The Grants Council has finished its review of Experiments and Builders Grants for Cycle 13. Cycle 13 presented an opportunity to behold, and add to, the compounding effect of having an operating system that works. While the number of proposals for Cycle 13 was ~34% higher than for Cycle 11, the Council was able to manage Intake, Preliminary, and Final Reviews within the allotted time, all while participating in the Missions process that is separate from the Council.
During Cycle 13, the Grants Council evaluated projects on the merits of their submissions and reviewers conducted methodical analysis of the proposals. There was a marked improvement in the quality of proposals on average, making this a very competitive Cycle. The increase in proposals paired with an increase in novel Web3 applications and use cases.
Of the 106 proposals, the Council voted in favor of 26 (24.5% grant rate vs 33.8% for S3). The Experiments Sub-Committee has voted in favor of 10 projects (a 21% grant rate vs 27% for S3). The Builders Sub-Committee has voted in favor of 16 projects (a 33% grant rate vs. 46% for S4). Some qualified projects were near-misses and are encouraged to submit again within Cycles 14 or 15. As a reminder, proposals are now open until July 27 for Cycle 14 on CharmVerse.
As we move into the remainder of the Season, the Council will focus on initiating more Requests for Grants (RFGs) and on improving the quality of interactions between reviewers and proposers. The Grants process is working well and we are looking forward to making improvements for the rest of Season 4.
Here are the Finalists.
Builders
Aragon (40k OP)
Atlantis World (50k OP)
Cannon (50k OP)
Concrete (35k OP)
DAOstar (37.5k OP)
DeSci World (20k OP)
DRPC.ORG (25k OP)
EAS: Supercharged (50k OP)
evm-runners (25k OP)
Hildr (25k OP)
Karma Grantee Accountability Platform (30k OP)
Opensource Observer (50k OP)
Pyth Network (40k OP)
Redstone (40k OP)
simple-op-stack-rollup (45k OP)
Unruggable Names (30k OP)
Experiments
Aura Finance (150k OP)**
DeBridge (100k OP)
Extra Finance (104k OP)
Layerswap (145k OP)
Metronome (149k OP)
OmniBTC (90k OP)
OP Podcast NFTs (500 OP)
Pendle (112k OP)
Tide Protocol (40k OP)
Velodrome (150k OP)**
RFG
WakeUp Labs (30k)
The finalists can expect outreach from the Foundation to handle KYC, distribution of the grants, and other details in the near term. As always, you can reach out to the Council with any questions at grants@optimism.io. Final milestones will be added as a comment to this post during the week of July 24 or sooner.
The conferral of a grant is not an explicit or implicit promotion or endorsement of the projects, their representations, or their underlying products but rather an acknowledgement that the projects’ applications were deemed most suited to receive a grant given the parameters applied by the mandate of Season 4 governance.
**Note that the Grants Council held a vote regarding projects requesting more than 150k and resolved to grant only 150k in line with the Season 4 charter, primarily based on budget considerations and to favor availability for more projects.