The Web3 Foundation was established in Zug, Switzerland by Dr. Gavin Wood, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Ethereum. The Web3 Foundation mainly funds the R&D team of the decentralized technology stack. In December 2018, the Foundation first announced the General Grants plan , focusing on funding open source projects related to Polkadot and Substrate (Polkadot's open source modular toolkit), each project can receive up to $100,000 in funding. Around March 2020, the foundation launched a new funding program "Open Grants", each project can receive up to 30,000 US dollars in funding, and as of now, there are 226 projects in the Polkadot ecosystem, and the coverage is very wide .
From 2019 to 2020, the sponsorship of the Web3 Foundation is divided into six batches. Officially, their autonomous projects can be divided into several different types: finance, identity/ownership, privacy, Internet of Things, social networking etc., also includes development areas at all levels of the Web3 technology stack, from low-level infrastructure to ecosystem components such as wallets, parachains, layer-2 scaling solutions, bridges, and developer tools.
How to apply for the foundation grant plan?
For teams looking for $30,000 or less, the fastest way to get approved is through the open grants program on github, where applications can be approved in just 24 hours.
Teams with more complex applications, seeking larger grants, or increased privacy need to apply through the General Grants program, which may take longer to be approved, and it is best to submit a full development roadmap.
How does the project deeply participate in the Polkadot ecology?
A project that is deeply involved in the Polkadot ecosystem basically requires participation in the following requirements. At the current stage when Polkadot has not yet been officially launched, projects that generally join the Polkadot ecosystem will start with the use of the Substrate technical framework.
One of the paths to becoming a Polkadot ecological project can be summarized as:
1. First use Substrate for development
2. Apply for a grant from the Web3 Foundation
3. Apply to join the Substrate Builder Program / Web3.0 Bootcamp
4. Participate in Polkadot online and offline activities
5. Active in Polkadot official media accounts and communities
6. Election Polkadot Parachain
In addition to this, there is another way to participate. With the launch of Polkadot and the launch of the parachain, the project party can directly bid for the slot of the parachain or bridge to Polkadot to share the security and nodes of Polkadot.
