Fantom Announces Community-First Funding Initiative With Gitcoin’s Grant Protocol to Bolster dApp Development

Creates New Development Incentives for Fantom-Native Projects

SYDNEY, Australia, Nov. 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fantom, one of the fastest-growing layer-1 blockchain platforms, today announced the next wave of its grants program alongside Gitcoin, the leading platform for open source development in Web3. Through this collaboration, Fantom will allow the ecosystem builders within the Fantom Network to participate in a test round on Gitcoin’s new grants protocol. Currently in beta, Gitcoin will be deploying its protocol on the Fantom Network to allow Fantom projects access to funding in a democratic manner. Gitcoin will work alongside the Fantom Foundation to bolster dApp development on the network, and enable users to directly support promising projects.

Gitcoin has long been a cornerstone in funding for open source software in Web3. To date, Gitcoin has contributed over $72M, onboarded 312,000 active developers, and supported over 2,500 development projects through bounties, hackathons, and grant programs. By deploying a round on top of grants protocol, Fantom is streamlining funding for Fantom-native projects. All Fantom projects on the Fantom Network will be eligible to apply for matched incentive rewards, with allocations decided by Fantom users.

The Fantom Incentive Program will look to provide:

Greater support across project verticals, including DeFi, gaming, NFTs, infrastructure, etc.
An empowered Fantom community with decentralized voting on the grant allocations.
Support for up-and-coming projects new to Fantom.

“We’re excited to see Fantom leveraging Gitcoin’s grants protocol to fund digital public goods in their local community,” said Azeem Khan, Head of Partnerships at Gitcoin. “Gitcoin Grants has helped countless projects, developers, designers, artists, and builders achieve their visions, and we hope the protocol will enable other programs to do the same in a scalable, permissionless way.”

The collaboration with Fantom marks the beginning of Gitcoin's transition to a permissionless, community-driven funding protocol through a series of initial test rounds. As DeFi grows and becomes more accessible, incentive programs play a critical role in developing the ecosystem. Fantom intends to be at the forefront of the growth of the space by making funds available to the projects with the most backing and participation from their individual communities.

Now, users within the Fantom ecosystem can donate to the projects they believe in and want to support. From seed to established projects, Fantom will allow eligible projects to apply for matched incentives using their Quadratic Funding mechanism. Fantom users vote on allocations, with higher $FTM matching rewards going to the projects that have the most support from the community.

“We could not be more excited to welcome Gitcoin to the Fantom ecosystem, and to allow our incredible community to further support projects,” said Fantom CEO, Michael Kong. “We look forward to introducing this proven incentive structure to our community, and rewarding the exciting projects that are being built on Fantom.”

To learn more about Gitcoin’s Fantom deployment or to submit an application, visit: grantshub.gitcoin. Follow Gitcoin on Twitter, and join the conversation on Discord.

To learn more about Fantom, visit: https://fantom.foundation. Follow Fantom on Twitter, and join the conversation on Telegram and Discord.

ABOUT FANTOM

Fantom is a fast, scalable, and secure layer-1 EVM-compatible platform built on a permissionless aBFT consensus protocol. On Fantom, transactions are confirmed in around one second and cost on average one cent. Speed, low transaction costs, and high throughput make Fantom ideal for DeFi applications and real-world use-cases.

ABOUT GITCOIN

Gitcoin (GTC) is an Ethereum token that enables community governance of the Gitcoin platform. This allows coders and developers to get paid to work on open-source software in a wide variety of programming languages. Gitcoin has facilitated over $21 million in grants and bounties for open-source developers.

Contact:
Isaiah Jackson
Howl Labs
E: isaiah@howl.xyz
P: 805 674 7348

NOTES

Statistic of growth on Fantom:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c1u3y6UJ-F5Dam0_Nz-xDmA5e3Ful1cT_SCjGg_BrBo/edit#gid=0

https://gitcoin.co/about

We are creating community and infrastructure for Web 3 — a diverse range of tools, technologies, and networks that enable people to work for the open internet.
By funding projects, building community, and making learning resources accessible, we are teaming up to create the digital public infrastructure of tomorrow.
- Statistics
  - $72m funded to open source
  - 312k active devs
  - 2.48k projects created

New 335m FTM Incentive Program with Gitcoin Grants

The original Fantom Incentive Program has received more than 100 applications and disbursed over 35 million $FTM to some of the top TVL projects on Fantom
Fantom’s users decide on the allocations, with greater FTM matching rewards going to the projects that are most loved and supported by their users.
Not every project needs to have huge TVL or usage numbers. Achieving product-market success takes time. We want the incentive program accessible to builders targeting smaller and more niche audiences. And allow them space for trial and error.
Fantom will participate in the immediate next Gitcoin Grants round, scheduled in June. As a special launch event, the Foundation will match user donations with 3M FTM in this first round. Subsequent rounds will receive 1.5M FTM in matching each round.

Previous Grants Program

35m FTM distributed
Protocols are rewarded based on their time-weighted average TVL. At the moment, there are four bands as follows:
- $5,000,000 to $50,000,000 TVL = 1,000,000 FTM
- $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 TVL = 1,800,000 FTM
- $100,000,000 to $200,000,000 TVL = 5,000,000 FTM
- $200,000,000 TVL and above = 12,000,000 FTM

We believe that builders and devs know best how to allocate funds, so there are no restrictions on how awards may be used – whether to build the protocol or even for liquidity mining.

https://unblock.net/round13-gitcoin-grants/

This funding mechanism matches the contributions from everyday individuals with a pool of funds from matching partners. As such, the funds collected in the matching pools are used to magnify the individual contributions of the community. This means that projects with larger community support will get better fund matching than those with fewer, big donors.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1237821/defi-market-size-value-crypto-locked-usd/

https://future.a16z.com/the-web3-playbook-using-token-incentives-to-bootstrap-new-networks/