Blockchain technology and gaming company Polygon announced that its community had voted to unlock the equivalent of $640 million in tokens with the aim of community grants.
The community will unlock one billion tokens in POL/MATIC over 10 years, including 35 million MATIC ($27 million) in Season 01 to fund the best projects in the Polygon Layer 2 blockchain and the Ethereum landscape.
After community consensus, the Community Treasury was created, with one billion POL released over 10 years, with around 100 million POL per year, all intended for manufacturers.
Season 01 of the Community Grants Program, overseen by the neutral Community Treasury Board, will distribute 35 million MATIC to projects leveraging Polygon.
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$27 million from MATIC for season 01
The Community Grants Program will use funds from the Community Treasury for the provision of grants. The Community Treasury accumulates POL, but given the ongoing token upgrade from MATIC to POL, grants for Season 1 will flow into MATIC. Applications are open today.
An open, community-aligned funding framework will mobilize professional grant allocators to distribute a portion of Season 01 funds. Builders are at the heart of Polygon's success.
They showed up at hackathons and accelerators, participated in global meetups and startup support programs. Over the past few years, they have been developing Polygon and building with Polygon technology, becoming a pioneer at the forefront of global innovation.
Thanks to these developers, the Polygon landscape has exploded in terms of growth across different protocols and technologies. It is a thriving, multi-centric community focused on blockchain technology.
What started as village grants, focused solely on Polygon Labs grants, evolved through community consensus to create the Community Treasure: today, applications are open for the Community Grants Program (CGP).
Given the ongoing token upgrade from MATIC to POL (with POL designed to gradually replace MATIC over the next four years), grants for Season 1 will be awarded in MATIC, with 35 million MATIC (currently equivalent at $22.7 million) allocated during the first season. .
The inaugural season offers two distinct pathways to candidates. One for a general grant stream, which anyone, anywhere, building anything on Polygon can apply for. The other is a consumer crypto track, which focuses on consumer-led projects and use cases, which may include gaming, gamified commerce, NFT innovations, content co-creation and much more. Moreover. Grants will be delivered by professional grant allocators.
The grant program follows proposals to ensure Polygon becomes a robust, community-run aggregate chain network.
Projects must build on Polygon or be willing to migrate to Polygon and build for the long term. A number of notable projects have started thanks to Polygon grants: Quickswap, Keom, Jokerace, and Intraverse, to name a few.
The inaugural season offers two distinct paths to candidates:
General Grant Pathway: For anyone, anywhere, building anything on Polygon, this is for you. The General Grants program does not place hard limits on eligible projects, but there are a few key areas we want to see, including developer tools and libraries, protocol infrastructure, and any type of dApp.
Mainstream crypto track: This track focuses on projects that can drive crypto adoption. Consumer-led use cases may include gaming, gamified commerce, decentralized social networks, AI/blockchain integrations, NFT innovations, content co-creation, digital/physical intersections, and communities distributed (also known as scenecoins).
Community-focused funding: Find support now, not later. The framework for deploying Treasury grant funds is open to community feedback, but the reason for this development is simple. At heart, we are developers. We iterate, innovate and work collaboratively.
While the first season of CGP will focus on “consumer crypto,” the overarching goal is to support developers as they build. Waiting for a project to be completed and produce results misses a key element of true innovation: the opportunity to take risks.