During my time in Istanbul I learned about the program Polygon blockchain is launching to give support to new projects. It is called Polygon Vilage and they plan to spend 110M Matic during 2024.
Today, I was attending an AMA where they explained the different areas they are launching and how to apply. The deadline for some of the categories is next Thursday so you may wanna take a look if you are thinking about building something in any of the Polygon chains.
They are basically supporting two areas, builders and startups. For the first group, you can propose your idea or initiate a project and request financial support, If you are a builder and have no ideas, they will propose some you could work on. They are planning to distribute 170K Matic among those projects that get more votes from the community, so your goal is to work on something unique that captures the eyes of anyone having the power to vote. This voting period will be used to select those projects moving forward the following stage, where they will be using quadratic funding donation formula for a short period of time, giving a bigger portion of a total of 170K Matic to those projects getting more donations during the QF round.
Their idea is that they should support those projects that are closer to what the w3 community feels is a better idea to develop. Quadratic Funding basically leverages the amount of voters, more than the amount of donations you get. You get a much better match having 100 $1 donors than 2 $500 ones as your project convinces many more individuals.
There is no perfect way to select projects but trying to make the do the process using as many people as possible involved is a nice way to try to push those ideas many people like or think they can be a nice project to be built.
For startups, they are not giving away grants, they will be offering a bunch of support from mentors, perks, and presentations on their VC network.
Other chains as Optimism are launching other programs to support projects in the community so you can start to feel the bull run is already here.
You can read here all information published on the Polygon Village program, they will keep adding grant programs as the year goes by so even if you are not ready now but have plans to build something in the future, it may be worth checking the site every once in a while.
