As previously revealed in the Raiden Trust launch announcement, the Raiden Trust team has been working on setting up a Raiden Network ecosystem grant program.

The Raiden Trust’s mission is to strengthen and foster the greater Raiden ecosystem by supporting projects and individuals working on complementary or foundational components or applications that help to build and grow the Raiden Network.

We are happy to share that the Raiden Trust is now open to accept grant applications.

Criteria for eligible grant applications

Beneficial for the greater Raiden Network ecosystem

We are offering grants to anyone that contributes to building and growing the Raiden Network ecosystem. This definition of eligible grant applications is purposely kept very broad to allow for a wide range of projects. Projects supported could vary from someone contributing to an open source library that the Raiden Network relies on to building a Raiden Network mobile wallet. It also means that a grant application can be anything from a small side project to an effort requiring several full-time employees.

Open source

Projects must be open-source or at least plan to open-source near-term.

No immediate plan to seek equity or similar for-profit funding

Projects should not plan to raise capital via equity financing or token sale models in the foreseeable future.

What we offer

Funding

The size of the grant depends on your requirements and budget projections. The maximum grant size is intended to not exceed $100,000. Receiving consecutive grants is possible depending on the progress of your project.

Mentorship

Leverage the potential of your project through mentorship by providing you access to our network in the Ethereum ecosystem. For example, if you encounter technical problems a Raiden Network core developer may be able to help you.

Examples of what we wish to fund

While we know that the possibilities of eligible grant applications are endless and that the best ideas may be entirely unexpected, we want to provide you with some categories and specific ideas that we think would make a great grant application:

Research, e.g. economics PhD researching p2p payment channel networks, especially with respect to the so-called “imbalanced channel” problem, see here

e.g. economics PhD researching p2p payment channel networks, especially with respect to the so-called “imbalanced channel” problem, see here Development tools or extensions, e.g. building a Raiden client or Raiden library in another language

e.g. building a Raiden client or Raiden library in another language Applications on top of Raiden, e.g. a file-sharing service with micropayments; also see more hacking ideas here

e.g. a file-sharing service with micropayments; also see more hacking ideas here User adoption, e.g. creating educational resources, organizing meetups, hosting workshops, etc.

e.g. creating educational resources, organizing meetups, hosting workshops, etc. UX improvements, e.g. building a more advanced wallet, wallet integrations or Raiden Network visualizations

Please note that we do not intend to grant funding to projects which are on the core roadmap of the Raiden Network project itself. If you want to work on the core roadmap you can always apply directly for jobs at brainbot. You can see what’s on the roadmap here.

Application process

Grants are reviewed in waves

There will be a submission window starting and closing every two months. While collecting new submissions, we will review grant applications from the previous round. All grant applications will be reviewed at the latest two months after its respective submission window ended.

The first submission window starts on June 21, closes on August 31 and all grant applications submitted before this date will be reviewed at the latest by October 30. The subsequent submission window will start on the close of the previous window.

The decision-making process

The Raiden Trust is managed by the trustees of the Raiden Trust, who are supported by a team of grant managers as well as an advisory board consisting of subject matter experts. If you want to learn more about our legal structure, read the legal launch blog post here.

The process to decide whether the Raiden Trust will provide a grant to a project is straightforward and follows the pattern below:

A grant application is submitted via this form The Raiden Trust team conducts an initial screening If the initial screening is successfully passed, the advisory board will further review the application The grant manager and/or the advisory board may want to conduct an interview with the applicant and/or ask for additional information The advisory board makes a recommendation to the trustees The trustees will then take the final decision

Please note that the information above is subject to change and will get updated as we learn along. If you have suggestions you can always reach out to us.

Do you have any further questions regarding the application process? Make sure to read our more detailed guidelines here. Otherwise, we are happy to help you at contact@raidentrust.li.