• Crypto: @cryptograntwire

• AI: @aigrantwire

• OSS: @ossgrantwire

Before we hop in, a quick note. I had calls with a few of you this week, and they reminded me that people really do appreciate the wires and the work that goes into them. It gets lonely sometimes trying to keep these moving, and some weeks it can feel like no one is paying attention. For those of you who still are, you are why I am still here. I’m just a grants nerd, after all.

Alright, let’s hop in.

AI

PIBBSS 2026-2027 Winter Fellowship is a 3-month in-person AI safety fellowship in Cape Town (November 2026 to February 2027) connecting ~20 interdisciplinary fellows with AI safety mentors; remote is possible for exceptional candidates. Deadline July 20, 2026.

AI Rapid Response Fellowship (Horizon Institute for Public Service) embeds AI security and policy experts directly into US executive branch offices to strengthen government AI capabilities. Deadline July 22, 2026.

New round of digital minds funding opportunities at Longview is a Longview Philanthropy RFP for grants and fellowships to study the potential consciousness, sentience, moral status, and legal position of AI systems, and how society should respond. Deadline July 24, 2026.

Safe Pareto Improvements (SPI) Fundamentals Program is a new CLR program to advance research on interventions that reduce AI conflict risks by improving negotiation outcomes for all agents involved. Deadline July 24, 2026.

Open Source AI Model for Tutoring (EDU AI) offers up to $8,000,000 for one team to develop an open-source AI tutoring model under the K-12 AI Infrastructure Program. Deadline July 31, 2026.

AI-BOOST and EUCAIM Generative AI Challenge for Healthcare provides €28,500 each to five teams building generative AI on healthcare clinical datasets across a five-month programme, with a shot at a €100,000 final prize. Deadline September 8, 2026.

Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund - Solutions for AI-Native RAN provides funding for developers building AI-native Radio Access Network solutions through the Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund. Deadline September 9, 2026.

NIH PRIMED-AI Frameworks Playbook for Precision Medicine (RFA-RM-27-011) is an NIH Common Fund program soliciting multi-use AI frameworks to advance precision medicine applications. Deadline October 9, 2026.

OpenAI Bio Bug Bounty offers up to $50,000 for researchers who find universal jailbreaks that defeat predefined biosafety challenges against frontier models. Rolling.

UK Dynamism Fund is a new philanthropic fund offering grants up to £50k for builders working to increase UK dynamism and accelerate tech and AI momentum. Rolling.

Apodex Frontier Program offers up to $100,000/month in free compute credits for top research labs and deep-tech AI startups. Rolling.

Also open:

• Pocket FM Generative Media Hackathon: generative media hackathon for builders. July 22, 2026.

• AI-4AI Academic Research Fellowship: six-month program for aspiring African AI researchers preparing for research careers. August 3, 2026.

• ARC Algorithmic Contribution Prize: Phase 1: $10,000; Phase 2: $20,000. August 7, 2026 (Phase 1); September 26, 2026 (Phase 2).

• Sentient Futures Fall 2026 Project Incubator: 10-week incubator for mentees working with mentors on AI safety and nonhuman welfare research. August 9, 2026.

• EARLY STAGE INNOVATIONS (ESI26): award minimum $750,000. August 13, 2026.

• ai@cam’s second AI-deas Sprint Programme 2026: up to £25,000 for cross-disciplinary research teams at Cambridge. September 14, 2026.

• AI Builders Challenge with IBM Bob: $15,000 total prize pool. Last day of each month at 11:59 PM ET.

Crypto

Stacks Endowment Degrant offers $3,000 to $5,000 degrants for Stacks ecosystem contributors. Deadline July 26, 2026.

NSF SBIR/STTR Distributed Ledger Technologies (Blockchain, DAGs, Smart Contracts) offers Phase I grants for commercial applications of distributed ledger technologies including blockchains, DAGs, smart contracts, and cryptography across any industry vertical. Project pitches are accepted on a rolling basis; full proposals due July 27, 2026.

Rocket Pool GMC Round 39 is accepting grant applications for the July 7 to August 7, 2026 period, with a parallel call for bounty applications. Applications must be posted in the designated forum threads. Deadline August 7, 2026.

Supercell Game Developer Grants Program offers $20,000 to $200,000 for game developers. Deadline August 9, 2026.

Devcon 8 India Community Hubs RFP-13 The Ethereum Foundation Devcon team is soliciting proposals from community groups to operate free, topic-specific programming hubs at Devcon 8 in Mumbai (November 3 to 6, 2026). Selected hubs receive dedicated physical space, a main-stage session, and up to 5 tickets. Deadline August 12, 2026.

Interledger Foundation Local Impact Mini-Grants offers $500 to $3,000 for community-led workshops, meetups, hackdays, and research on open payments and digital financial access. Deadline November 11, 2026.

Stellar Community Fund (SCF) offers up to $150,000 in XLM for projects building on Stellar and Soroban, across Build and Grow award tracks. Rolling.

Aptos Movemaker Grant Program is a $2M Phase 1 fund for builders on Aptos working on DeFi, AI, payments, stablecoins, and RWAs in Chinese-speaking markets. Rolling.

MagicBlock Forge is a VIP builder cohort offering 1:1 mentorship, GTM support, ecosystem access, and optional microgrants or credits. Rolling.

Avalanche Team1 Builder Grants offers community-driven grants including Accelerator Grants (up to $30K) and Mini Grants (up to $10K) for builders and projects increasing activity on the Avalanche network. Rolling.

Also open:

• Maelstrom Bitcoin Grant: $50,000 to $150,000 per developer building on Bitcoin. Rolling.

OSS

DataHub Agent Hackathon runs July 6 to August 10 with $20,500 in prizes for projects built on DataHub’s open-source data platform and related agent and context tools. Deadline August 10, 2026.

Jupyter Foundation community funding is a new call for proposals to fund community members improving the Jupyter ecosystem. Deadline September 9, 2026.

Claude for Open Source Program Anthropic is expanding its program that offers qualified open source maintainers and critical infrastructure stewards six months of free access to Claude Max 20x. Rolling.

Sovereign Tech Resilience provides vulnerability management services and a bug and fix bounty platform for open source projects and their maintainers. Rolling.

TestMu AI Grants for Open Source offers a $250,000 fund for open source projects and contributors in the QA and testing space. Rolling.

GrantFox Campaign #2 provides a $60,000 USDC reward pool for open source contributors. Rolling.

Conclusion

That’s it for this double issue! For real-time updates, join the Telegram channels:

• Crypto: @cryptograntwire

• AI: @aigrantwire

• OSS: @ossgrantwire

Hope to see you next time!

Peace,

Sov

• Crypto: @cryptograntwire

• AI: @aigrantwire

• OSS: @ossgrantwire

Alright, let’s hop in.

AI

Coefficient Giving — RFP: Global Health and Wellbeing in an Era of Transformative AI offers $10-30M for projects that ensure transformative AI improves human health and wellbeing, with a focus on the global poor, and grants ranging from under $100k to $1M-$10M. Deadline August 21.

The Singapore AI Safety Fellowship is a 3-month, full-time, residential AI safety research fellowship in Singapore, offering a $5k SGD/month stipend plus up to $30k USD in compute resources, housing, travel, and mentorship from leading researchers. Deadline July 10, 2026.

The Genesis Mission: Transforming Science and Energy with AI (DOE) provides $293.76M to interdisciplinary teams developing novel AI models to accelerate discovery and R&D across nine high-impact challenge areas, and is run by the DOE Office of Science. Deadline December 17, 2026.

The Johns Hopkins AGI Governance Fellowship is a fully funded 3-week in-person program in Washington, DC, for early-career professionals, covering travel, accommodation, and meals. Deadline July 15, 2026.

Google Xoogler AI Startup Incubator is a 12-week incubator selecting 10-20 AI startups from Google’s alumni network, providing $100K+ in direct funding plus $350K in Google Cloud and AI credits. Rolling.

Vals AI Fellowship is a 3-6 month fellowship for building AI evaluation benchmarks, offering a $1k-$2.5k weekly stipend plus unlimited API credits, GPU budgets, and mentorship. Deadline June 30, 2026.

Also open:

• GovAI DC Winter Fellowship 2027: $21,000 for AI governance and policy researchers in a bipartisan DC fellowship. July 12, 2026.

• Sentient Foundation Open Source AGI Grant: $42M committed for open-source AGI development with ecosystem partners, including Alibaba Cloud and Princeton. Rolling.

• Cooperative AI Foundation Multi-Agent Safety Grants: Up to $300K (Tier 1) or $300K-$1M (Tier 2) for multi-agent AI safety researchers. August 8, 2026.

• Frame Fellowship: $10,000 plus housing, food, and mentorship for SF-based AI safety, policy, or societal impact creators. July 10, 2026.

• DoorDash Research Fellowship: $8,500-$16,000/month plus housing stipend for applied ML researchers in a 3-6 month fellowship. January 1, 2026.

• io.net Grant Program: $20M in $IO tokens plus free GPU access for compute-intensive AI projects. Rolling.

• Gray Area / Modal AI Arts Open Call: $2,000 honorarium plus up to $5,000 production support and $20,000 Modal credits for AI artists. July 15, 2026.

• a16z Talent Engineer Fellowship: For builders working on talent engineering and systems for discovering exceptional people in the AI era. July 17, 2026.

• Bolder Futures Fellowship: AI for Social Good: Up to $2,000 stipend for projects using AI for social good. June 30, 2026.

• Hermes Agent Accelerated Business Hackathon (Nous Research / NVIDIA / Stripe): Up to $10,000 cash plus NVIDIA DGX Spark and Stripe credits for teams building AI agents that earn and spend money. June 30, 2026.

• Claude for Startups: For startups building with Claude. Rolling.

• FDE Fellowship by a16z: a16z fellowship for forward deployed engineers. June 26, 2026.

Crypto

Mantle Lightning Grants offers fast-track funding of up to $20K for early-stage builders and MVPs deployed on the Mantle network. Rolling.

COTI Web4 grant program for AI agents offers gas support and recurring COTI token rewards every 14 days for developers building AI agents on its privacy-focused on-chain infrastructure, with no application required. Rolling.

iExec Ecosystem Fund & Grants provides funding for developers building dApps across DeFi, AI, Real World Assets, and more. Rolling.

Superteam Brasil Earn Bounty offers a 3,000 USDG bounty for open-source agentic tooling in legal, compliance, and marketing within the Solana ecosystem. Deadline July 8, 2026.

Hyre Grant Program (Solana-focused) offers $100 in LLM credits to Solana builders and NousResearch hackathon participants, with broader public grants planned. Deadline June 30.

Palladium Labs Genesis Fund provides 10M CC to builders, with applications now open. Rolling.

OSS

NLnet NGI Grants (67 Projects) is funding 67 new open-source projects through its NGI Zero Commons Fund, TALER, and Fediversity initiatives, with varying standard grant amounts. Deadline August 1, 2026.

Patch the Planet: a Daybreak initiative to support open source maintainers provides ChatGPT Pro, conditional Codex Security access, and API credits to selected open-source maintainers, in partnership with Trail of Bits and HackerOne. Rolling.

Coderabbitai / Santosh Yadav OSS Fund is a $1M distribution fund for OSS projects and maintainers, with roughly $700K already contributed. Rolling.

Docker Sponsored Open Source Program provides support for sponsored open-source projects. Rolling.

That’s it for this week!

Peace,

Sov

This issue covers the week ending June 19, 2026. Remember that the Telegram channels receive updates first, so please subscribe!

• Crypto: @cryptograntwire

• AI: @aigrantwire

• OSS: @ossgrantwire

Alright, let’s hop in…

DARPA DICE — Decentralized Artificial Intelligence through Controlled Emergence — is seeking proposals on foundational theory and algorithms for scalable, adaptive, resilient decentralized AI agent collectives that operate autonomously in contested environments, and is open to researchers and developers. Deadline August 25, 2026.

2026 People-First AI Fund offers a $50M fund for US-based community nonprofits working on AI initiatives. Deadline July 15, 2026.

Tarbell Grants provides up to $20K for original reporting on frontier AI companies and accountability. Deadline July 12, 2026.

UK GovAI Winter Fellowship 2027 is a fully funded 3-month London fellowship (Jan to Apr 2027) on AI governance and policy research, offering up to £12,000 plus travel support and visa sponsorship for aspiring AI policy researchers. Deadline July 12, 2026.

MicroAGI Research Fellowship runs a 6-month in-residence fellowship in Munich or Zurich focused on embodied AI and robotics, providing a $10K monthly stipend, up to $2M in compute resources, and lab access for researchers. Rolling.

OpenAI Foundation — People-First AI Fund (2026 wave) is accepting applications for its expanded $100M fund, which provides unrestricted grants to US nonprofits applying AI to priority social impact areas. Deadline June 15, 2026.

Stellar Hacks: Real-World ZK is a single-track hackathon with a $10,000 prize pool for builders making privacy pools, private payments, confidential tokens, identity proofs, or provable computation using ZK on Stellar. Deadline June 29, 2026.

Philippine Blockchain Week APAC Hackathon (Stellar) offers up to $60,000 for builders creating projects on Stellar, with workshops and the event running from June 20 to 21, 2026. Deadline July 15, 2026.

0G Zero Cup is an online knockout competition with a $ 17,000 pool for builders creating AI-native apps, agents, or games on 0G using vibe coding workflows and 0G Studio tooling. Deadline June 23, 2026.

OpenAI OSS Maintainer Support provides a $1M Codex for Open Source fund offering ChatGPT Pro, API credits, and conditional security access, plus direct GitHub Sponsors support for key OSS maintainers in OpenAI’s toolchains. Rolling.

Civic Graph Fellowship - Code for Africa offers 7 part-time, 3-month fellowships with a competitive monthly stipend for builders developing open-source civic data systems, OSINT tools, and structured data platforms ahead of South Africa's elections. Deadline June 28, 2026.

Also open:

• Polaris Fellowship 2026: A stipend for AI builders and researchers. June 28.

• UiPath AgentHack 2026: $50K prize pool for enterprise AI agent builders. June 29.

That’s it for this week! Hope to see you next time!

Peace,

Sov

• Crypto: @cryptograntwire

• AI: @aigrantwire

• OSS: @ossgrantwire

Alright, let’s hop in.

AI

Anthropic’s Claude Corps is an initial $150M commitment to a 12-month paid fellowship embedding early-career AI talent in US nonprofits. Both fellow and host applications close July 17.

The Google DeepMind Multi-Agent AI Safety Fund offers up to $10M for research on emergent risks posed by large populations of interacting AI agents, and is run jointly with Schmidt Sciences, the Cooperative AI Foundation, ARIA, and Google.org. Awards are tiered up to $300K, then $300K–$1M, and it’s open to academic and independent researchers globally. Deadline August 8.

OpenAI’s Economic Research Exchange is an open call for external researchers to conduct empirical studies on AI’s economic impact, with research support and privacy-safe data access provided by OpenAI’s Economic Research team. Deadline July 5.

The NSF AI-Ready America National Coordination Lead seeks a single national organization to coordinate AI-readiness hubs across states and territories with up to $5M/year for five years. Deadline July 21.

The AAIF Goose Grant Program offers up to $100K over 12 months for open-source work on the Goose AI agent, aimed at developers extending what the agent can do. Rolling.

The MEST AI Startup Program 2027 is a fully-funded 12-month program with seed funding for AI founders in West and East Africa, one of the strongest on-ramps for the continent’s early-stage builders. Deadline July 20.

Also open:

• Band of Agents Hackathon: $10K+ for enterprise multi-agent system builders. June 19.

• Cognition × Anthropic × Etched Hackathon: H100 GPUs, Anthropic credits, Cognition API access; $100K pool with a $50K top prize. June 20.

• wAtt-boost Youth Start-Up Program: two €10K prizes for African youth startups in renewables, AI, smart grids, and climate. June 21.

• AI Forge Program: DARPA program on interpretability and adversarial robustness research. June 22.

• Google for Startups North America: 10-week AI-for-Energy accelerator, no equity taken. June 30.

• 2026 TDAI AI & Data Science Graduate Fellows: 50% salary/tuition support for current OSU PhD students. July 1.

• CyberNext — Cybersecurity & AI Readiness: $5K–$14K for work in Albania. July 5.

• mHUB Chicago Compute-Energy Nexus: $200K for 6.5% equity, AI and energy hardware startups. July 13.

• AIRR / AI Open Access compute: GPU-hour grants for AI-for-science projects. July 17.

• AI4D Inclusive AI Innovations in Africa: up to KES 5M for inclusive AI work. July 17.

• Slack Agent Builder Challenge: $42K prize pool for AI-powered Slack agents, plus Dreamforce 2026 opportunities. July 13.

• Foresight Fellowship: frontier-tech and AI work. Rolling (2027 cohort).

• G-Research Grants: up to £2K for trustworthy AI and ML research. Rolling.

Crypto

Stellar’s Marketing Grants provide up to $500K in funding for user acquisition and growth campaigns for teams building on Stellar. Rolling.

Taiko’s grant program is a $25M rolling pool for developers, researchers, and community builders across its ecosystem.

The Maelstrom Bitcoin Grant Program runs $50K–$150K per developer for open-source Bitcoin work; its fourth grantee is now funding Silent Payments (BIP 352) privacy. Ongoing, no deadline.

Arbitrum Founder House London is accepting applications for its July 10–12 founder accelerator for teams building on Arbitrum. Apply by June 25.

The Interledger Open Payments Accelerator is a 4-month program that provides $50K in funding plus mentorship to early-stage teams serving underserved populations on Open Payments. Deadline June 30.

Stacks Endowment Q2 Grants support builders creating Bitcoin-native financial applications. Deadline June 26.

Also open:

• Solana Foundation Perps & Derivatives Grants: milestone-based, for fully on-chain perps and derivatives teams. Rolling.

• Reactive Developer Fund: $3K–$10K from a $3M fund for EVM-compatible app developers. Rolling.

• Arbitrum Open House London: prizes and grants for Arbitrum builder teams.

• Bitget Vibe Trading Hackathon S1: for trading-app builders.

• KUB Grants Program: ecosystem grants for builders.

• CL Web3 Grants #32: ongoing community grants round.

OSS

A quieter week on the open-source wire, but we did find three worth a longer look:

The Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund launched to give the people who keep Rust’s most critical crates healthy something open source rarely offers them: stable, long-term funding instead of one-off bounties.

AWS Cloud Credits for Open Source offers cloud credits to open-source projects and the maintainers behind them, defraying the build, test, and hosting costs that quietly grow as a project gains users.

Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund continues its rolling open call to invest in foundational open digital infrastructure, libraries, tooling, and protocols.

Conclusion

That’s it for this week! For real-time updates, join the Telegram channels:

• Crypto: @cryptograntwire

• AI: @aigrantwire

• OSS: @ossgrantwire

Hope to see you next time!

Peace,

Sov

• Crypto Grant Wire

• AI Grant Wire

• OSS Grant Wire

Alright, let’s hop in.

AI Grant Wire: Highlights

OpenAI Foundation’s AI Resilience program is the biggest funder move in this issue. On June 1, OpenAI’s nonprofit parent named AI resilience its next major program and said it is finalizing more than $130 million in grants to organizations, with grantees to be named soon. That is the opening tranche of a much larger plan: more than $1 billion across the Foundation’s programs over the next year, and $25 billion into AI resilience and life sciences in the years ahead. The money targets four areas: bio-resilience (pathogen-agnostic biosecurity across prevention, detection, and defense), cyber-resilience (securing under-resourced public-interest actors that cannot buy AI-ready defenses), AI model safety (independent evaluation and alignment science beyond the labs), and AI’s impact on young people (independent research into learning, development, and human connection). These are direct grants that the Foundation will announce, so track it as a funder movement rather than an open call. If you work in biosecurity, cyberdefense for public-interest organizations, independent model evaluation, or youth and AI research, this is the funder to watch, and a good moment to be visible to the groups likely to be named before the list is set.

NSF SBIR/STTR Phase I funds across nearly all technology areas, AI work included, with up to $305,000 in non-dilutive Phase I funding for an eligible U.S. small business, and NSF takes no equity. Entry runs through a Project Pitch, and you need an invitation to submit a full proposal. The pitch window is open now, and full proposals are due July 27, 2026.

The Thinking Machines Lab Interactivity Research Grants offer multiple $100,000 awards, plus $25,000 in Tinker credits, for research on interactivity in human-AI collaboration. Proposals are due June 19, 2026. Good fit if your work is about how people steer, inspect, and collaborate with AI systems past raw model performance. Institutional applicants should note that indirect costs are capped at 10 percent of the cash grant.

NIJ Research and Evaluation of Artificial Intelligence for Criminal Justice Purposes has the nearest deadline of the public-sector AI items. It is a two-stage process, and the concept paper is due June 15, 2026. Eligibility is broad, including state, local, and tribal governments, nonprofits, companies, and higher-ed institutions.

Pulitzer Center AI Accountability Fellowships fund journalism rather than technical AI work, and they still belong on the AI radar. The 10-month fellowship offers up to $25,000, split as up to $20,000 for reporting and $5,000 for engagement, and runs September 2026 through July 2027. Applications close July 12, 2026. It fits reporters on any beat who want to dig into how governments and companies use AI in policing, hiring, welfare, and medicine.

Longview Philanthropy Digital Minds RFP funds research and applied work on the potential consciousness, sentience, and moral status of AI systems. Applied-work grants range from $50,000 to $2,000,000, and research fellowships range from $55,000 to $150,000 per year for 1 to 2 years, with computing and travel support. The application deadline is July 10, 2026. Good fit if you work on digital minds, model welfare, or the link between those questions and AI catastrophic risk.

Anthropic Fellows Program is a paid four-month AI safety research fellowship for people who can reside and work in the US, UK, or Canada, with no visa sponsorship and no PhD required. It pays a weekly stipend plus a computer budget, with mentorship from Anthropic researchers. The named May and July 2026 cohorts have closed, and Anthropic reviews applications on a rolling basis for future cohorts, so confirm the current cohort and deadline on the page. It reads more like a research residency than a grant form.

FIND EVIL! AI Cybersecurity Hackathon has a short clock. The SANS-hosted event lists $22,000 plus in prizes and a June 15, 2026, submission deadline, and tasks teams with building autonomous AI agents that triage and respond to threats at machine speed. Click it if you are building AI-driven security tooling and can ship inside a hackathon window. Skip it if you need grant capital with follow-on support.

EU Horizon AI Funding Calls were identified as a major AI funding signal. The social post that surfaced cited 1.8 billion euros and a June 30 deadline, and I could not confirm either figure against official EU sources. Horizon Europe AI is substantial, so if this fits your work, go straight to the official EU Funding and Tenders portal and verify the specific call and deadline before you budget time.

OSS Grant Wire: Highlights

NLnet Foundation Open Call funds FOSS, hardware, open data, and open standards, with grants from 5,000 to 50,000 euros and the option to scale up where there is proven potential. The current open call runs to August 1, 2026, and the NGI TALER and NGI Fediversity pilot calls are open under the same deadline. Anyone can apply, from individuals to companies, as long as the work ships under a recognized open-source license.

UnitaryHACK 2026 pays cash bounties for contributions to open-source quantum software. The sixth annual event, which runs from June 3 to 17, 2026, is organized by the Unitary Foundation and is open to developers worldwide. The deadline is June 17, 2026. Good click if you can contribute to quantum software repos quickly and want a bounty-shaped lane rather than a grant proposal. Register first so your contributions are eligible to claim.

OpenAI Codex for Open Source is maintainer support rather than cash. The program offers six months of ChatGPT Pro with Codex, worth roughly $1,200, plus possible API credits and conditional Codex Security access for qualified repos. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. It works for core maintainers of widely used public projects who can put coding-agent credits to work on review, triage, and release flows.

The Drupal Association and the Acquia Fair Trade Initiative are funded from Acquia’s own margin, so partner revenue is untouched. The money supports Drupal.org infrastructure, events, community programs, and the Security Team. This works through Acquia’s partner revenue rather than an open application form, so read it as a model for how commercial vendors can fund the projects they depend on.

IBM and Red Hat Open Source Security Initiative gives the week its largest strategic signal. The two committed $5 billion to “Project Lightwell,” an AI-powered clearinghouse that vets and verifies open source patches, backed by a large engineering force. It is set to launch as a commercial subscription, not a grant round, so treat it as a buyer-side commitment to open-source security rather than something you apply for today.

Crypto Grant Wire: Highlights

Ethereum Foundation Neutral DeFi Risk Intelligence Aggregator RFP is the crypto item I would click first. The RFP asks for an open-source web app that aggregates DeFi risk ratings from every major feed into a single neutral view, showing ratings verbatim with no composite scoring of its own, covering the top 20 Ethereum protocols by TVL at launch, and handing it to a named long-term steward. It opened on May 26, closes on June 15, 2026, and runs for roughly 20 weeks on milestone payments.

BNB Hack: AI Trading Agent Edition is a live hackathon from BNB Chain, CoinMarketCap, and Trust Wallet, with a $36,000 prize pool plus API credits, mentorship, and ecosystem support. It runs from June 3 to 21, 2026, with submissions locking on June 21 at 12:00 UTC across two tracks: autonomous trading agents and strategy skills. It fits teams already working on trading logic, wallet flows, market data, or agent execution better than broad app builders do.

Stellar x CV Labs Accelerator is the most direct accelerator-style crypto funding item. Early-stage startups building DeFi, payments, or real-world asset products on Stellar can receive up to $150,000 in XLM as initial funding, inside a 12-week EMEA program that begins in August 2026. Applications close July 3, 2026, and the program backs around ten teams. Click it if you are already pointed at Stellar or can make the EMEA accelerator wrapper work for you.

Zcash Grants Hub maps the live Zcash funding lanes in one place, spanning Zcash Community Grants, coinholder-directed retroactive grants, and ZecHub DAO funding. It is a community-built navigation surface rather than a single application, and amounts and deadlines vary by lane. Click it if you are building privacy infrastructure or community tooling and need to see which Zcash route fits before you apply.

GG24 Public Goods Tooling Development Round distributed $123,800 to 13 projects building the meta-layer that Ethereum public goods depend on, split across proactive conviction-voting pools and a retroactive impact pool. The useful part is the model, a hybrid of proactive and retroactive allocation with impact scored after delivery. Track it if you build public goods tooling and care about where funding design is headed.

Dates Worth Catching

• June 15, 2026: FIND EVIL! AI Cybersecurity Hackathon submissions close.

• June 15, 2026: NIJ AI for Criminal Justice concept papers due at 11:59 PM Eastern.

• June 15, 2026: Ethereum Foundation Neutral DeFi Risk Intelligence Aggregator RFP proposals due.

• June 17, 2026: UnitaryHACK 2026 closes.

• June 19, 2026: Thinking Machines Lab Interactivity Research Grants applications due at 11:59 PM PDT.

• June 21, 2026: BNB Hack: AI Trading Agent Edition submissions lock at 12:00 UTC.

• July 1, 2026: TDAI AI and Data Science Graduate Fellows Program applications due.

• July 3, 2026: Stellar x CV Labs Accelerator applications close.

• July 10, 2026: Longview Philanthropy Digital Minds RFP applications due.

• July 12, 2026: Pulitzer Center AI Accountability Fellowships close.

• July 27, 2026: NSF SBIR/STTR Phase I full proposals due.

• August 1, 2026: NLnet Foundation Open Call applications due at 12:00 noon CEST.

Confirm before you plan:

• EU Horizon AI calls: the 1.8 billion-euro figure and the June 30 date in the social post could not be confirmed. Verify the specific call and deadline on the official EU Funding and Tenders portal.

• Anthropic Fellows: the May and July 2026 cohorts have closed. Confirm the next cohort and its deadline on the application page.

Follow Sov’s Grant Wires

Telegram gets the updates first, so please subscribe!

• Crypto Grant Wire tracks protocol grants, ecosystem funding, public goods programs, builder calls, and related crypto funding opportunities.

• AI Grant Wire tracks AI research grants, compute and infrastructure support, applied AI funding, and funder movement around AI systems.

• OSS Grant Wire tracks open-source grants, maintainer funding, digital infrastructure support, security funding, and public-interest technology programs.

Hope to see you next time!

Peace,

Sov

I think I’m at a point now where I am going to try and start sending these newsletters again more regularly (famous last words). If you came for the crypto grants, I hope you’ll continue to follow my work and share it with others who might be interested.

Alright, let’s kick it off. This issue covers the week ending May 29, 2026.

Note: I do use AI (a mix of Claude, Codex, and a Hermes Agent) to find, summarize, and present this info, and help me draft the newsletters. I’ll do my best to keep it concise with minimal sloppage, but if that’s off-putting, you can go ahead and unfollow now.

AI Grant Wire: Highlights

ARIA’s Safeguarded AI cybersecurity call is the biggest AI funding page in this issue. The call allocates 20 million pounds, part of the wider 59 million pound Safeguarded AI program, to teams building production-grade, security-critical software backed by machine-checked proofs. Proposals are due July 1 at 14:00 BST. Good fit if you can ship verification, formal methods, red teaming, or security systems work.

Thinking Machines Lab’s Interactivity Research Grants are cleaner than most lab grant posts. The program offers multiple $100,000 awards plus $25,000 in Tinker credits for research on how people work with AI systems in real time. Apply by June 19. Good fit if your work centers on human-AI collaboration, research tooling, interaction design, or model behavior.

Canada and CIFAR’s latest AI Chairs announcement ties 42 new and renewed Canada CIFAR AI Chairs to a $24 million investment. There is no application link here, but if you track where research capacity is being built, it is one of the clearer maps available right now.

Biswas Family Foundation Fast Grants fund AI and health work in $25,000, $50,000, and $100,000 tiers, with up to $3 million awarded annually. The Cycle 1 deadline is June 15 at 11:59 PM Pacific, and applications carry over to the next cycle rather than closing hard. A good fit if you need compute, datasets, token credits, or a small budget to test an AI health idea at an academic institution.

TechAccess: AI-Ready America serves institutions, not individuals. NSF expects up to 56 State and Territory Coordination Hub awards at $1 million per year for three years, with a possible fourth year. Round 1 letters of intent are due June 16, and full proposals are due July 16. For organizations with statewide coordination capacity, not solo builders.

MATS Autumn 2026 stays on the board as an AI safety fellowship, open until June 7. It funds work on alignment, governance, security, field building, and empirical safety, with a funded extension that includes a stipend and compute.

The Google Data Center Community AI Fellowship is a fully funded Watson Institute program for community leaders who use AI in Google data center communities. The priority deadline is July 12, and it runs from September 1, 2026, through January 14, 2027. I would send this to local entrepreneurs and community operators before academic AI researchers.

Vals Fellowship is worth noting if you care about evals. Vals funds fellows for three to six months to build a benchmark or evaluation technique, with unlimited API credits, GPU access, a human data budget, and a $1,000 to $2,500 per week stipend. Admission reads as rolling, and the public application page is a bit hard to decipher.

Foresight’s Norm Hardy Prize is a $10,000 award for usable security work, with a July 31 deadline. It is narrow, but it fits a week where so much AI safety funding is really about systems people can use without fooling themselves.

OSS Grant Wire: Highlights

The eBPF Foundation’s 2026 Academic Research Grant Program offers up to $50,000 to faculty at universities and research institutes working on eBPF. Applications open June 15 and close July 15. It is for kernel-level systems research: verification, verifier limits, deployment, observability, security, scheduling, and performance.

Claude for Open Source is a tooling subsidy rather than a grant, and it still earns a place here. It gives active open source maintainers and contributors six months of free Claude Max 20x, reviewed on a rolling basis. If you maintain a public repo with real usage and are buried in issue triage, code review, or security cleanup, that is support you can put to work, even though it does not pay the rent.

NLnet Restack is one of the better open internet surfaces to keep nearby. The first call opens on June 1 and closes on August 1 at 12:00 CEST, with individual proposals ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 euros from a 7 million-euro fund. Scope is the healthy, open internet stack: free and open-source software and hardware, open standards, open data and AI, open science, Creative Commons, and open educational resources. If your project sits in that commons layer, it is a click now.

Convex for Open Source offers support rather than cash. Accepted projects receive Convex Pro, community access, and direct help from the Convex team, with reviews on a rolling basis. To qualify, a project should be actively maintained, fully open source, and built with Convex or planning to integrate it. It is narrow and useful for maintainers already near the Convex ecosystem.

NSF’s SBIR/STTR relaunch is the startup lane in this issue. NSF is deploying $250 million to restart the program, with a new $40 million pilot for next-generation scientific instrumentation. Entry is through a project pitch rather than a single deadline. If you track AI and open source sustainability through the startup funding lens, it is one of the larger public capital moves this week.

Crypto Grant Wire: Highlights

Filecoin ProPGF Batch 3 is a $2 million milestone-based round for core infrastructure maintenance and RFP work tied to Filecoin pods. Applications opened May 26 and close June 16, with an early bird cutoff of June 9 for faster feedback. Good fit if you maintain core network infrastructure or can answer a specific Filecoin RFP.

GOAT AI Builder Grants offers a $500 base grant to get from idea to working product, plus a $1 million Singularity Investment pool for high-traction applications. It is aimed at agent-native apps that drive real usage and transactions on the GOAT Network, so it fits builders with an early product better than someone hunting for a general bounty. The $1 million is a pool, not a per-team amount.

Starknet Growth Grants are for later-stage teams. Starknet offers up to $1 million in non-dilutive funding for projects that already have a live, reliable product and significant usage. If you are at the idea stage, the separate Seed Grants track is the better door.

Zealynx Audit Grants subsidize security work rather than hand out cash. The tiers cover 100 percent, 50 percent, or 25 percent of a scoped audit, with typical audit credit limits of $32,000, $16,000, and $8,000. Any Web3 protocol with written contracts can apply, pre-launch or live, as long as one team member has a public identity. The feed lists a July 6 deadline, but the page shows none; confirm it in the application flow.

OpenSats’ seventeenth wave of Nostr grants funded five open-source Nostr projects, spanning app discovery, encrypted calls, software distribution, client onboarding, and AI tools tied to Nostr discovery and bitcoin-native payments. There is no deadline attached, since it is an awards announcement, but it shows where Bitcoin-adjacent public-goods money is going.

Zcash Q2 Coinholder Directed Retroactive Grants is a governance item, not an open call. ZEC holders are reviewing nine completed public goods submissions during a 30-day window that closes June 17 at 20:00 UTC, followed by a coinholder poll. Useful if you track retroactive funding design, less useful if you need a place to apply this week.

Sui Overflow 2026 gets a cautious mention. It is Sui’s flagship virtual hackathon, with tracks around the Agentic Web, DeFi and payments, Walrus, and DeepBook, and prior editions drew more than 5,000 registrants and over $1 million in prizes. Registration is open, and the current edition runs from May to August 2026, but the public page still carries stale 2025 timeline fragments, so confirm any specific date before planning.

Dates Worth Catching

• June 1: NLnet Restack first call opens.

• June 7: MATS Autumn 2026 application deadline.

• June 9: Filecoin ProPGF Batch 3 early bird cutoff.

• June 15: Biswas Family Foundation Fast Grants Cycle 1 deadline at 11:59 PM Pacific.

• June 15: eBPF Foundation 2026 Academic Research Grant Program opens applications.

• June 16: Filecoin ProPGF Batch 3 closes applications.

• June 16: TechAccess: AI-Ready America Round 1 letters of intent due.

• June 17: Zcash Q2 Retroactive Grants review period closes.

• June 19: Thinking Machines Lab Interactivity Research Grants applications due.

• July 1: ARIA Safeguarded AI cybersecurity call proposals due at 14:00 BST.

• July 12: Google Data Center Community AI Fellowship priority deadline.

• July 15: eBPF Foundation 2026 Academic Research Grant Program closes applications.

• July 16: TechAccess: AI-Ready America Round 1 full proposals due.

• July 31: Foresight Norm Hardy Prize deadline.

• August 1: NLnet Restack first call deadline at 12:00 CEST.

Follow Sov’s Grant Wires

Telegram gets the updates first, so please subscribe!

• Crypto Grant Wire tracks protocol grants, ecosystem funding, public goods programs, builder calls, and related crypto funding opportunities.

• AI Grant Wire tracks AI research grants, compute and infrastructure support, applied AI funding, and funder movement around AI systems.

• OSS Grant Wire tracks open-source grants, maintainer funding, digital infrastructure support, security funding, and public-interest technology programs.

Hope to see you next time!

Peace,

Sov

Solana dominated the funding headlines this week with three separate grant programs launching across SafePal, MagicBlock, and Superteam Earn. Web3 Foundation activated a major 10 million DOT bounty program for Kusama across three experimental tracks, Sui rolled out a selective $500K per team DeFi builder initiative, Pharos Network opened a $10M incubator for RealFi projects, and the Ethereum Foundation opened its 2026 PhD Fellowship with an April 1 deadline.

Full archive at crypto-grant-wire-site-v1-production.up.railway.app. Real time updates on Telegram.

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Canton Foundation approved CIP-0100, formalizing governance for the 5% Development Fund established under CIP-0082 on the Canton Network. The fund allocates grants for core protocol R&D, developer tooling, security audits, and ecosystem infrastructure, with recipients minting CC tokens directly after milestone verification. Quarterly public reports covering receipts, balances, commitments, and disbursements will be published, along with an annual independent audit.

Grant Program Results

Intuition released its January 2026 update, confirming all Grants Cohort 1 projects completed their first funding round. The update also covers the launch of a flagship app, four Portal releases, AI assisted identity creation, and the formation of community and developer guilds to support ecosystem growth.

Colosseum shared progress on its Crypto AI Agent Hackathon, reporting 1,433 agents across 532 active teams, with 531 projects in development and 201 fully submitted. The hackathon has attracted 4,360 human voters as teams build AI agents for crypto applications.

Avalanche announced the latest cohort of the Helika Gaming x Avalanche Game Accelerator, selecting five gaming studios competing for a $125,000 prize pool at Demo Day. The accelerator supports studios building Web3 gaming projects on Avalanche through mentorship, resources, and funding.

Funding Opportunities

Sui Network launched the DeFi Moonshots Program, an ultra selective initiative supporting teams building category defining onchain finance projects on Sui. Selected teams receive up to $500,000 in incentives plus technical and launch support.

SafePal announced a $3M Builder Grant in partnership with Solana to fund developers building on the Solana network. The program was unveiled on February 11, 2026, alongside a limited edition Solana branded hardware wallet. Applications are open via the linked form, with no specific deadline mentioned.

Web3 Foundation launched three Kusama Vision Bounties focused on Proof of Personhood, Zero Knowledge Proofs, and Art & Social Experiments, funded through a 10 million DOT allocation approved via Referendum 498. Eligible proposals include ZK rollups, privacy preserving applications, sybil resistant identity systems, generative art, and experimental DAOs. The 24 month program accepts proposals now through dedicated portals at kusama.network/vision.

Stacks Endowment launched its Ecosystem Grants Program, offering up to $50,000 in STX per project to builders, developers, and operators contributing to Stacks network growth and a Bitcoin economy. Funded through SIP-031, applications are open with no specific deadline listed.

Pharos Network opened applications for its Builder Incubator, allocating $10M in funding to support projects building onchain RealFi solutions. Selected builders receive technical mentorship, go to market guidance, and investor access through the program, which targets developers creating real world financial applications on the Pharos ecosystem.

MagicBlock announced its Ecosystem Fund, committing 100% of presale proceeds to invest in Solana teams building real time and private applications. The fund positions MagicBlock to back the next generation of Solana developers through direct investments, with the team describing itself as well funded for years of continued support. No specific application deadlines or eligibility details were provided.

Superteam Earn launched a Solana grants program offering up to $10,000 per project to builders developing ideas into platforms on the Solana network. The initiative provides non dilutive funding targeting creators with promising concepts ready for execution. Applications are open now with no specified deadline.

Celo Developers launched a challenge to build agentic apps with real world utility on the Celo network, offering $5,000 in prizes. The 10 day event runs February 6 to February 15, 2026, targeting apps that leverage Celo’s low cost, stablecoin native, and mobile first features.

Ethereum Foundation opened applications for its 2026 PhD Fellowship Program, targeting research in AI powered protocol security, automated mechanism design, and agent verification and delegation. Three fellowship positions are available, with applications due April 1, 2026 at esp.ethereum.foundation.

OwockiBot launched a live quadratic funding round where small contributions are amplified through quadratic matching. Participants can contribute to public goods projects via qf.owockibot.xyz.

Conflux Grants unveiled its funding program targeting Real World Assets, PayFi and Remittances, and Infrastructure to drive crypto adoption. Applications are accepted via forum.conflux.fun, though no specific funding amounts or deadlines were disclosed.

Rootstock Collective hosted a Grants & Funding AMA on February 10, 2026, covering the grant application process, funding criteria, and common application mistakes for Rootstock builders. Participants received stRIF rewards, and builders can review the session for guidance on aligning applications with Rootstock’s funding priorities.

Research & Strategic Analysis

Heen AI published a guide detailing 18 capital allocation mechanisms for AI agents, all deployed on Base and paying out in USDC. The mechanisms cover bounties, quadratic funding, commitment pools, prediction markets, impact certificates, and others, offering programmable onchain funding alternatives to traditional grant processes. Builders can deploy these via Moltbook templates at moltbook.com.

For real-time updates on crypto grant and funding developments, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Prezenti submitted a draft proposal requesting $276,400 in cUSD from the Celo Community Treasury to fund Season 2 of its direct grants program, a 41% reduction from its Season 1 ask. Combined with $70,000 in unspent Season 1 funds, Season 2 provides $290,000 in grant capacity across a $70,000 invite only Boost pool and a $220,000 Anchor pool open to applications. Anchor applications open February 2026 and close June 2026.

TheDAO activated over 75,000 ETH (~$300M) through its revived Security Fund to support Ethereum network security. The initiative deploys funds into restaked ETH positions via EigenLayer, prioritizing security focused AVSs.

Grant Program Results

Protocol Guild reported distributing $4.2M in total funding to 66 recipients over the past year through its 1% token pledge norm for Ethereum L1 R&D contributors. This marks 100% year over year growth from $2.1M distributed the prior year, with 29 new projects pledging and cumulative pledges reaching 35 projects and over 560M tokens.

Intuition released its January 2026 update, confirming all Grants Cohort 1 projects completed their first funding round. The update covers the launch of a flagship app, four Portal releases, and the formation of community and developer guilds.

Funding Opportunities

Pharos Network opened applications for its Builder Incubator program, allocating $10M in funding to support projects building onchain RealFi solutions. Selected builders receive technical mentorship, go to market guidance, and investor access.

Digital Chamber announced the February 6 deadline for its State Network Microgrant Program, offering $2,000 grants plus tickets to the Chamber Summit for eligible state or regional crypto associations, university clubs, and nonprofits. The program supports grassroots efforts to advance crypto policy and adoption at local levels.

Base announced a 5 ETH prize pool for developers building autonomous OpenClaw agents that transact on its network, focusing on onchain apps, token deployments, or community engagement. Submissions require a live agent interacting on X or Farcaster with a link posted in the announcement’s comments.

Electroneum launched its 2.0 Grants Program to fund established teams migrating or expanding live dApps to the ETN Network. The program targets projects with proven traction, with applications open now and no specific deadline listed.

Tria Foundation announced a $10M grants program to fund technical R&D, public goods, developer tooling, and ecosystem projects supporting self custodial crypto infrastructure. Funding ranges from $50K to $250K for smaller grants, with up to $2M per large scale project, and applications are open with rolling reviews.

Tools & Infrastructure

Karma shipped a major platform update in January, headlined by an integrated payout disbursement system that lets program managers configure payouts per milestone and create Safe transactions directly from the platform. Other additions include AI prompt management for application evaluation, ecosystem level impact metrics for Filecoin, and application form gating with access codes for invite only programs.

For more, visit the Crypto Grant Wire. For real-time updates, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

This week features new funding commitments, headlined by Solayer’s ecosystem fund, Stellar’s major overhaul of its community funding program, and the Ethereum Foundation’s Q4 2025 allocation report showing over $7M distributed to protocol development.

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Optimism published its Season 8 Grants Council impact analysis, reporting $1.70 ROI per OP token delivered and $3.0M in attributable TVL uplift from 1.8M OP distributed across 12 projects. Top performers included Truemarkets, Morpho, and Hydrex, while Tydro accumulated $494M TVL on Ink despite not yet receiving its approved allocation.

Aragon introduced policy plugins to automate recurring treasury operations like budgets, buybacks, and token burns. The approach reserves governance votes for strategic decisions while allowing predefined rules to execute permissionlessly.

Zcash Foundation published its 2025 year in review, highlighting the launch of the Shielded Aid Initiative, adoption of a new Community & Coinholder funding model, and appointment of Alex Bornstein as Executive Director. The SEC closed its investigation into the foundation in January 2026 with no enforcement action.

Grant Program Results

Ethereum Foundation ESP released its Q4 2025 allocation report, distributing over $7 million via proactive grants and direct allocations. Recipients include Axiom, Certora, Gitcoin, Nethermind, WalletConnect, and other projects working on Ethereum ecosystem development.

Filecoin announced the selection committee for ProPGF Batch 2, which is reviewing over 100 proposals for milestone-based funding. Decisions will be finalized by late January 2026, with the program managed through Karma’s grant platform featuring AI-assisted applications and onchain attestations.

Edge City held a showcase for Shift Grants Round 002, presenting projects focused on defensive acceleration backed by Vitalik Buterin. Funded projects include Infinite Zero, MultiSpec Bio, Symmetry Institute, Resonant Health, and Saeed Ahmad.

Funding Opportunities

Solayer announced a $35M ecosystem fund targeting applications built on infiniSVM, which delivers 330K+ TPS and approximately 400ms finality. The fund prioritizes DeFi, payments, consumer apps, and AI-driven systems with clear revenue fundamentals.

Stellar launched SCF 7.0 with three funding tracks: Integration for projects using existing building blocks, Open for novel protocols, and RFP for specific ecosystem needs. The program offers milestone-based funding with follow-on awards up to $300K, and the SCF #41 submission deadline is February 1, 2026.

Avalanche launched Build Games, a builder competition with a $1M total prize pool plus $30K in referral prizes. The competition is open to projects at all stages with support including mentoring, workshops, and post-competition resources.

ChainGPT opened applications for Builder’s Program Season 3, supporting projects integrating ChainGPT AI tools. Past participants include Carbon Browser.

Bloockberg Ecosystem Fund is accepting applications for non-dilutive grants up to $100K for protocols, applications, tools, content, and services. Reviews occur on a rolling basis.

CertiK and YZi Labs launched a $1M audit grant program providing audit support to teams building in crypto. The program targets serious projects across Web3, AI, and biotech.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss donated $1.2M (3,221 ZEC) to Shielded Labs for Zcash protocol development. The funds support work on the Network Sustainability Mechanism and Dynamic Fees.

Research & Strategic Analysis

Protocol Guild shared insights on Ethereum core developer funding, noting that over 180 developers are supported by the program. Many are driven by values alignment and challenging work, with the organization aiming to provide adequate compensation for contributions.

Cornaro Labs released an analysis of EU blockchain funding, examining nearly €600M committed through EU grant programs. The report includes a data-driven analytics dashboard at analytics.web3grants.co/eu-blockchain-grants.

Tools & Infrastructure

Karma now powers Filecoin’s ProPGF program alongside existing deployments for Optimism, Celo, and Scroll. The platform provides AI-assisted applications, GitHub and Dune integration, milestone tracking, and portable reputation across ecosystems through onchain attestations.

For more, visit the Crypto Grant Wire. For real-time updates, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

dYdX Grants Program released its December 2025 community update, reporting $3 million in USDC and 5.8 million DYDX held as of January 7, 2026. The program has reduced monthly grant expenditures by approximately $220,000, delivering an estimated $3.7 million in annual savings compared to the previous iteration.

Grant Program Results

The Filecoin network’s third RetroPGF round has concluded, distributing over 500,000 FIL across 91 ecosystem projects. The round received 120 applications and awarded funding in recognition of past contributions to the network.

Ethereum Everywhere announced the winners of the Local Meetups LATAM Round, a collaboration with Localism Fund and Gitcoin. Grants went to ten community led Ethereum meetup groups across Latin America including La Movida Regia, ETHFloripa, and Ethereum Cartagena.

Avalanche Foundation completed the project snapshot for the Retro9000 L1 and Infrastructure Tooling Round. Projects are reviewed for funding from a $40 million reward pool based on mainnet metrics, technical quality, and community votes, with the next snapshot scheduled for July 14, 2026.

Edge City presented the Round 002 cohort of Shift Grants in collaboration with nodes_0 and backed by Vitalik Buterin. Grants went to five projects focused on defensive and decentralized innovations including Infinite Zero, MultiSpec Bio, and Resonant Health.

Funding Opportunities

Pump Fund launched a $3 million Build in Public Hackathon to support early stage projects on pump.fun. Twelve projects will receive $250,000 each at a $10 million valuation, with applications due February 18, 2026.

Avalanche launched Build Games, a $1 million builder competition for projects at any stage built on Avalanche. A separate $30,000 prize pool exists for referrals of winning projects.

Gitcoin’s GG24 Dev Tooling and Web3 Infra Round approved $350,000 for allocation via deep funding. This is part of $550,000 total allocated to the category, with the remaining $200,000 distributed through quadratic funding.

ChainGPT opened applications for Season 3 of its Builder’s Program, which funds projects that integrate ChainGPT AI tools. Past recipients include Carbon Browser’s integration of the API and SDK.

Hemi announced a forthcoming grant program that will provide a more formal structure for funding. The program will focus on hVM applications, DeFi infrastructure, and primitive deployments.

The DoubleZero Grants Program launched to support ecosystem builders with high impact, targeted projects. The program will provide grants in 2Z tokens from the DoubleZero Token Treasury, with an initial focus on three open RFPs.

Tools & Infrastructure

Grantee.me released updates to its grant intelligence platform, helping builders match and apply for Web3 grants based on GitHub analysis. Hackathon hosts can use the platform to identify code and solutions across niches.

For real-time updates on crypto grant and funding developments, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

I ended that piece teasing updates to my Crypto Grant Wire with a: “(if I can get it working).”

I got it working.

Not just that one but a few projects shipped since June, and maybe a couple dozen things I hacked together, hated or didn’t work, and scrapped. But I learned from all of them and am now quickly iterating on new ideas and builds using Claude Code and Ralph Wiggum (more on this in a future post maybe?)

This is the story of moving from almost to actually, and what it took to get there.

Quick Recap

For those who didn’t read the original (or forgot, which is fine), here’s the short version: I’m an operator who always regretted not learning to code. When AI tools got good enough that I could finally attempt building things, I went all in on a project called the AI Parliament. It was supposed to be a system of specialized agents that could scan governance forums, analyze proposals, and present insights.

I did get it “working” eventually, but found there’s so much more to develop before I’d release anything. I have some ideas on adapting the concept to another use case I care about. Maybe I’ll share that here someday when it’s ready.

But that project taught me something: you can’t just throw prompts and hope for magic. You need architecture. You need a plan. You need to act like a product owner.

I took that lesson and started smaller.

Sov’s GG24 Summarizer

Back when I was still at Gitcoin, we were in the middle of GG24 sensemaking on incoming proposals. This was summer 2025, right around when Claude Sonnet 4 had just dropped. There were a lot of proposals to review, and I thought: what if I built something where anyone could look at the proposals and get AI analysis?

This was before I started using Claude Code. Just me, Claude in a browser, and a lot of copying and pasting between the chat and a couple of IDEs.

What I built: A two-panel site - Sov’s GG24 Summarizer. One side shows the proposal, the other lets you run it through Claude or ChatGPT for summarization and analysis. Looking back, it’s rough. But at the time I was thrilled to have something live on the internet that I built.

What I learned: How GitHub works. Pushing code, managing branches, understanding what a commit does. Table stakes for any developer, but I’d never done it myself. Then connecting GitHub to Railway so updates deploy automatically. My proof to myself that I can get something from idea to working website.

Multi-Channel AI Assistant

I get a lot of newsletters via email. Substack, governance updates, market intel. What I wanted was a bot I could email things to, have it summarize whatever I sent, and respond in Telegram. Then continue the conversation there, with the bot remembering what we’d discussed.

This sent me down a rabbit hole. I learned the difference between local models (still not really using them), vector databases and RAG (understand the concept, haven’t implemented it), and basic databases (actually got this working).

What I built: A Telegram bot backed by a Postgres database in Railway, using the Claude API. When I send it a message, it logs the exchange and builds context over time. I can email an address using CloudMailin, and the bot summarizes whatever I sent and responds in Telegram.

What I learned: How to build a Telegram bot from scratch. How to set up and manage a simple database and build in email workflows.

ENS Public Goods Dashboard

I’m a steward for ENS Public Goods, and we were putting together our Term 6 retrospective. I started wondering if I could use AI to research everything we’d published over the year and pull insights from it.

I’ve been using Manus for a long time and know its features well. I actually canceled my subscription at one point, but their recent 1.5 and 1.6 updates made the product much better. I came back and now use it quite a bit in different ways.

For this project, I fed it all our forum entries and publications. It consolidated everything and generated insights I could share with Simona for accuracy checks. Then I realized I could take that same research and turn it into a dashboard.

Manus creates projects you can export to GitHub. So I connected the output to GitHub, then used Claude Code to iterate. Push improvements, deploy to Railway, see the results, repeat.

What I built: The Term 6 Dashboard shows strategic grants, builder grants, and interactive visualizations of the whole term.

ENS PG Term 6 Dashboard

What I learned: Manus is great for research, not just building. You can chain tools together: Manus for initial research and build, GitHub for version control, Claude Code for iteration, Railway for deployment. And building something useful for teammates is way more motivating than building for yourself.

Crypto Grant Wire Rebuild

This is the one I’m most proud of.

The Crypto Grant Wire is a Telegram channel I’ve been running for years. Over 4,000 followers. For crypto grants nerds like me, it’s where you track updates across the ecosystem.

Sov's Crypto Grant Wire Telegram

For a long time it was just a Notion database. I’d add links manually, Make (formerly Integromat) pushed them to Telegram, and that was it. Then X23 started feeding in automated entries from governance forums, which added value but also created data format inconsistencies.

What I always wanted: take the entire history of the grant wire, put it in a structured database, and summarize every entry consistently. The problem was years of manual entries plus X23’s different format meant the data was a mess.

What I built:

First, a tool called TeleSum that pulls all messages from a Telegram channel and summarizes them. I used Grok 4.1 for the summarization because most of the links are from Twitter, and Grok can actually read Twitter content. Most other AIs can’t.

Then came the tedious part. Tuning the summarization. Handling edge cases. The X23 entries had source links pointing to a domain that no longer exists, so I had to reverse engineer those back to the original governance forum URLs.

The pattern was actually straightforward once I (or Manus rather) figured it out. x23 URLs had a predictable structure that mirrored the original Discourse forums. The slug at the end of the x23 URL was the same slug used in the original forum. So I extracted the protocol name from the x23 URL (like “makerdao”), looked up the known governance forum domain for that protocol, grabbed the slug, and combined them. For Snapshot votes, the x23 URL contained the proposal hash, so I constructed those URLs too. Pattern matching and a lookup table.

Now TeleSum runs automatically. New entries come in, database stays current. I’m building out APIs and export functions for anyone who wants access.

On the frontend, I built a web interface that aggregates the Notion data, adds the Telesum database as a searchable archive, and gives everything a proper home.

It’s still amateurish looking. I know. But it works, and it’s the foundation for everything else I want to build for the grant wire. You can check it out at the link below if you like!

https://crypto-grant-wire-site-v1-production.up.railway.app/

What I learned: Different AI models are good at different things. Grok for summarizing Twitter posts. Claude for coding. Gemini for fast iteration on specs. Years of manual work can become structured data if you’re patient. And building for your community beats building for yourself.

What Changed

The tools haven’t changed much since June. Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf, Manus, Railway. Same cast of characters.

What changed is my approach.

Six months ago I was throwing vague prompts at tools and hoping for magic. Now I start with architecture. Break tasks into small, testable chunks. One thing at a time. Commit working code before moving on.

I still hit walls. The AI assistant took way more iteration than expected. The Grant Wire data cleanup was tedious. Every project has a moment where you wonder if it’s ever going to work.

I don’t think of myself as someone who can’t build things anymore. I’m someone who builds things slowly, with a lot of AI help and a lot of trial and error. That’s enough.

For Other Operators

If you read the original piece and thought “I should try this,” the answer is still: just start. But start with something small and specific. Something you actually want to exist. The motivation matters when you’re debugging at midnight.

The gap between almost and actually is persistence. Dedicate the time. Make sure everything you do moves toward progress. The tools are good enough now that if you stick with it, things will work.

The juice is still worth the squeeze. More than ever.

Peace,
Sov

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

The Polygon community announced a transition for its Community Treasury, with the Community Treasury Board moving from a governing role to an advisory role. The Polygon Foundation will now set long-term Treasury strategy while Polygon Labs handles execution with biannual reporting.

Optimism announced its Season 9 Governance Fund Missions, allocating 3.89M OP to the Grants Council and 0.98M OP to the Developer Advisory Board. The missions focus on increasing DEX TVL for collateral-borrow pairs on lending markets like Morpho and Aave, with projects required to contribute revenue back to the Collective.

The Optimism Budget Board released its advisory proposal for the Season 9 Governance Fund, recommending a total budget of 4.87M OP. This represents a 54% decrease from Season 8’s 7.24M OP budget, calculated using a 10-year runway target.

Optimism introduced a proposal to use 50% of Superchain revenue for monthly OP token buybacks over a 12-month period starting February 2026. The Superchain has generated 5,868 ETH in revenue over the past year, with a governance vote scheduled for January 22.

The Web3 Foundation is shifting away from its traditional open Grants Program after more than six years. The foundation will now focus on targeted strategic funding and direct participation in Polkadot OpenGov as the ecosystem matures.

Funding Opportunities

Gitcoin posted a proposal for a partnership with Octant to create a yield-powered matching pool for GG25. The proposal would allocate up to $2M in matched capital to Octant vaults, with generated yield funding $100k-$300k in matching for the Q2 2026 round.

The Zcash community opened a call for proposals on coinholder-directed retroactive grants for Q1 2026. The program empowers ZEC holders to vote on which community members should receive retroactive funding for their contributions.

TRON DAO hosted an X Space on its grants program and ecosystem builders on January 13, 2026. The TRON Builders League offers a $10 million funding pool for projects in DeFi, GameFi, NFT, and stablecoin sectors.

Kalshi launched its ecosystem grants program on Superteam Earn with over $2 million in total funding available. Pro users can apply for grants supporting prediction market applications with API access and monetization support.

Morph unveiled a $150 million Payment Accelerator program to support startups and financial institutions scaling real-world payments onchain. The program provides grants, incentives, and liquidity support for crypto cards, cross-border remittances, and merchant payment gateways.

The COTI Foundation offers its Builders Program backed by a $40 million fund (400M COTI tokens). The program provides grants ranging from $1,000 to $100,000 for developers building privacy-focused applications on COTI’s Ethereum layer 2.

SuperDapp launched its AI Agents Grants Program with up to 50,000,000 $SUPR tokens available. This is a performance-based program for AI agents built with the SuperDapp SDK, open to solo developers and teams.

The Monad Foundation’s Monad Momentum program is an incentives matching program for applications on Monad Mainnet. Wave 2 applications closed December 31, 2025, with results communicated by January 13, 2026, and matching up to 1:1 with MON tokens.

DoubleZero launched its grants program to support ecosystem builders with high-impact projects in network tooling and infrastructure. Grants are milestone-based and funded from the DoubleZero Token Treasury, with open RFPs available on their Airtable.

Tools & Infrastructure

Grantee launched a Grant Intelligence & Capital Access API platform that uses AI to transform GitHub repositories into funding intelligence. The platform provides repository analysis, readiness scoring, and grant matching to help builders find Web3 grants, with early access now available.

For real-time updates on crypto grant and funding developments, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

In what seems like a lifetime ago, in my piece “Sov’s Song,” I covered my journey from discovering Bitcoin in 2017 to focusing on crypto grants and ecosystem funding during the 2021 bull market. What I want to explore here is how mentoring shaped that path and, specifically, how a simple framework called “Learn, Teach, Serve” became foundational to my work, despite its unlikely origin.

The framework itself is straightforward:

• Learn everything you can

• Teach others about what you learned

• Serve others in their path of learning

• Failure is learning … BLAME IS NOT!

But the story of how I learned these principles, who taught them, and how they survived a betrayal to become valuable in crypto is worth exploring.

The Servant Leader

During my time with a local food bank, I learned what deep mentorship looks like. I came into the nonprofit world knowing almost nothing beyond wanting to help rebuild an organization in crisis mode. That’s where I met Teri.

Our VP, Teri, embodied true servant leadership. She had extensive experience in philanthropy and a doctorate in organizational leadership. But more than credentials, she had wisdom about how to serve others effectively. She taught me everything from governance structures to community engagement, always anticipating what I needed to learn next.

Teri taught me the fundamentals of grants: committee dynamics, accountability frameworks, and impact measurement. She also taught me how to anticipate what people needed before they knew they needed it. Those skills would resurface years later in crypto.

But my story with “Learn, Teach, Serve” didn’t start at the food bank.

The Day Job

While doing nonprofit work, I was also running daily operations at a systems integrator. For more than a decade, I’d been managing technical teams, sales teams, operating as the COO of a company doing $50 million in revenue.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about being a high school dropout who ends up running operations at this level: the imposter syndrome never quite goes away.

The owners brought in a new CEO to take over. He came in with a grand vision and taught us the “Learn, Teach, Serve” framework to shape our organizational culture. For the first 12 months, it was inspirational. The framework resonated deeply with what I was seeing Teri live out at the food bank.

But around month 12, things shifted. By 18 months, it became clear: the person who taught us “Learn, Teach, Serve” didn’t follow those values himself. He had ulterior motives that put the entire organization at risk.

What I learned from that experience is that the best leaders are willing to change their minds when presented with evidence that they should. And they appreciate all the things they don’t know.

The contrast between Teri and this CEO was stark. She lived the values. He taught them, but violated them. Yet somehow, the framework survived because it was valuable independent of the messenger.

My Entry Point

About 18 months in, with things headed in the wrong direction, I started looking for other opportunities. I applied to multiple tech companies. Roles I was overqualified for based on the job descriptions.

I couldn’t even get to the first interview. After three or four rejections, I realized what was happening. That checkbox asking for my education? High school dropout. Everything else gets filtered out before a human ever sees it.

That’s when crypto started making sense. Nobody was asking for my diploma. The work either added value or it didn’t. I created a pseudonym (Sov) and started spending early mornings, evenings, and weekends learning about the space and looking for where I could contribute.

What I didn’t expect was how liberating it would be to be recognized purely for expertise rather than credentials. When crypto organizations eventually started setting up my access, I’d tell them to use my real name. They’d set it up as Sov anyway. The work spoke for itself.

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt had pushed me into a space where I could operate on merit. That unconventional path set everything else in motion.

I wasn’t looking for mentors when I entered crypto. I’d had Teri’s example of what deep, sustained guidance looked like, but I wasn’t expecting to find that here. What I found instead were people who showed up at exactly the right moment with exactly the right insight.

The Markets Mentor

Ace gave me my first authentic taste of how people in crypto operate. I found him the same way many of you probably found me: through his Substack. His writing on markets and crypto culture pulled me in. From there, I joined his Discord and started vibing with the community. That led to working together on a DAO that would later implode (as many do). But before that happened, he showed me something I’d never considered: how to spot opportunities in the chaos.

He had a knack for reading markets and understanding the channels people used, how they thought about narratives, and where the real conversations were happening. Even though we were working in the same geographic area (rare in crypto, especially on the West Coast), his perspective opened up an entirely different world.

During that time, I started noticing patterns. Ecosystem funds and grant programs kept coming up in conversations. I remembered Dove Metrics, the crypto fundraising intelligence database that tracked VC rounds and investors. I thought: surely there’s a Dove Metrics for grants. When I realized there wasn’t, I saw my opportunity.

But I wasn’t ready to go all in like Ace had done, leaving his traditional role. I had a family to support, too much risk to take that leap completely. So I kept my primary job and started building on the side. That’s how the writing began, how Sovereign Signal eventually emerged.

Ace had taken a chance, leaving his traditional role. He wasn’t hoarding what he learned. He created space for people like me, lightweight contributors who wanted to get involved but needed someone to vouch for them. His connections and respect in the space meant doors opened that wouldn’t have otherwise.

Crypto Natives

Ethropy was my first exposure to a crypto native community. Finding LobsterDAO was something else entirely.

The depth of conversations, the intensity. Ivan banning people who weren’t adding value. Visionaries and founders regularly having conversations in plain sight.

I found my way in through Cryptographic and Amplice. They added me to some shared chats and made introductions. Eventually, I connected with Nemo and the rest of the core contributors. This crew taught me what it means to be “crypto native” (if that’s a real thing).

The piece I wrote, a grants retrospective, took enormous effort. This was before AI language models, so every data point required manual digging through forum posts, governance proposals, and scattered documentation. When I finished, Nemo connected me with Dino, who spent considerable time editing and refining the piece. He helped on a few other reports, too, and to this day, his editing is superior to anything Claude can do.

We published it on both the LobsterDAO Substack and my own, and suddenly I had reach. But more than distribution, I learned something about myself: until working with the LobsterDAO team, I’d exclusively worked with people in my backyard. Same city, same timezone, same cultural context.

No corporate politeness. People scattered across the world, in different time zones and cultures, all aligned on the same goals. If you could connect with someone, you could work with them. Geography didn’t matter.

That experience changed how I thought about what was possible.

As I got deeper into grant programs, I started to see something else: crypto was the natural progression of the open source systems I’d spent my whole career around. And if I was going to understand this space, I needed to work with someone who actually built software.

A Builder’s Journey

David Mihail was that person. The first time we met, he was in a shoddy hotel room in Egypt. East Coast guy, probably half my age, living the true crypto nomad life and exploring the world in ways I wished I could have in my 20s. I’d reached out to him at random online, and here we were on a Google Meet, talking about collaboration.

David became well known in the Ethereum community for his work on CryptoStats and other public goods. Working with him was the first time I experienced grant programs from a builder’s perspective. My technical experience was in data center buildouts and hypervisor infrastructure. David’s work was in software development, data visualization, and public goods tooling. I had to learn a new language to help him effectively.

We became grantees together. Uniswap Foundation and Ethereum Foundation both funded CryptoStats. Then we landed a generous grant from Avalanche to build out their bridge dashboard.

Working with David taught me the builder’s journey from the inside. What it feels like to ship something, to iterate based on feedback, to maintain public infrastructure while seeking sustainable funding. That perspective became foundational because builders have been the ones I’ve been supporting ever since.

Conclusion

The CEO who taught me “Learn, Teach, Serve” turned out to be a fraud. But the framework survived because Teri had already shown me what it looked like when someone actually lived it. Ace, the LobsterDAO crew, and David. None of them signed up to be my mentor

That was just the beginning. Mentors keep showing up. Most recently, Rekt, who’s shared all kinds of advice on this blog and changed how I think about writing. I mentioned him in my piece on parenting.

And on my best days, I’m one myself. I’m always looking for those opportunities. We all should be.

If you’re building in this space, remember we’re all figuring this out together. The person sharing a quick insight today might not realize how much it matters. The knowledge you develop tomorrow might be exactly what someone else needs.

Learn everything you can. Teach others about what you learned. Serve others in their path of learning.

Peace,
Sov

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Aave DAO rejected a proposal to transfer control of the protocol’s brand assets from Aave Labs to a DAO-controlled entity. The Snapshot vote, which closed on December 25, saw 55% vote against, 41% abstain, and only 3.5% in favor, with a record 1.8 million AAVE participating. The vote concluded a dispute over revenue sharing following the discovery that swap fees from Aave Labs’ CoW Swap integration were being directed to a private wallet rather than the DAO treasury.

Grant Program Results

OpenSats announced its 15th wave of Bitcoin grants, awarding 13 grants including six first-time recipients and seven renewals. New grantees include Braidpool for mining decentralization, BlindBit Suite for Silent Payments tooling, Dana Wallet for privacy-focused mobile payments, FreeBSD for operating system diversity, LaWallet for Lightning wallet infrastructure, and LNHANCE for zero-knowledge proof-of-concept work. Renewed grants went to Bitcoin Dev Kit, Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, and several other infrastructure projects.

Funding Opportunities

Opinion Labs is running its $1 million Builder Program, targeting developers, routers, and researchers building on its prediction market protocol. The program offers grants tied to usage, liquidity contribution, and ecosystem impact, along with priority API access and engineering support. Products must be publicly live and integrated with the Opinion protocol.

Web3 Foundation announced a strategic shift away from its traditional open grants model toward targeted funding aligned with Polkadot’s product-centric vision. The foundation will now prioritize core protocol development and key ecosystem projects while providing technical reviews through Polkadot OpenGov. This marks the end of the open grants program that has operated for over six years.

Defactor launched its Accelerator Grants Program with $250,000 to support real-world asset tokenization projects. The program provides non-dilutive funding in REAL tokens to teams building in real estate tokenization, asset-backed lending, trade finance, and commodities. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis through the grants portal.

ARMswap introduced its MVP Grants Program with a 125 million ARMSP token budget for contributors across marketing, development, community engagement, and bug hunting. Bug bounty rewards range from $5,000 to $100,000, payable in USD, ARMSP, or ARMUP tokens. The program uses a Proof of Contribution system requiring a minimum of 10 accepted Qualifying Events for monthly rewards.

Bitcoin.ℏ offers developer grants through its Business Gift Program for developers integrating the Hedera-based token into applications. The program targets payment solutions, games, NFT platforms, and decentralized apps, providing grants along with integration assistance. Applications are submitted through an online form.

LazAI Network announced grants for projects building on its Alpha Mainnet, with 10,000 $METIS distributed across two categories. Ignition Grants target early-stage projects while Builder Grants are for established projects with over 50 daily active users.

0xJoshDeGreat compiled a list of creator grant programs across crypto ecosystems rewarding content production. Programs include Arbitrum Education & Community Growth, Axelar (which has paid $300k to creators), Octant, Resolv ($100,000 in tokens), and Superteam (up to $10k per opportunity).

Research & Strategic Analysis

Raymond Cheng published the “Prosperous Software Movement” proposal introducing the Public Prosperity License, a new software license with built-in revenue sharing. The proposal requires companies above certain revenue thresholds to share a percentage of revenue with their open-source dependencies through approved funding mechanisms. A working group is forming to develop the concept further.

Tools & Infrastructure

Rock’n’Block published a list of 50 blockchain ecosystem grants available for 2026, covering programs across major networks including Aptos, Stellar, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Solana, BNB Chain, Base, and Starknet. The directory also features builder programs from prediction market platforms including Opinion, Polymarket, and Kalshi.

Chain.Love operates as a discovery platform for Web3 infrastructure services, offering unified pricing comparisons, performance metrics, and automated load balancing across RPCs, indexers, oracles, and bridges. The platform maintains a community-driven, open-source database on GitHub and claims to reduce developer costs by over 60% through intelligent caching.

Grantee.me launched as an x402 hackathon project providing a grant intelligence and capital access API that analyzes GitHub repos for development activity, codebase quality, and grant qualifications. The tool operates on a pay-per-analysis model on Avalanche Fuji and targets builders in the Global South and underrepresented ecosystems.

For real-time updates, follow the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

Here’s this week’s digest of the latest grant announcements, program updates, DAO discussions, and funding opportunities straight from Sov’s Crypto Grant Wire!

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Hedera Council voted on October 29, 2025 to re-allocate HBARs previously designated for the Hedera Foundation. The funds were moved to a general fund for ecosystem and open source development activities, with future distributions overseen by the Board.

Polkadot community members discussed treasury bounty management following OpenGov.Watch data revealing performance gaps. Web3 Foundation proposed closing several bounties including Marketing, UX, Legal, and Games, with a shift toward milestone-based funding and a new OpenGov track for spend cancellation.

Grant Program Results

Optimism Grants Council published the Season 8 final report, covering 91 unique applications with 24 approved (26.4% approval rate). The council allocated 2,490,000 OP from the 6,290,000 OP budget, marking the first time the Grants Council distributed 100% of its season budget.

Optimism released Cycle 45 results for Season 8 Audit Grants, approving four applications totaling 227,078 OP. Metrom received 25,200 OP, 40acres received 75,000 OP, VII Finance received 72,928 OP, and Arcadia Finance received 53,950 OP.

Scroll closed applications for its Community Grants Support Program after receiving 488 applications from over 40 countries. The program approved 26 proposals totaling $82,500, including 11 large events, 8 meetups, 4 hackathons, and 3 flex projects.

Ethereum Community Fund announced the Season 1 Leaderboard for its Perennial Grant Experiment Epoch 1. The 10-week program distributed $800 per week, with winners required to book confirmation calls by December 30, 2025.

Funding Opportunities

Gitcoin proposed a yield-powered matching pool partnership with Octant for GG25 in Q2 2026, with initial matching between $100,000-$300,000. Octant commits to matching Gitcoin’s vault deployment up to $2 million, with estimated total capital deployment of $6-8 million to generate yield.

Circle Ventures introduced the Arc Builders Fund to support early-stage projects building on Arc, the company’s Layer-1 blockchain for enterprise adoption. The fund targets always-on markets, offchain assets and credit markets, onchain FX, agentic commerce, and energy and compute applications.

OpenLedger launched a $5 million grants initiative in partnership with the University of Cambridge’s Cambridge Blockchain Society. The program supports decentralized AI research, focusing on transparent datasets and blockchain-AI systems.

Venom Foundation launched Venom Labs, a $500,000 grants program supporting Web3 projects building on the Venom blockchain. Initial grantees received $50,000 each, with requirements including a live MVP and 3,000+ community members.

Cosmos Hub issued a Request for Proposals for ATOM tokenomics research, seeking qualified firms to provide data-driven research supporting a redesign of ATOM’s economic model. Applications are due January 15, 2026.

Obol Network launched Obol Ecosystem Grants in December 2025 to reward contributors to Ethereum staking. The program offers variable, equity-free funding across three tracks: developers, education, and growth.

STON.fi offers a grant program providing up to $10,000 USD in USDT tokens for DeFi projects on the TON blockchain. The program provides funding for development tasks including coding, debugging, and testing.

Pentagon Pizza Watch accepted a grant from Polymarket as part of the platform’s $2.5 million builder grants program. The project tracks pizza shop popularity around the Pentagon as an OSINT indicator and displays Polymarket wagers with geospatial data.

Research & Strategic Analysis

I published “Four Years In”, sharing perspectives from four years working in the crypto grants space. Check it out and subscribe if you like it!

GregTheGreek shared commentary on Protocol Guild’s treasury management, suggesting they use put options against deposited tokens to lock in value. He noted their Eigen holdings dropped from approximately $80M in January to $12M currently.

Deep Funding launched with $350,000 from Ethereum Foundation and Gitcoin to fund Ethereum’s open source software using a framework designed by Vitalik Buterin. The system uses juror comparisons and prediction markets to allocate funds at the repository level for developer tooling and infrastructure.

Tools & Infrastructure

ETHGas raised $12 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital as it launched Ethereum’s first blockspace futures market. Validators and block builders committed $800 million in liquidity, enabling users to lock in gas prices up to 64 blocks in advance.

Avalanche Foundation shared a weekly update on grantee progress as part of its Retro9000 program. The $40 million initiative announced its third cohort on December 2, 2025, with cohort grants exceeding $125,000 for L1 and infrastructure tooling.

For real-time updates on crypto grant and funding developments, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

So here it is. After four years of running programs, advising protocols, managing grantees, and watching this space evolve as a grantee, a grant manager, a tooling provider, and an advisor across some of the major programs in this space, I have some thoughts.

Some of this might sound harsh. Some of it contradicts the narratives we’ve been telling ourselves as an industry. But I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t.

Full Circle

When I first got into crypto grants, the buzzword was “novel funding mechanisms.” Quadratic funding. Retroactive public goods funding. Conviction voting. Streaming payments. The hope was that we could unlock entirely new ways to allocate capital. That we’d improve on the grant-giving systems that have existed for centuries.

I’ve run a bunch of QF rounds. I’ve participated in retro funding. I’ve seen these mechanisms at play across multiple ecosystems. And here’s what I’ve learned: the most effective way to run a grant program is milestone-based direct grants.

That’s it. We tried all the fancy stuff and came back to what nonprofits have been doing forever.

There’s a time and place for these other mechanisms. Quadratic funding is a great marketing opportunity. The individual grant amounts aren’t huge, but QF creates buzz and excitement and gives an early signal about which grantees can mobilize community support. Retro funding can work for ecosystems with long histories of contribution, where you want to reward past impact. But retro funding can also become a popularity contest. There are tradeoffs to all of these things.

But here’s where we’ve over corrected. Because these mechanisms didn’t live up to the hype, there’s now a bias against them. That’s not right either. I’m still excited about what’s possible. Prediction markets, results-based funding, and mechanisms we haven’t fully explored yet. The mistake wasn’t experimentation. The mistake was expecting any single mechanism to be a panacea. The opportunity now is matching the proper mechanism to the right problem.

So, where are novel funding mechanisms best positioned?

Well, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve and for most grant programs with specific initiatives and targets, the answer is boring: direct grants, milestone-based funding, and knowing what outcomes you want before you start allocating capital.

The Bifurcation of Grants and Incentives

One of the shifts I’ve seen is the separation of grants from incentives. Programs would give out grants to protocols, which would then use those funds to drive user incentives, including liquidity mining, yield farming, and the rest.

Arbitrum’s journey through STIP, LTIPP, and what they called the “Incentives Detox“ is the clearest example of this reckoning.

What happened was a recognition that they’d poured significant treasury resources into programs, but the results were mixed at best. Traditional grant disbursement methods like upfront payments, committee-based selection, and milestone tracking don’t always align with the goals of targeted incentives. While grants excel at funding potential and promise, what Arbitrum ultimately wanted was something more precise: measurable outcomes tied directly to network growth metrics.

So they did something unusual. They stopped most programs for three months. They held biweekly community calls to dissect data from previous programs. I was lurking and listening to those calls. They analyzed what actually drives sustainable adoption versus what just creates temporary spikes from mercenary capital chasing rewards.

The result? A fundamental shift in thinking. Growth teams now have incentive budgets. Grant teams have grant budgets. Different functions, different goals, different mechanisms.

If you’re trying to drive DeFi metrics, that’s an incentives problem. If you’re trying to fund development of specific tooling or infrastructure, that’s a grants problem. We spent a few years conflating these, and it didn’t serve anyone well.

The Busy Person Problem

Some of the best advice I ever got came from running a food bank, not from crypto.

As I described oh so long ago in Sov’s Song I was the board president of a small food bank that was 90 days from going under when I took over. We had $15,000 in the bank. One of our mentors, a trucking and warehouse magnate, told me something I’ve never forgotten: “If you want to get something done, ask a busy person.”

In crypto, we’ve done the opposite.

There’s this positive spirit around engaging our community to help make decisions and provide feedback. We host community calls. We ask for opinions. We create governance forums.

And what happens? The people who show up are the ones with nothing but time on their hands.

I led a governance working group for a major L2 for a while. When I joined, we had weekly calls where people would just vibe with each other. Community members, very junior, lots of time. And I had to ask myself: Is this the best use of our time and resources? Paying people like me to show up and steward random community members through half-baked contributions that I then had to course correct?

I cut the community calls. No value.

Here’s what I’d recommend: seek out subject matter experts and domain experts in specific areas. If you want to drive a particular outcome, find someone who’s doing that well today and pay them to come in and do their thing. That’s worth more than a hundred open community calls where you’re getting watered-down responses from people who are there because they have time, not expertise.

The people who produce real value are busy. They have business models, as individual contributors or companies, to come in and do specific things around impact measurement or business development. When you start being intentional about finding those teams and striking agreements with them, that works way better than hosting calls and hoping good people show up.

Theater

There’s a difference between systems and protocols that are decentralized and decentralizing every decision out to a community. I haven’t seen many places where broad community decision-making has been effective.

I’ve been present in many of the DAOs that have tried. Look at some of the biggest grant-giving DAOs of the last couple of years. Which tokens had the most downside? Often, the same ones that gave out the most money with the least clarity on what it was actually for.

Now you see them pulling back and centralizing around operational structures with more accountability. There’s still a spirit of involving qualified people. We want people who are qualified in specific ways. That’s different from “let’s get community feedback on everything.”

Creating work for decentralization’s sake isn’t decentralization. It’s theater. You end up with someone hosting calls, paying for their time to steward people toward contributions, only for those contributions to be lackluster, and then someone has to course-correct. You’re just creating work.

People, Process, Technology

In the traditional tech space I came from, there’s a concept of people, processes, and technology. The order matters. In crypto, we over-optimize for technology. We have a lot of builders who like to build things. But that’s only one part of the equation.

You can have the best or worst tool in the world, but if you have a terrible or great process, it makes up for it. And vice versa.

I’ve used all the tools. QF platforms. Milestone tracking systems. Forum-based approaches. Spreadsheets. Purpose-built grants management tools. Homegrown solutions. They all have tradeoffs.

The question isn’t “what’s the best grants platform?” The question is “what does your grantee lifecycle look like, and what tools support that?”

I think about this in phases: Discover (how do grantees find you, how do you find them), Source (how do you qualify applicants), Launch (onboarding after approval), Deliver (milestone tracking and accountability), and Expand (retention and follow-on work).

Map your internal processes to these phases. Then figure out what tools support each. Some tools do one thing well. Some try to be full-stack. What matters is that your process is clear. The technology follows.

Treat Grantees Like Customers

This might be the most practical thing I can share: think about your grantee lifecycle the same way a B2B company thinks about customer lifecycle.

The easiest deal to close is the next deal with a current customer. Consulting firms know this. You’re always selling your next engagement while delivering your current one.

The same principle applies to grantees. Not all are created equal. Some you work with and think, “I don’t know if we should have given that grant.” Others you want to work with forever.

During the delivery phase, make that determination. Which grantees do you really want to continue working with? Then be proactive about finding more work for them.

At one program I run, we have grantees we’ve worked with for years. Any time we can slot work for them, we do. We’re not going to put out an RFP and hope a good builder applies when we already know who the good builders are.

This sounds obvious, but I see programs doing the opposite all the time. They finish a grant, wave goodbye, and then wonder why they can’t retain their best contributors. Or worse, they make proven grantees go through the same arduous application process as everyone else because “we want to be decentralized.”

Find your good grantees. Give them more work. Ask them what they want to do next that you haven’t asked them to do yet. That’s how you retain talent.

The (Ongoing) PGF Problem

This is the one that keeps me up at night.

I believe crypto is part of the natural progression of open source. And when you look at how much of crypto is built on open source, we’re standing on the shoulders of giants.

For a while, there was a swell of support for these teams. QF rounds dedicated to open source. Collectives fund core contributors. Corporate programs chipping in. But as grant programs have questioned their value or shut down entirely, support for foundational open source has diminished.

We’ve recreated the same problem we said we wanted to solve.

In Web2, the internet was built on open source protocols. Who maintains those protocols? Mostly the tech giants. There’s value capture happening there. They fund open source tools partly because it lets them influence the roadmap.

We’ve done the same thing in crypto, except we’re not even supporting the teams we should be supporting. We’re not funding the open source foundations of what we claim to be building.

That’s what’s missing. And I don’t have a clean answer for how to fix it.

Where We Go From Here

So that’s the state of grants as I see it.

We’ve come full circle on mechanisms. We’re separating grants from incentives. We’re slowly learning that community engagement without intentionality is just noise. We’re realizing that decentralization isn’t always the answer. We’re starting to think about process before technology. Some of us are treating grantees like customers.

And we still haven’t figured out how to sustainably fund the public goods we all depend on.

We should not solve any of this by launching more programs or building more tools. We solve it by being honest about what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what we actually want to achieve.

Grant programs that started as marketing exercises, to show we’re funding builders and compete on dollar amounts, are getting shut down or restructured. The ones that survive will be the ones that got specific about outcomes before they started writing checks.

Something I’m trying to do more of: just reaching out to other program managers and comparing notes. Learning from each other. It made my day when that conversation happened that sparked this piece. Someone running a program is asking other programs what they’re doing. I don’t see enough of that. If enough of those conversations happen, they may evolve into something greater.

If you’re running a grants program, my advice is simple: Be clear about what you want to achieve. Fund people who can actually deliver. Don’t create work for the sake of decentralization. Treat your grantees like valuable customers. And remember that all the novel mechanisms in the world won’t save you from unclear goals.

We’re still figuring this out. But at least now we’re asking better questions.

Peace,
Sov

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Stacks Treasury Committee approved a $27 million operating budget for 2026, alongside a 25 million STX allocation for DeFi working capital. The budget allocates 35.2% to engineering and security, 22.2% to network growth, and includes a new three-track grants program launching in January 2026.

Curve DAO is voting on a 17.45 million CRV grant proposal (~$5.3 million) for Swiss Stake AG, the protocol’s core development team. The 12-month grant covers software R&D, infrastructure, and security, with a vote active until December 19, 2025 and a 15 million CRV quorum required.

Curve DAO is also voting on a 1 million CRV proposal to establish a Liquidity Incentives Committee. Voting runs December 14-19, 2025, requiring a 15 million CRV quorum and 50% majority to pass.

Safe ecosystem published its 2025 reflections and 2026 outlook, reporting annualized revenue exceeding $10 million. The organization outlined goals to reach break-even and double revenue in 2026, with a token utility protocol scheduled for release in late Q1.

Grant Program Results

Avalanche Foundation announced its third Retro9000 cohort, awarding over $140,000 to four projects including Blaze Stream, Hashfire, and Transparency Protocol. The $40 million program also granted follow-on funding to Tesseract for continued progress as a DEX aggregator on Avalanche.

BTrust announced Q4 2025 developer grants to six Bitcoin open-source developers across Africa. Recipients are working on Rust-Payjoin, Stratum V2, Lightning Development Kit, and Validating Lightning Signer, with five of six being Btrust Builders program graduates.

ENS Public Goods Working Group allocated $25,000 USDC to Phantom Zone, a cryptography research team focused on fully homomorphic encryption. The grant supports development of Poulpy (FHE library) and Phantom (encrypted RISC-V virtual machine), with co-funding from Ethereum Foundation’s ESP program.

XRPL Commons launched Glow, a retroactive funding program for XRP Ledger contributors, announcing its first wave of 8 recipients on December 11. Recipients include XRPLWin, XRPScan, and Bithomp, with voting for the second wave now open.

Golem Foundation and Octant launched StreamVote, a continuous funding pilot for Ethereum public goods with 25 ETH (~$80,000) and a $1 million USDS yield-generating vault. The initial cohort of 17 grantees includes L2BEAT, Protocol Guild, Solidity, and ethers.js.

Funding Opportunities

Filecoin opened applications for ProPGF Batch 2, a milestone-based funding program with a $4 million pool targeting core infrastructure, tooling, and governance projects. Applications close December 23, 2025, with funding decisions expected in late January 2026.

Nosana launched a grants program offering $5,000 to $50,000 for builders in decentralized AI, with funding available in USDC, NOS tokens, or GPU compute credits. Applications are open year-round for projects in AI infrastructure, developer tooling, and applications.

Render Network Foundation is accepting applications for grants supporting 3D rendering and AI computing projects. The program provides funding, prioritized rendering access, technical mentorship, and promotional support on a rolling basis.

Solana Mobile announced builder grants offering up to $10,000 per team for mobile-first crypto applications utilizing native device features. The next hackathon in partnership with Colosseum is scheduled for Q1 2026.

JustLend DAO highlighted its ongoing grants program with over $192 million in grants power available on TRON. The community-led initiative supports user incentives, JST buyback and burn, and developer support.

District announced a $1 million Builder Fund to support builders through a Player vs. Environment model. Successful projects that graduate join a community of over 300 members to govern the fund and collaborate on investments.

Research & Strategic Analysis

LexNode published an analysis on DAO legal structures using the Aave DAO vs. Aave Labs debate as a case study. The analysis explores conflicts between token and equity holders and outlines approaches including legal entities (DUNAs, DAO LLCs) and formalized accountability frameworks for adjacent organizations.

Eshita shared observations on ecosystem builder strategies, noting a shift from broad builder acquisition to incubating fewer projects with downstream support. Ecosystems now prioritize business-ready founders and treat top teams as portfolio companies, with grants including milestones and accountability.

Tools & Infrastructure

Arbitrum launched a Live Incentives portal creating a centralized hub for discovering active reward programs across the ecosystem. The portal features the DRIP program from Entropy Advisors and includes Aave, Dolomite, Euler Finance, Fluid, Morpho, and Silo Finance.

Giveth partnered with Superfluid for Season 4 rewards, distributing over 1.2 million $SUP tokens to donors supporting public goods projects. The program rewards recurring donations with real-time token streams over three months.

Ananya published a curated list of over 100 Web3 grants in a Google Sheets document. The community resource aggregates funding opportunities across multiple ecosystems.

Tally announced capital formation tools, completing a full stack for on-chain organizations including governance, vesting, airdrops, staking, and buybacks. The platform manages over $40 billion in value and has transferred over $1 billion.

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Arbitrum DAO is evaluating BLAZE, a $5 million loan initiative for early-stage builders aligned with the Crypto Cities thesis. The program offers short-term loans ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 for cash-flow-positive protocols that need liquidity to launch and scale.

Arbitrum OpCo renewed its Firestarters program with a $50,000 pilot budget to fund feasibility studies and groundwork for new initiatives. The program focuses on revenue generation, support for non-DeFi builders, and ecosystem-unifying projects through Q1 2026.

EigenLayer’s ELIP-012 proposes an Incentives Council to direct the distribution of freshly minted EIGEN tokens. The council would enable faster iteration on incentive mechanisms for AVSs and apps on EigenCloud.

dYdX Foundation restructured its grants program after raising $8 million in DYDX tokens in August 2025. The change saves approximately $2 million in annual costs and has funded 14 new grants since August.

Grant Program Results

Ethereum Foundation’s ESP released its Q3 2025 allocation update, distributing $14.3 million across consensus layer development, cryptography research, and community education. Funding went to projects including Lighthouse, the PBS Foundation, and the Lita Foundation for zkVM development.

Avalanche Foundation announced the third Retro9000 cohort, awarding over $140,000 to four projects for shipping L1s and infrastructure tooling on mainnet. The following snapshot for the $40 million program is January 13, 2026.

Vitalik Buterin donated 256 ETH (approximately $600,000) to privacy-focused messaging projects Session and SimpleX Chat. Both projects focus on metadata-resistant communication systems.

KyberSwap received a $50,000 grant from the Uniswap Foundation’s Hook Design Lab program. The grant supports enhancements to FairFlow and adoption of Uniswap v4 hooks.

Limitless secured 300,000 OP tokens from the Optimism Governance Grants Council to build pre-TGE trading markets on Base. The grant includes a 6-week Alpha Prophet competition with OP rewards.

Intuition launched its Ecosystem Instantiation Initiative with grants and a Builder’s Guild for project funding and mentorship. Applications for the first cohort closed December 5.

Uniswap Foundation Security Fund announced the recipients of Cohort 2 audit subsidies and added 16 security providers to Areta’s marketplace. The fund subsidizes security audits for teams building Uniswap v4 hooks.

Funding Opportunities

Kalshi launched a Builders Program with over $2 million in grants, co-sponsored by Solana and Base. Kalshi raised $1 billion in a Series E round on December 2, 2025, valuing the company at $11 billion.

DWF Labs launched a $75 million DeFi Fund targeting perpetual DEXs, money markets, and yield protocols on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Solana, and Base. The fund provides capital, liquidity, and ecosystem support for teams with functional MVPs.

Sonic Resonance Fund launched to support the growth of the Sonic ecosystem through seed and venture investments and liquidity agreements. The fund has engaged with over 20 teams.

Opinion Labs plans to launch the Opinion Builder Program for ecosystem development beyond prediction markets. No specific funding amounts or application details have been released.

Moonbeam and HELLO Labs announced a gaming accelerator for early 2026, providing $30,000 funding, TV exposure, and ecosystem access per project. Two spots remain open.

Prezenti extended its Peach grants round for the Celo community to December 31, 2025. The program targets projects with over 10,000 daily transactions.

LiskDAO Season 2 offers 2,225,000 LSK total funding with 135,000 LSK in rewards and a town hall scheduled for December 10. The program runs in parallel with Optimism’s Season 8.

X1 EcoChain launched a $5 million grant program for Web4 dApps, DePIN pilots, and infrastructure projects. Grants range from $10,000 to $100,000 per project with milestone-based payouts.

Quranium opened applications for its DeQUIP Grant Program, offering $5 million for 15 teams building quantum-secure decentralized applications. The program provides funding, mentorship, and advisory support.

Fluence joined the TON Grant Program with up to $100,000 in compute credits for TON-based projects. Fluence credits offer up to 85% savings compared to centralized cloud costs.

Research & Strategic Analysis

Kevin Owocki published a framework for reforming Ethereum public goods funding, identifying shifts from vibes-based to provable mechanisms. The post emphasizes sustainable revenue flows from sequencer fees, OSS licensing models, and yield-based funding.

Owocki also posted a timeline of Ethereum PGF's history from 2018 to 2025, outlining initiatives and mechanisms over that period.

Circle Foundation launched as a philanthropic initiative seeded by Circle’s Pledge 1% equity commitment. The foundation focuses on strengthening the financial resilience of US small businesses through CDFI partnerships.

Joel John posted on token economics issues, covering high FDV listings, lack of token rights, and incentive mismatches in crypto ventures.

Octant released the Grant Impact Handbook, a research resource to guide grant program design and impact measurement.

Tools & Infrastructure

PriVote enables private voting for Gitcoin Grants rounds using the MACI protocol for zk-proof-based vote encryption. The tool was used during Round 24’s Privacy Round.

Gondor received a grant from Polymarket to build a borrowing protocol for Polymarket positions after 8 months of development with Polymarket’s engineering team. Beta release is upcoming.

Ritual announced a builders program for AI onchain. Details on funding opportunities are forthcoming.

For real-time updates on crypto grant and funding developments, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.

Here’s this week’s digest of the latest grant announcements, program updates, DAO discussions, and funding opportunities straight from Sov’s Crypto Grant Wire!

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DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Lido DAO is reviewing a $58.2M ecosystem grant request for 2026 to support protocol resilience, security, and treasury growth. The proposal includes a $43.8M baseline and a $14.4M discretionary cap to fund the Lido Core Upgrade, scale Lido Earn, and explore vertical expansion, projecting net income of +$4.9M in 2026.

Jito DAO passed JIP-29 with 1.4M votes (100%), extending its NCN/Futarchy grants program and retaining remaining JIP-7 funds. The proposal allows for more flexible, market-based grant selection without a new budget.

Cardano’s Critical Integrations Budget is now on-chain for DReps and Constitutional Committee members to vote on. The budget aims to address infrastructure needs for Cardano’s next growth phase.

Zcash Community Grants Committee continues meeting and reviewing grant applications. The new funding structure allocates 8% of all block rewards to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG).

Grant Program Results

Gitcoin’s GG24 Solutions Development Grants Program allocated up to $155K to 19 projects aligned with UN SDGs. The program used a combination of human evaluation and AI-assisted analysis, with Karma providing the technical backbone.

Zcash announced the results of its first quarterly Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program. The new funding structure allocates 8% of all block rewards to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG).

ETC Grants DAO ran multiple giveaways in 2024-2025 for the Ethereum Classic community, including ETC rewards and L9 miners. The DAO has been a key contributor to ETC ecosystem infrastructure and marketing programs.

Funding Opportunities

Miden’s Pioneer Program offers milestone-based grants for teams building on Miden. The program provides technical and product support, business mentorship, and GTM guidance for projects in ZK, DeFi, RWAs, and privacy.

Pharos Network’s $20M Ecosystem Grant Program, launched in March 2025, continues to empower developers and startups building impactful solutions on the Pharos Network.

Endless Protocol launched an Education Fund to build its education ecosystem. The fund supports developers and creators building high-quality educational content, with applications now open.

The Aborean Public Goods Fund launched “The Forge” Grant Program to bring new builders into the Abstract ecosystem. The program offers non-dilutive grants and day-1 liquidity for teams across DeFi, infrastructure, gaming, and social.

Ritual launched a global Builders Program for developers, researchers, and educators exploring AI, cryptography, and blockchain. The program focuses on onchain AI topics like zkML and verifiable inference through workshops and technical deep dives.

Fystack launched its Builder Grants program, offering API Credits to developers working on payments, gaming infrastructure, tokenization, and on-chain treasury solutions using stablecoins.

Octant announced Epoch 10: Best of the Best, its second-to-last epoch before its v2 transition. The epoch will feature 25 projects selected from the top three of each previous epoch, with an allocation window from January 6-26, 2026.

Algorand’s xGov program is accepting retroactive grant proposals. The community-driven program empowers the xGov Council to vote on grant proposals.

Pump.fun announced a grants initiative to support Solana community tokens. The program aims to support liquidity and sustainability for fair-launch tokens on Solana.

Brevis partnered with OpenEden to build a Continuous Protocol Incentivization (CPI) system that eliminates snapshot-based reward programs. The system tracks on-chain behavior continuously to reward genuine long-term users.

Zama’s Creator Program supports creators. The program offers rewards for tackling challenges in the FHE space.

Research & Strategic Analysis

Gitcoin founder Owocki shared early strategic thinking for GG25, proposing a model focused on 1-2 frontier domains with targeted PGF rounds funded by coalitions to generate dealflow for an investment engine. The approach aims to keep burn low while rebuilding ecosystem relevance.

Devansh Mehta outlined that 10x improvements are needed in funding collection, allocation, and accountability across the public goods funding space.

Brian Flynn suggested two ways for Optimism to compete: start buying back OP tokens and revamp its grants program by reducing intermediaries.

A post on Hanson’s Folly discusses futarchy, a governance framework that replaces token-weighted voting with market-based decision making, and its potential as an asset class.

Tools & Infrastructure

The Dev Tools Guild announced its 60M gas limit milestone and mainnet upgrades to Fusaka scheduled for December 3. Optimism Retro Funding continues supporting guild members.

Arbitrum DAO published its November 2025 D.A.O. Grant Monthly Report. The report covers an executive summary, a data overview, domain-specific updates, and a financial overview.

Cornaro Labs shared its weekly top picks from the CL Web3 Grants Hub, including the Miden Pioneer Program (up to $20K), Endless Protocol Education Fund ($200K), Lit Protocol Grants (up to $2.5K), and Wire Blockchain Network Incubator.

The Solana Founder Seed Funding Pack is a curated list of top grant and accelerator programs for builders in the Solana ecosystem, including the Solana Foundation Funding Program.

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Until next week!

Sov

Now the weekly updates are back by popular demand. AI summarization makes the process much easier, so every week I’ll try to deliver a digest of the week’s grant announcements, program updates, DAO discussions, and funding opportunities straight to your inbox.

Weekly Updates (Nov 15-26, 2025)

DAO Governance & Treasury Decisions

Jito DAO proposed JIP-29 to extend its NCN Grants Programme and maintain access to the remaining 1.7 million JTO from its original 2 million JTO allocation. The proposal removes tight specifications on grant structures while maintaining selection standards and commits to continued futarchy experimentation.

GnosisDAO is reviewing a proposal for a 9-month futarchy pilot that uses prediction markets to generate advisory signals for governance decisions. The pilot maintains DAO authority while testing the approach with 100,000 in temporary liquidity.

Program Results

Optimism Grants Council released Cycle 44 Audit Grants results, approving 111,800 OP for three projects from 1,447,129 OP requested, marking a 7.7% approval rate. 235,876.4 OP remains in the Season 8 budget.

Optimism Grants Council released Cycle 44 Growth Grants results, awarding 650,000 OP to four projects, including Lido and Renzo Protocol. The council declined 16 applications, including a 500,000 OP request from Uniswap, leaving 2,490,000 OP remaining in the Season 8 budget.

Gitcoin published a retrospective on its GG24 Privacy Round, which distributed 35.41 WETH to 93 privacy-focused projects from 121 applications. The round recorded 7,427 votes using MACI, a private voting protocol, and received approximately $13,000 in community donations.

Funding Opportunities

Warden Protocol launched a $1 million Agent Builder Incentive Programme to attract developers to its upcoming Agent Hub. The top 10 agents published within the first month will each receive $10,000, with additional rewards for code quality, documentation, and use-case diversity. Agents must be built using LangGraph, and registration is now open.

Rayls announced a $1 million+ Developer Program to onboard builders to its new EVM Layer 1 built on reth with sub-second finality. The program kicked off with a hackathon at Ethereum Devconnect in Buenos Aires on November 18-19. Focus areas include latency-sensitive DeFi applications and bridging TradFi real-world assets to DeFi.

Avalanche Foundation’s infraBUIDL Program provides grants for infrastructure projects that improve user and developer experiences on Avalanche. The program covers wallets, bridges, oracles, and other infrastructure.

Cornaro Labs announced new Web3 grant opportunities, with over 150 active grants now available on their dashboard at web3grants.co. Programs include Local Meetups LATAM (up to $3,000), TEN Ecosystem Grants (up to $10,000), Analog Grants (up to $50,000), and the Warden Agent Programme (a $1 million pool).

COTI Foundation’s Builders Program offers grants up to $100,000 for developers building privacy-focused solutions. Applications are open at build.coti.io for solo developers or teams building privacy applications in the COTI ecosystem.

Ethereum Community Foundation provided an update on the BlobKit Grants program, awarding 1 ETH to Blob House for a game using BlobKit. The program has 11 ETH remaining available for builders using the BlobKit SDK.

Silvi Protocol opened the Bioregional Reforestation Grants Round, seeding $100,000 in matching funds to 8 bioregions for community-led tree planting and ecosystem restoration. The round runs over 8 months, and applications are available at silvi.earth.

Localism Fund announced the Local Meetups LATAM grant round in partnership with the Ethereum Foundation, allocating $30,000 to support recurring Ethereum meetups across Latin America through 2026. Applications are open from November 10 to December 5, 2025, with grantees announced on December 12.

Research

David Dao and co-authors published a research agenda identifying three problems in Ethereum public goods funding: the Deployment Problem, the Allocation Problem, and the Impact Problem. The research draws on six years of experimentation that has distributed over $150 million through Gitcoin, Optimism’s RetroPGF, and other mechanisms.

Tools & Infra

Electric Capital announced Open Dev Data, an open-source dataset and tooling stack for measuring developer activity in the crypto space. The platform tracks thousands of ecosystems, millions of developers, and hundreds of millions of commits, replacing the annual Developer Report with continuously updated data. Access via opendevdata.org or the Python package open-dev-data.

StableLab reintroduced Forse as a growth intelligence platform for protocol teams running grants and incentive programs. The platform unifies onchain and offchain data into modular analytics with counterfactual attribution and cohort tracking. Forse Insights is live, with Forse Agents in private beta.

Kevin Owocki announced a print poster visualizing the history of Gitcoin Grants, covering over 20 rounds and representing over $60 million in public goods funding. Preorders are available at gitcoin.metalabel.com/gghistory.

Woof introduced Streamer, a payment tool that enables DAOs to pay service providers in native tokens while recipients receive a fixed USD value. The tool has distributed over $9.7 million and is available at streamer.woof.software.

For real-time updates on crypto grant and funding developments, join the Crypto Grant Wire on Telegram.