RFP Hub: grants and funding opportunities across web3

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Hi,

I’m George Stefan CrossChainLabs ( https://crosschainlabs.tech), a small team building public-goods infrastructure across web3.

We plan to build an RFP Hub for Ethereum Foundation, a single open place where builders can find all the grants and funding opportunities across web3 instead of checking dozens of sites.

It will work across ecosystems, not just Ethereum. Optimism’s grant rounds are some of the best organised in the space, so we’d love to include the Collective as one of the sources from day one.

Would the Grants Council be open to having grant rounds listed in the Hub?

Thanks!

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This sounds like a valuable initiative, especially for reducing discovery friction around grants. I’m curious how you’re thinking about the Operational side for Optimism specifically data source selection, update frequency, branding/attribution guidelines, and any API or scraping policies you’d rely on for keeping things accurate and up to date.
esp.ethereum

It would also be helpful to understand where you are in the process: have you already received any formal green lights or commitments from other foundations/DAOs, or is this still in an exploratory / design phase?
@georgeccl

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Thanks for the thoughtful response. Quick answers:

Data sources. Official Optimism channels only: Mission Requests on this forum, Council communication threads, RetroPGF rounds, the Foundation grants page.

Update frequency. Daily for active rounds, changes reflected within 24 hours.

Branding and attribution. Every entry links back to the Optimism source, builders go to your platform to apply.

API and scraping. robots.txt respected, conservative rate limits. Scraping is the fallback: as a verified publisher, Optimism could push data to us, with your entries taking precedence over anything scraped.

On status. We’re early, in active outreach to several ecosystems (this forum post is part of that).

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Thanks for the detailed breakdown really appreciate the transparency !

One thing I’m curious about: the Web3 grants/funding discovery space already has several active platforms Snapshot (for governance/voting visibility), Questbook, Gitcoin, and a few others that surface ecosystem opportunities.

From a community perspective, how does RFP Hub differentiate itself from these existing platforms? I ask because if builders are already checking multiple tools, adding another destination could increase confusion rather than reduce friction which seems to be the core problem you’re solving.

Would love to understand: is the goal to become a complementary aggregation layer (with an open API/standard that existing tools can plug into), or a standalone destination? That distinction would really help the community evaluate the long-term value here… @georgeccl @Optimism-Node

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Great question, and the framing in your last paragraph is exactly right.

The RFP Hub is an aggregation layer, not a destination. The product is the open API and the standard data format.

Quick note on the platforms you mentioned, since they each play a different role:

• Snapshot — governance voting, not grants discovery.
• Questbook — grants management software for funders (proposal flow, review, payouts). They run individual programs, they don’t index across ecosystems.
• Gitcoin — operates funding rounds. Their rounds would be one of the sources flowing into the RFP Hub.

So none of these overlap with what the RFP Hub does, they’re either upstream (sources) or adjacent (different problem). What doesn’t currently exist is a shared, open index across all of them with a public API anyone can build on.

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Thanks for the clarification, George the aggregation layer framing makes the value proposition much clearer.

A few follow-up thoughts from a governance/ecosystem perspective:

Data freshness & curation How will the Hub handle grant rounds that are closed or paused? Will there be a status layer (active / deadline-passed / upcoming) so builders aren’t applying to stale opportunities?

Optimism-specific context Optimism’s grant programs (Mission Requests, RetroPGF, Grants Council) have quite different structures and eligibility criteria. Will the API surface those distinctions, or will everything be flattened into a generic “grant” object ?

Sustainability Since this is public-goods infra, is there a long-term sustainability model beyond the Ethereum Foundation grant? Wondering if protocol fees, ecosystem contributions, or a DAO structure is being considered.

Would be great to see Optimism Collective as a launch-day source the grants data here is among the most structured in the space. @georgeccl @Optimism-Node