1 Billion Unlocked Over Decade in Community Grants Program for Polygon Builders

tl;dr

• Following community consensus, the Community Treasury has been created, with 1B POL unlocked over 10 years, with ~100M POL per year—all for builders
• Season 01 of the Community Grants Program, overseen by the neutral Community Treasury Board, will distribute 35M MATIC to projects building on Polygon
• Applications are open today
• An open, community-aligned funding framework will leverage professional Grant Allocators to distribute a portion of Season 01 funds

Builders are the heart of Polygon’s success.

You’ve shown up to hackathons and accelerators, poured out to global meetups and startup support programs. Over the last few years, it is you, dear builder, at every turn, developing Polygon and building with Polygon technology, becoming a pioneer at the forefront of global innovation. Because of these first-class developers, the Polygon landscape has exploded in growth across different protocols and technologies. It’s a thriving, multi-centered community. 

And in this time, you’ve taught us at Polygon Labs a ton, too. Like: How to best support you in your build journey. We’ve listened and we’ve learned. 

While the Village Grants program focused only on grants from Polygon Labs—an important beginning to support projects building on Polygon—the Community Treasury was created following community consensus as a long-term, community-first, and sustainable solution for continued support and development across Polygon: Today, applications are open for the Community Grants Program (CGP). 

10 years, ~100M POL per year, for up to 1B in funding. Just for builders.

Apply to the Community Grants Program today

Season 01 of the CGP will operate as follows: 

• 35M MATIC will be allocated in Season 01. And with 100M POL available each year, there’s more to come in following seasons.some text
  • NOTE: Will grants be delivered in POL or MATIC?
  • The Community Grants Program will use funds in the Community Treasury for grantmaking. The Community Treasury accrues POL, but given the ongoing token upgrade from MATIC to POL, grants for Season 1 will be made in MATIC.
• Grants overseen by an independent Community Treasury Board.
• Open, community-aligned funding framework: Adherence to a community-funding framework, with a portion of Season 01 grants distributed by professional Grant Allocators.

The grant program follows proposals to ensure that Polygon becomes a strong, community-governed aggregated network of chains.

Who is eligible? 

A few conditions must be met to be eligible. Projects must be: 

• Building on Polygon or willing to migrate to Polygon
• Building for the long term

A number of standout projects got their start with Polygon grants: Quickswap, Keom, Jokerace, and Intraverse, to name a few. It’s been amazing to see these projects grow—and you can join their ranks.

Important application details and dates

Interested projects should apply early, as applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. Expect an average four-week turnaround for grant allocation. 

Please note the following important information: 

• Applications for S01 open June 11, 2024 and close Aug 31, 2024
• Grant range: 5,000 - 50,000+ MATIC
• Total S01 allocation: Up to 35,000,000 MATIC
• Every month: Community Treasury Board reviews and selects projects
• Grant payouts begin the first of each month

Apply here: polygon.technology/grants

Tracks for Season 01

The inaugural season offers two distinct tracks for applicants:

‍General Grant Track: For anyone, anywhere, building whatever on Polygon—this is for you. The General Grants Track doesn't impose strict limitations on eligible projects, but we are keen to see a few key focus areas, including developer tooling and libraries, protocol infrastructure, and any kind of dApp.

• Apply here

Consumer Crypto Track: This track focuses on projects that can drive crypto adoption. Consumer-led use cases may include gaming, gamified commerce, decentralized social, AI/blockchain intersection, NFT innovations, content co-creation, digital/physical intersections, and distributed communities (also known as scenecoins).

• Apply here

Community-first funding: Find support now, not later

The framework for how treasury grant funds are deployed are open for community feedback, but the reasoning for this evolution is simple. At heart, we’re developers. We iterate and innovate and work collaboratively. 

While the first season of CGP will focus on “consumer crypto,” the overarching goal is to support developers while they build. Waiting until a project has finished building and produces results misses a key piece of true innovation: The opportunity to take chances. 

With Polygon CGP, dynamic early-stage builders can get the funding they need when they need it. 

Building is hard. You shouldn’t have to worry over the finances needed to succeed while you experiment. Build for longevity and get the support you need to, today.

Future-proof your project by building on Polygon

It’s time to update mental models: Polygon is more than Polygon Proof-of-Stake network. 

Read: WTF is Polygon?

Building with Polygon technology means sovereignty. Build where you want, how you want. Deploy a dApp or infra on Polygon PoS, the low-cost, account abstraction behemoth that continues to cook; or find a home for your project on Polygon zkEVM, an EVM-equivalent ZK L2 where Ethereum tooling works out-of-the-box. 

If your project needs a chain of its own, Polygon CDK is right for you: An open-source collection of software components that enable developers to spin up ZK-powered chains with performant, battle-tested ZK tech. Tons of projects have built or are building with Polygon CDK: X Layer, Astar zkEVM, Swell, Immutable, Gnosis Pay, Libre, Hypr, Canto, Palm Network, IDEX, and more. 

With Polygon, all roads lead to the AggLayer. AggLayer is a horizontally scalable multichain network that enables access to shared liquidity and state across sovereign, connected chains. Aggregation lets builders concentrate on their project without having to worry about bootstrapping users or project liquidity. Aggregation is a machine for network effects.

Any chain can access the aggregate user base and liquidity of every connected chain. 

So when Polygon PoS connects later this year (presuming community consensus), the more than 2B TVL and the 1M daily active users of Polygon PoS can seamlessly access all dApps, users, and liquidity on all connected chains. Right now, there are three: X Layer, Astar zkEVM, and Polygon zkEVM.

Hypothetical experiences builders can design?

Say Alice wants to buy an NFT on Astar zkEVM using ASTR, but only has POL on Polygon zkEVM. 

In one transaction, her POL can travel from Polygon zkEVM to X Layer, which may have deep POL/ASTR liquidity pools, swap POL for ASTR, send ASTR to Astar zkEVM, and buy the NFT.

Does this take numerous bridge delays and multiple confirmations? Nope. One transaction, that’s it. 

The AggLayer unlocks a huge variety of new cross-chain experiences and expanded use cases for protocol and dApp developers, alike. Better for users, better for developers, and better for a unified blockchain landscape.

Now it’s in your hands: Submit a proposal to help build 

Tune into the blog and our social channels to keep up with updates about Polygon.

The future of Web3 is aggregated.

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