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Cartesi Web3 Grants Program is live - what you need to know
Recorded: Feb. 15, 2024 Duration: 0:42:58Space Recording
Full Transcription
I'm the community lead for Charmverse and I'll be your host for the next hour.
If you're not familiar with Charmverse, we are trusted by Optimism, Cartesi, Game 7 and Mantle and it's a Web3 community operations platform for members to build relationships, work together and vote.
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Hello, how are you, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, thanks for having me.
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like a lot of people do where you get introduced into trading you buy bitcoin or if and then you
realize that uh there is this world that exists where there is internet money and then you get
interested to learning more about internet money uh so that was the case for me a friend of mine
introduced me into crypto and then i got very curious i wanted to learn more about you know
what is ethereum what is bitcoin and what what is you know all these cryptocurrencies and blockchain
about um so i went on youtube started researching more about blockchain and then i came across a
video of vitalik he was talking about funding the commons and public goods and that uh got me so
interested so at that time i think it was around 2020 or 2021 um i that time it was uh when uh there
was a lot of stuff around people talking about daos as feature of work so i joined gitcoin and you know
started listening in and uh learning more about what is public good how do we fund you know public
good and open source software and then um you know while in that rabbit hole i made this really good
friend who gifted me an ens name and told me hey this is your web3 identity you can use it for everything
on chain and then you know i got into ens dow where i contributed for like a year uh building and also
as a dow contributor you know chatting a lot about what is public goods for ens and how do we fund public
goods and yeah that's how i got into that and you know that's uh that's why we are here now you fell
down that rabbit hole like so many of us do you dip a toe and then here you are um helping to launch a
grants program which is incredible um so i see someone's requested to speak i'm gonna get into it
a little bit a little bit with helen start talking about this grants program the mission behind
cartesi and then we will take questions in a little bit but i want to dive into it um before we start
bringing people up so what is the mission behind cortesi grants yeah our mission is actually very
simple number one uh we want to support developers and projects and talents that are launching novel
applications on cartesi and are contributing towards the growth of the ecosystem and number two we want
to attract exceptional community members who can you know become long-term contributors in the ecosystem
and who align with our mission um so yeah that's essentially um our mission of the grant program
is this your first round uh of grant no uh yeah we launched uh our courtesy grants program we started
with a pilot program which is what uh led to with one of our programs so yeah i would say this is uh
wave one but we initially started with experimenting with how can we fund projects in the ecosystem how does
that look like and our pilot program really shaped uh with one uh program that we currently have
so did a little experimentation but this is kind of like your first official
grants launch is that safe to say yeah okay amazing yeah and when did this launch happen how long has the
current program been up and running yeah we launched i think uh january 13th so i would say we are pretty much
two weeks in into the process amazing how are you feeling about everything so far i mean are you breathing a
little easier now i know it's so much to get these programs launched and to prepare and it can be super
stressful connective we are doing great because uh campus is very helpful um in terms of receiving
applications and helping with reviewing and yeah we haven't really had any issues so far with the
application process or grantees having any issues so i'd say yeah amazing we love to hear that we love to
hear that but you know like i said i know you know working with you um behind the scenes on stuff
how much work you and your team put into this so i'm glad to hear you're happy with how it's all going so
far what is your role um at cartesi grants yeah my role is a grant steward um doing all the fun stuff
around you know grants and funding projects and you know leading the grants program and you know stream
learning the process um so yeah and so are you part of the grants council as well because i know you
have a grants council that will be evaluating so you're part of the council um is that pretty much
the sole purpose of the grants council is it to mostly do the evaluations of the applications or do
they have other purposes um in the community yeah so uh our grants program uh we also see it as a
governance experiment uh our goal is to continue decentralizing the program and getting community
more involved so uh grants council is in charge of reviewing proposals and helping applicants shape
their proposals but essentially the goal for what gets funded is decided by the community through our
the community vote so community vote um will ultimately decide who's getting the grants
yeah and who how do you how do you become a grant council member does the community vote people in
will it change on the next wave how does that work yeah um so yeah since uh grants program started as a
pilot and then you know launching wave one at the moment the grants council consists of um technical
reviewers who are from the core team but our plan is to get the grants program to scale and get to a
point where we can have community members applying to join in as reviewers and you know being part of the
grants program and getting get get getting voted in by the community as well to become you know um
technical reviewers or in charge of running the program essentially that is our long-term plan yeah yeah
so it'll get switched up throughout the different waves who's a part of it but um again cartesi is just
kind of getting up and running with their official grants program so you learn along the way and what
works and what doesn't and iron out the details as you go um so okay so listeners we're talking with
cat helen who's a grant steward of the cartesi project grants program um they're currently up
and running they're using charmverse to collect applications so if you are looking for a web3 grant
definitely check them out um you're going to want to go to at cartesi project um or cartesi.io is
their website and you can find your way to the grants program and we're just talking all about how it works
so helen as we talk about this application process walk us through what people can expect um you know
the application process itself but then also the evaluations and how that works
yeah so uh the evaluation process or you know also with the application process you know goes through
three stages so once we receive the applications on tamvers uh the grants council will do a preliminary
review to filter applications and you know understand more about the proposal and then within seven days of
receiving the application the grants council will provide feedback on the applicant and they can
either schedule a call or follow up with questions based on the proposal and then um the applicant is
expected to refine the proposal based on that feedback and then um after the proposal has been refined
the grants council will discuss the refined proposal through our weekly sync and then uh you know
the grant council will conduct an internal vote to determine whether that certain proposal can be
recommended to the community for a wider approval and then if that is the case if the internal vote
passes then the grants council will provide a report or a summary to the community about that particular
project and how they they reviewed that proposal and then community can use that to
essentially vote on the project and decide whether it gets funded or not amazing and i do want to dive
in in a little bit to how you're using charmburst and some of the features that you are employing to go
through this evaluation process but first i want to um so you said you do offer guidance throughout
this you're going to offer feedback and help people who who need a little help you know if this is their first
time submitting a grant they have access to um a team of people that are going to help guide them
through the process or give feedback on their application yeah essentially the grants council is
always available to provide feedback um applicants or anyone can book a call literally with the grants
council and then you know you can have a chat with us one-on-one to discuss your proposal or your project
idea and then we can help you shape your proposal um so yeah so listeners if you're interested in
applying to this it's just good to know because you'll you'll go through an application process
there's a lot of information that you'll be asked to fill out but you know don't hesitate to publish
that proposal and and get that feedback right you have a team of people that know what they're looking
for that are there to help you that are there to offer guidance so um definitely take advantage of
that if you are applying to this program so what kind of tracks do we have happening what kind of
tracks can people expect to see yeah so for one of our grants program we are allocating 500k to
four different categories of funding and essentially the baseline criteria for all these categories is
we are looking for projects that you know will utilize courtesy technology in a meaningful way um and
maybe just to talk a bit about each category um the first category is gaming uh for this category we
are looking for uh we are looking to promote development of games that are leveraging courtesy and especially
any infrastructure or tooling that simplifies game development on courtesy and um yeah we are very
huge on supporting public goods and open source software so uh the tools and frameworks that you know are
built we expect them to be public goods and you know tools that can be reused by developers um and then the
the second category is developer tooling and for this category we want to support tools that improve the
developer experience on courtesy um any frameworks also that make it easy to build applications on courtesy
uh you know highly encouraged uh and also we want to support any analytics or monitoring tools as well
and um the third category is research and integration uh for this category we had we have two tracks and the
first track is we want to support research and proof of concept of integration so if you want to do any
integration on courtesy we encourage first to apply for an initial grant that showcases how the integration
will look like and then after that you can apply for an additional grant to scale the integration and
then the second track for research integrations uh we are looking for uh any research other any any
applications around research and development um this can include uh any interesting research honestly in
the web3 space uh we believe that web3 is a very fast evolving space and we want to attract any projects
or teams that want to do any you know interesting research on cartesi and also specifically we want
research around consensus mechanisms zk and cartesi uh risk five and yeah any also any any research also
around the cartesi machine as well um something that we are interested in and then the final category
is new ideas and uh decentralized applications for this particular category we wanted uh to at least
have one category that is for open applications so if you're applying for a grant and your project
doesn't fit on either gaming or developer tooling or research and integrations definitely this category is
for you so um yes the the fourth category in the ideas and apps is for open applications but we are also
interested to seeing uh projects that want to build solutions that address topics around consensus
mechanisms and fts defy um on this category as well so overall um we interpreted these categories very
broadly and you know if you have any projects and you want to build on cartesi please feel free to
submit your application or also you know send me a dm as well i'm always looking to chat with people
and i know this space is recorded but also if you want to learn more about each category um you can learn
more on our landing page on campus as well yeah definitely go check it out um like helen said there's
there's kind of a wide variety of things that you can be building for this grant so i definitely
encourage you to check it out um are you seeing i mean is is it kind of spread out is it kind of even
what people are applying to are you seeing a focus on a certain category
uh yeah so far it's been uh uh not on specific category i think we've seen applications on
research applications or dev tooling as well and new ideas and also some on gaming so yeah it's
distributed i like that's great so do you so you said you have five hundred thousand dollars that
you in total that you will be giving away um in grants for this wave are you breaking that i'm
just curious i'm always curious how different grants programs operate so are you kind of allotting
a certain amount to each category or are you kind of like whatever the top projects that are voted on
that's it you're not um yeah that's yeah that's a good question yeah we allocated 500k into uh we
distributed into the four categories for the new ideas and tabs we've allocated 150k for research and
integrations we've allocated 100k for developer tooling 100k and gaming 150k yeah and is there
like a maximum number of projects that you plan to fund is it like one from each category
honestly no we are just looking at the kind of applications that we are getting and sort of using
that to see how it evolves but at the moment because we also just launched we are not really uh limiting
the number of applications that we are expecting to receive one category all right so it's currently
open um also listeners if you do have questions as we're talking through this please raise your hand
i will be happy to bring you up to ask questions or if you're in the process maybe and you have a
question um we have helen here one of the grant stewards so um i'm sure she would be able to
answer those questions for you um when so you've been up and running for two weeks when is the
application deadline how long is this uh program going to be running for yeah wave one is running for
four months and we are accepting applications on a rolling basis so we don't have a deadline yet for
when the deadline after four months it's uh i think that is something that will communicate
towards the end of four months but at the moment yeah we are we are accepting applications on a rolling
basis so um feel free to submit your application yeah amazing so people have time to kind of get in there
and submit their applications ask their questions you have time to kind of review stuff as you go i assume
um so let's see you launched on charmverse and i just want to talk about some of the features
you're using but i guess first i'm curious what made you choose charmverse as your platform to launch
to launch this program yeah uh first of all i'm a huge fan of them but uh our pilot program we
were hosting it on the on our governance forum and one of the things that we quickly realized was
it was getting it was becoming a challenge for community and also the core team and applicants to
track their proposals to understand what stages their proposals were in and we wanted to make sure that
this process can be easy and you know applicants can understand where the where their proposals are
at so that was one of the things that we really uh chose canvas uh you know you guys help a lot with
communications as well like any any proposal once it's submitted you get notified uh the grantee as
well or the applicant if a community member or a grant council leaves a comment on their proposal they
can get notified as well so you guys have a very robust uh notification system which is also something
that we were looking for and another thing i would say a because for with one we wanted to have different
tracks for funding um that would definitely be a challenge if we were doing that on our governance forum
like with canvas where we can create and manage different applications templates for each category
um so that was also something that we really wanted to have um and yeah another thing i would say is
canvas really provides a good workspace for our grants council to manage applications and also tasks
as well during the review process well that was a great plug thank you um
no we're so happy to have cartesi running on on charmverse and like i said helen i've been working
with you you're an absolute pleasure um and i've just found myself really enjoying setting these grants
programs up um and they're all just such for such great causes and great people running them
um so listeners just to break down some of the features that helen was mentioning
uh proposal tracking so they were able to create templates for each of their funding categories with
each of the questions in a form field makes it very easy and organized to fill out you're able to require
some information you can keep some information private so if they want to collect a wallet address
or an email they can keep that private so only the author of that proposal and the admin of the space or the
grants council are actually able to view that so they can keep things private that don't need to be
shared with the rest of the community because cartesi also is allowing the proposals to be viewed by the
other applicants in the space um and not all grants programs do this but i think it's really great
because people learn from other grant applicants um is that one of the the reasons behind why you chose to
keep the those public yeah absolutely yeah yeah i mean i think it's great i think especially if you're
a first-time applicant to a grants program it's kind of nice to be able to look at someone else's
application and make sure you're doing it right or am i giving enough information or you know am i
describing my project well enough so i think that's a great idea to keep those things public
uh yeah it's also go ahead yeah i was going to say that it also helps you maybe to have a look at
other proposals and see how you can shape your proposal as well so yeah and also maybe provide
feedback if you're a community member and maybe you found one proposal that is really interesting to
you uh we are always welcoming the community to provide feedback to the applicants or the grantees
um yeah i think that's a great thing too is to have the peer feedback available so if i can
click into someone's application and i notice something or had a suggestion about something
they're working on um you can make a comment right on there to that author or for the rest of the
community to see um and yeah i think it can be really helpful to have that support from your peers
um another thing that we mentioned was the workflow so there's you know you publish your
application and it is in an initial review that the grants council can start to rate but they were
able to build out a custom workflow that best suited the cartesi grants program so you know having a
preliminary review and then a final review and then as helen said ultimately it will be a community vote
on the top projects that will receive grants so all of those were able to be set up but if you wanted
to have a feedback stage or a spam filter stage or whatever works for your community you can set that
workflow up for you so that's actually a fairly new feature that we implemented right before cartesi
launched so really exciting to have it in action and working for you guys um and another thing as part
of that workflow is a rubric evaluation so it's a scoring matrix that they can score in uh both
review processes the grants council can go in there and score i believe your scoring matrix is probably one
through five on all this different criteria that they choose to set and then they can rate each project
accordingly they can give feedback to the applicants the applicants can make changes if they need to
improve their applications and then move on to the next phase so a lot of new features that we've
released that are just so exciting to see in action um helen are you i don't believe so but you're not
using the milestones feature on this round are you attaching milestones to proposals
yeah we are not using that at the moment but probably it is something that we might consider
uh throughout the wave one based on you know the workflow and the tasks that grants council will
need to manage and i think it is a very good feature especially helping with managing and tracking
proposals and milestones yeah i mean that's what you're saying being able to manage proposals and
do the evaluations and the potential to pay out milestones or track milestones and then pay out
for them um all on one platform which is something that uh you don't find very often so helen as usual if
you do choose that you want to attach milestones to proposals of course let me know and i'm always happy to help
um and another feature that we just launched that i just sent helen a video about recently was
credentials so now grants programs can actually and web3 communities can issue credentials for
applicants um of a grant program for just submitting a proposal just participating in the
grant program so that could be one credential that could be issued and then a second credential or
you don't even need to do that one you could just do the one if a proposal is accepted so you could
essentially um set send a credential to someone if they became um a grantee of cartesi so just kind
of neat a new feature that we just launched like i said i just sent this to helen the other day so um
but kind of neat for these grant programs or communities and we're going to continue to add
these credentials to charmers because we want to encourage people to contribute and we want people to be
able to almost build out a resume of their contributions and what they're doing in web3
so all very exciting things happening over here and like i said happy to um yeah just be supporting
cartesi in this awesome grants program so okay so what were some challenges because grants programs like
i said it's a lot of effort to get up and running what are some of the challenges you came across maybe for
our listeners that are thinking about doing this what are some challenges you came across while
launching this program and just getting it up and running
honestly i would say this maybe probably will sound like a cliche but we haven't really had
any challenges at all again uh campus has been very very helpful uh throughout the process
before launching after launching um so yeah we haven't really had any challenges so far since
launching two weeks ago i would say amazing congratulations i love that um i feel like that's
not common so let's keep rolling with that i'm gonna knock on wood right now because that's fantastic to
hear um so what about advice could you give advice first let's start with advice for maybe writing a
winning grant proposal do you have some tips for people that might be applying
yeah um number one it's really milestones like and you you ensure that uh when you are submitting your
proposal you have really outlined your milestones and how that looks like during your development journey
for that particular project that's one thing that grants council really looks at during evaluation stage
um and also the proposal has to really demonstrate uh understanding of the technology and how
you are going to use um courtesy during your development process uh for your project uh also what is the aim
of your project what is the scope and i think another thing that you also really look at is a tangible use
case of a breed technology um but yeah essentially uh i would say like the main ones is demonstrating
understanding of courtesy technology how you are going to use courtesy and really clearly
uplining the milestones for your project um yeah all right friends if you're applying you just got some
hot tips from one of the grant council members so make sure you take that into account like you said
there's a lot of information to fill out but you have time to do it so don't rush it if you have
questions reach out to the grants council dm helen um look at other people's applications see what
they're doing that's part of the reason they're keeping these proposals open for members to see
but take your time because this could be the project that helps you sustain a bit longer with
your project or get it up and running um how about for people that want to host a grants program
what about advice for them and maybe something that you learned along the way that maybe you wish you
had known before you started yeah i would say something that um i would advise like when launching a
grants program which we also you know realized uh during uh before we launched wave one during our pilot
program is really understanding what are the short-term and long-term needs for the ecosystem and your
community and aligning those needs with your grants program to essentially ensure that you are funding
impact impact projects that are solving needs for your community um i think that is the most important
thing uh in my opinion when launching a grants program you have to understand what are the needs for
your community and then aligning those needs uh with your grants program so that you can ensure that
your community can keep building and you can keep funding projects that are having high impact to
your ecosystem and yeah you know the project as a whole that's great advice definitely take that into
account now why so i feel like when i first got into this space it was a lot of talk about venture capital
why go web3 grants over venture capital if you needed to make a pitch that this was the way to go to
get started yeah i'm not a huge fan of venture capital as well but honestly our goal is to grow
the number of contributors uh meaningfully contributing in in our ecosystem and you know the number of
people as well that are building open source software usable tools for the community and i feel like grants
aligns align well with that mission um and yeah i mean uh we already have we already see a lot happening
with vcs and in web2 so why should we replicate that as well so um but yeah essentially the goal for
cartesi we want to grow the number of you know folks and quadritus building in the ecosystem and we want
folks to build tools and uh you know open source software that can be used by other developers that
are coming into our ecosystem and grants feels like a good way to do this um yeah absolutely like i said
i think grants grants programs have become so big in this space and i just i think it's it's wonderful
for for people that are you know getting started and building these amazing tools um so congratulations
on the launch and i wish you all the best of luck for the coming months um and going through applications
i'm sure we will be in touch but what did i miss what do people need to know about this grants program
um yeah i feel like we've touched on um everything about the grants program maybe to reiterate we are
allocating 500k to four different categories of funding if it's gaming developer tooling uh research
integrations and new ideas and decentralized applications and we are looking for you know any
early stage builders and talents or projects that want to contribute meaningfully into the cartesi
ecosystem and yeah please feel free to submit your application my dms are also open i am recently
having so much fun meeting new people talking to them and just seeing what kind of projects and
ideas that people are looking to build um so yeah feel free to shoot me a dm as well
listeners cartesi grants program up and running currently 500 000 that they will be giving away
this wave um be sure to follow at cartesi project they are on the space right now so click that pfp
make sure you click on helen's pfp as well give her a follow and go to cartesi.io you can get all of
the information about the cartesi project um about the grants program and be directed to the charmer
space to go start working on your application why would you pass it up amazing funding categories um
a wide array of things that you can be building for this to help continue to build out the cartesi
ecosystem helen so exciting it's so nice to have you on here today i um yeah i love what you guys are
doing i'm really excited to be working with you on it and we're honored to have you running on charmers
yeah thank you um it's also been an honor working with you as well and you know some of us team and
you know helping us get the program running and you know we get to fund projects and folks who are
building the ecosystem and yeah really happy and grateful for um yeah chambas partnering with us
and helping us throughout the process as well well we're always here we are so happy to help
i'm really excited to follow along on the journey and find out who the grant winners are and um yeah
listeners don't slack go apply for a cartesi grant um go start building go start filling out your
application go check it all out but thank you to everyone for being here today for checking it out
if you are applying i wish you the best of luck and helen we will certainly be in touch along the way
and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions and yeah best of luck to cartesi and kudos to you
guys for just putting together an amazing project yeah thank you appreciate it wonderful thanks for
having me um yeah it was really fun chatting about uh our grants program and yeah absolutely maybe we'll
have to have you back once you wrap everything up and we can kind of do a recap of what's going on or
next wave stuff and and keep the conversation going but i i'm excited to follow along and hear
everything that's happening so thanks again for being here helen i know it's late where you are so
go get some rest and listeners thanks for being here and we'll see you next time bye everybody
yeah bye everyone
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