

Portuguese:

Application Form:

Spanish:

Portuguese:

We hope this article has clarified the internal processes at Kipu Impact. We are open to suggestions and collaborations; if you have any questions or concerns, just write to us at impact@ethkipu.org.

The ETH Kipu Team