Grants Program Update, April 2023 — The Six Month Check-In

Grants Program Update, April 2023 — The Six Month Check-In

The Sia Foundation has grant funding available for community contributors! The Grants Program was created to fund research, development, developer tools, and anything else that will support and further our mission of user-owned data while enriching the Sia ecosystem.

Just design a proposal that meets our requirements, submit to our forums, and wait for review by our grants committee. If your grant gets approved, you’re on your way to creating the next great project on the Sia storage network.

Check out our site for more info.

The Current State of Grants

The Grants Program was launched in October 2022, making April the half-year anniversary of a program that has surprised and delighted us both in terms of the quantity and quality of submissions we’ve received.

We’ve reviewed 18 grant proposals to date and have approved 10 of them, with projects including ecosystem research, L2 platforms, news aggregators, media streaming, and more. The grant funds disbursed are allowing community members, individuals, and small teams the opportunity to contribute to Sia in new and exciting ways.

Curated ideas

There’s projects that we don’t have the time or desire to pursue, or haven’t even considered ourselves. The Grants Program is an incredible way for us to use our resources to still support them and materially enhance Sia.

To this end, we’ve created a new category in our forum called Proposal Ideas. As the name implies, you can suggest an idea that you’d like to see someone else put together a grant proposal for — something that will benefit the Sia network and its users. This category also allows voting, so you can help the best ideas rise to the top. We’ve begun adding some of our favorite ideas to this category, so head on over and add yours too. You could give a dev their next big idea.

Progress makes perfect

Our first grant was completed with Alphaday, a news and on-chain data aggregator. The OG grant squad from Q4 of last year is progressing well, with Lume, Fabstir, and Sia Satellite all moving along and in some cases nearing completion.

Messari just released the first of their Sia research reports, and our latest grant approvals are all detailed below!

New reviews

Since the last update, we’ve approved four new grants: TwikkL, Autify Network, SiaFrench, and the S5 network. We’ve also rejected one called SiaFlow. Let’s take a look at each.

TwikkL

Link

What is it?

A decentralized video-sharing platform that utilizes blockchain technology and Sia storage network to provide a censorship-free and transparent environment for users to share and stream videos.

Grant Status

Approved

Updates

The TwikkL team was very patient with us — we first requested an update to their proposal, and then that proposal came in just a little late so we pushed back review a couple times.

Despite the wait, TwikkL was approved after providing clarity on their timeline, abuse handling, risks, and budget justification.

S5

Link

What is it?

A content-addressed storage network designed and built from the ground up to enable new decentralized apps and websites with significant improvements compared to their centralized counterparts.

Grant Status

Approved

Updates

Redsolver has been working on S5 as a community member for a while, so the committee was well-aware of its potential. As a committee member, Redsolver of course recused himself from the approval process as per committee rules.

S5 has a ton of potential, and we’re incredibly excited to see how it develops.

Autify Network

Link

What is it?

A supply chain management platform that wants to store their images/product metadata on Sia/Filebase.

Grant Status

Approved

Updates

After kicking it back for amendments, the Autify team responded with a proposal worthy of approval. The committee was pleased to see their commitment to open-source the project under the AGPL license, a more thoughtful list of risks, and more information regarding budget concerns.

SiaFrench

Link

What is it?

A project to develop an API framework and docs for English and French.

Grant Status

Approved

Updates

The committee requested that the SiaFrench team refine their initial proposal, and drop other aspects like a community management initiative entirely. The committee was pleased to see the team filter the scope of the proposal to just the API work, and is hopeful that this project will help diversify the tools available to the Sia community.

SiaFlow

Link

What is it?

SiaFlow provides a comprehensive platform that delivers various insights and metrics to track the activities and development of the Sia ecosystem and its associated open-source projects.

Grant Status

Rejected

Updates

While the committee appreciated this proposal, they decided to reject it. They cited the number of other places the project had been submitted for grant funds, the likelihood of continued maintenance, and the usefulness to the community.

Coming Next

We encourage the community to provide their feedback and ask questions on the Sia Forum! Community contribution and input is the best way to push proposals and projects to the next level.

You can see the list of all proposals here, and our proposal requirements here. See you next month!

Steve

steve#4381 on Discord

Grants Program Update, April 2023 — The Six Month Check-In was originally published in The Sia Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.