The Web3 Foundation announces the JAM Director's Award, a prize pool of 10 million DOT aimed at promoting diversity in the development of the JAM protocol. The goal of this award is to encourage the creation of multiple client implementations, thereby improving network resiliency.
What is JAM?
JAM is a prospective path to replacing the relay chain with a more modular and minimalist design. JAM will allow Polkadot to run generic “services,” smart contract logic that can process the result of execution on cores. There will be a parachains service that can run existing Substrate-based parachains, meaning developers will still be able to use Substrate to develop and deploy their own blockchains. These services will have no predefined limits on the amount of code, data, or state they can accommodate; departments may file additional DOTs for greater capacity.
Creating new services is permissionless, without the friction of governance interaction in the current system. The design also includes other technical improvements, such as replacing WebAssembly with the Polkadot virtual machine, based on RISC-V ISA, and SAFROLE, a block production algorithm based on SNARK.
You can learn more about JAM in the Gray paper.
JAM Director’s Award Focus
A truly decentralized protocol should be able to support multiple client implementations. The JAM Implementer's Prize is designed to catalyze this by funding and supporting projects that contribute to the development of JAM implementations from the start. We believe that supporting a range of implementations in various programming languages will strengthen the foundations of the ecosystem. It distributes the power of protocol implementers more widely and reduces the risk that a bug in a single implementation will destroy the entire network.
The JAM Implementer's Prize will complement current and future funding initiatives that support Polkadot's ecosystem and technology stack, such as Decentralized FuturesGrants and Polkadot’s on-chain treasury.
The price will be activated if and when JAM is ratified as Polkadot technology via the network’s on-chain governance mechanism.
What are we looking for?
We are particularly interested in proposals to implement the JAM protocol in various programming environments. As the full JAM specification becomes available, we are looking to support teams excited to develop implementations in languages such as OCaml, Go, and Zig.
How to register
We are still finalizing the details of the application process and more information will be released soon. However, we look forward to engaging with potential participants early on. If you would like to apply for the JAM Implementer's Prize, please complete this form. Once the application details have been finalized, we will contact you to provide more information on how to proceed.