Announcing the Aleo Tooling & Infrastructure Grants Program

Today we're thrilled to announce the Aleo Tooling & Infrastructure Grants Program! As we prepare for mainnet launch, we understand the necessity for diverse and robust tooling & infrastructure that can support the Aleo network. This program incentivizes our community to help us address this need by creating these supporting components for our ecosystem. We have $1M USD in grant funding available for this initial program, and we're inviting you to apply and start building during Testnet 3 Phase III.

Given Aleo’s unique privacy-preserving architecture, building much of this tooling & infrastructure is not trivial. Therefore, we will use our grants program to evaluate high-quality proposals and allocate funding to capable individuals and teams. 

Our goal with the Aleo Tooling & Infrastructure Grants Program is to recognize and reward members of our ecosystem who build innovative solutions on the Aleo network. We’re incredibly excited to be launching this program and looking forward to what you’ll create!

Program Scope

All types of tooling & infrastructure are in scope, except block explorers. We leave it up to you to decide what you want to create. Below are some examples of tooling & infrastructure that would be useful for the Aleo network. You are not required to build these examples and can submit a proposal for anything you believe would benefit the ecosystem. 

• Wallets a. Browser-Based/Web b. Mobile c. Desktop

• Decompilers & Disassemblers

• IDE Plugins & Linters

• Fuzzers

• Code Completion Tools for Leo (e.g., GitHub Copilot)

• GitHub Libraries

• WebHooks (e.g., wagmi.sh)

We will only distribute the $1M USD in available funding to accepted grant proposals. When you submit a grant proposal, a program committee consisting of Aleo core team members will review it and decide whether or not to allocate funding. The individual or team applying for a grant must determine the project timeline, milestones, and amount of funding required to work on their proposal. For more details, please see the next section.

Submitting and Working on a Grant

To submit a grant proposal, you must follow the steps outlined below:

1. Form a team. If you’re looking for team members, we recommend joining our

   Discord. You can also work on a grant as an individual. It’s totally up to you.

2. Write a grant proposal using our Launch Grants Proposal Template.

3. Submit your proposal by completing our Launch Grants Application.

4. Our program committee will review your application and determine whether or not to accept or deny your proposal. We will inform you of this decision via email. 

If your proposal is accepted, the following actions will take place:

1. A program committee member will schedule a short call to discuss your proposal and provide feedback. This feedback will include input on the project's funding amount, milestones, timeline, and technical architecture.

2. After the call, you will update your proposal based on the feedback from the program committee member. We can iterate on these changes asynchronously.

3. Once we agree on the final proposal, you will sign an official grant letter.

After you sign an official grant letter, you must adhere to the following:

1. Set up a GitHub repo and ensure it’s open-source and uses the

   Apache 2 license.

2. Start working on your project. We will have a regularly scheduled check-in to stay updated on your progress.

3. With each completed milestone, we will award you a portion of the total funding for your project as defined by the official grant letter and proposal. 

4. You will have a direct line of communication with members of the Aleo team if you have any questions while working on your grant.

5. Once your project is complete, you will receive the final milestone payment and work with our team to integrate your work into the Aleo network.   

As a reminder, only accepted proposals that sign an official grant letter are eligible for funding. You must complete a grant proposal AND submit an official application to be reviewed by our program committee. All applications will be assessed based on our selection criteria outlined in the next section. 

Grant Application Selection Process

Grant applications are accepted based on team quality, project uniqueness, and potential impact on the Aleo ecosystem. This selection process will be conducted via a vote by a program committee comprised of Aleo core team members. Each committee member’s vote will carry equal weight. This committee will also be responsible for assessing the completion of each milestone and approving the associated payouts. 

The following criteria will be used for evaluating grant applications and for voting:  

1. User Experience

   - How seamless is it for contributors to use?

2. Architecture

   - How robust is the technical architecture? How well is it defined?

3. Functionality

   - How many different things can you do as an end user?

4. Impact

   - Does the tooling or infrastructure provide valuable insights for contributors? 

5. Novelty

   - How unique is the tooling or infrastructure? Is it differentiated?

Our program committee will review applications on a rolling basis until we run out of funding. We will focus exclusively on tooling & infrastructure grants for this program until Testnet 3 Phase III Deploy Incentives conclude; then we will open the grants program to individuals and teams who want to deploy programs on the Aleo network. 

If you’re interested in deploying a program right now during Testnet 3 Phase III, please check out the Aleo Deploy Incentives Blog Post for more details.‍

Conclusion

The success of Aleo relies on the innovation and expertise of our community. The Aleo Tooling & Infrastructure Grants Program demonstrates our commitment to fostering growth and rewarding developers who contribute to building a more versatile ecosystem.

If you have an idea for tooling & infrastructure that could benefit the network, this is an excellent opportunity to build it and receive funding. Together, we can create a stronger and more vibrant ecosystem of privacy-focused applications.

Legal Requirements

For information about requirements and eligibility for receiving funding through the Aleo Tooling & Infrastructure Grants Program, please read our Terms of Service.