Panvala issues grants of its own token for work that makes Ethereum safer. The first batch of 2,119,836 tokens will be released on February 1, and the first applications for those tokens have already been submitted. We’re happy to have some of the top teams in the Ethereum community participating in the program: Gnosis, Status and Level K are the first teams to apply for grants. They’re not changing their roadmaps to earn these tokens — these teams already use their own funds to make Ethereum safer. Panvala organizes them under one banner to make these efforts sustainable so their work isn’t limited by the funds they already have.

These teams already use their resources to support the broader Ethereum ecosystem. The Gnosis Ecosystem Fund issues grants to Ethereum projects, and Status contributes to the Ethereum Community Fund, which funds open source projects and research that benefit the Ethereum ecosystem. Teams that issue their own grants or invest in startups are prime candidates for earning Panvala token grants in the system’s infancy. In this context, Panvala is a network of ecosystem funds that seek sustainability together without any shared financial accounts. If we succeed, instead of eventually depleting their money and shutting down, these ecosystem funds will use their Panvala tokens to continuously replenish the money they spend on work that makes Ethereum safer.

What can teams do with their tokens?

Grant recipients will receive Panvala tokens so they can help govern Panvala itself. Early grant recipients will have a strong say in the work that earns future grants to help make better decisions: people who have already made Ethereum safer will decide who should be rewarded for future work that makes Ethereum safer. They’ll also help govern the Panvala Mark staking game, where smart contract authors stake tokens that are lost if security flaws are found. These grant recipients can make significant donations back to Panvala itself by depositing the tokens they’ve earned back into the token capacitor so more tokens can be issued in future grants.

You can join them: if your team currently has plans to do work that makes Ethereum safer, apply here by January 18 for the best chance of getting into the first batch and email us for help. The second batch with 2,029,962 tokens will be released on May 3.

For more information about how Panvala works, check out the Panvala One-Pager.

Gnosis

The Gnosis Safe brings the security of smart contract wallets to normal users with a convenient mobile app. Gnosis has applied for 500,000 PAN tokens for their work on Gnosis Safe Recovery. The current prototype implements social recovery: a user can specify the addresses of friends who can replace lost keys. Upcoming work will extend that mechanism with time-lock recovery, where users who attempt to replace lost keys must stake tokens that are lost if the original key is used during the challenge period. When this is implemented, these mechanisms will undergo thorough user research, and a recovery interface will be integrated into Gnosis Safe.

In addition to the work that the Gnosis team performs directly to make Ethereum safer, they have also created the Gnosis Ecosystem Fund to fund projects that improve Gnosis and Ethereum in general. If your project is unable to fund itself, Panvala token grants aren’t the right choice for you yet. Instead, we encourage you to apply for Gnosis Ecosystem Fund grants. The first application deadline is on March 31 for up to $125,000 in grants.

Status

Status is an Ethereum wallet, dapp browser, and messaging app that aims to bring the power and promise of the decentralized Web to everyone with an Internet connection. Status is applying for 250,000 PAN tokens for building a tool that helps teams in the Ethereum ecosystem monitor their smart contracts and assets, and trigger warnings when events have been triggered by accounts that shouldn’t be able to.

Level K

Level K builds and performs security audits on decentralized applications for their clients. Most recently, they disclosed a malicious GasToken minting attack that allows attackers to drain funds from cryptocurrency exchanges. Level K is applying for two token grants. They seek 200,000 PAN to add dynamic oracles to Tidbit, their modular and composable library for building oracles on Ethereum. They also seek 225,000 PAN to abstract voting weight from token holdings in Registry Builder, their modular library for token curated registries. Both of these libraries help Ethereum developers reuse more audited contract code as the basis for their experimentation.

Panvala Awards Committee

This month, the Panvala Awards Committee will evaluate these applications, along with any other applications that come in before they convene. The current members of the Panvala Awards Committee are Evan Van Ness, Bryant Eisenbach, and Pol Lanski.