Unlock Announces Grants Program Upgrade

The original Unlock Protocol UDT Grants program was launched in 2021 with a goal to decentralize governance of Unlock Protocol, expand the number of integrations across the Unlock ecosystem, and increase the number of applications built with Unlock.

We’ve taken the learnings from this last year, along with our mission to continue to decentralize at scale, and made significant improvements to the grants program, which we hope will mean the next year is an even bigger success! Here’s what’s new.

Streamlining the grant process and adding new capabilities

For the revamped grants program, we’ve partnered with Wonderverse, a DAO tool for collaboration and organization. Adding a decentralized tool opened up the opportunity to improve workflow and communication across the Unlock grants process. Let’s take a look how!

When a prospective grantee submits their grant application, the Unlock grants committee reviews their submission. We’ve streamlined the grant review process and implemented it via Wonderverse. This should reduce the time it takes from application to committee decision, with a target of returning a decision to the grant applicant within two weeks of their submission.

For grant applications that have been accepted and their milestones have been met, we now have the ability to make UDT grant awards directly from this same integrated system. This means we’ll also be able to speed up the time it takes to distribute grant rewards, getting UDT into the hands of grantees sooner!

I’m also excited to say that it means we now have the capability and capacity to create individual grantee workspaces where we can more closely communicate, educate and support our grantees. The goal is less friction for grantees to get what they need to be successful. This should lead to shorter launch timelines and higher-quality end products.

Improved guides & handbooks

We’ve updated all of our guides and handbooks for grantees and published them in our docs. This should improve the understanding of how the grants program works for those interested in applying.

In addition, our new processes should make adding new grant committee members much easier. This will enable Unlock to scale the program as the ecosystem grows.

Using the experience gained from the over 100 grant applications we received to date, we sought to increase the impact of the projects we give grants to and have made improvements to the grant review guidance for the committee.

What’s next?

We’re thrilled so far with all of these improvements and we’re confident this next season of grants will be even more effective at increasing network volume and adding to the credibility and visibility of Unlock Protocol. On a quarterly basis, the grants committee will review the progress of the program and make proposals to the community for iterative improvements, if needed. This will accelerate the success of the program while maintaining our commitment to decentralization.

👉 Interested in building with us? Fill out an application for one of grants now!

Looking back at the last year: Unlock Protocol grant success stories

Over the past year, the grants program has had success spawning work in areas of plugins and integrations, education, showcases, events, and platform subscriptions. Some of the highlights include:

Integrations & Plugins

Built with Unlock

Events

ETHAnglia

Education

With the upgraded grants program, we can’t wait to see what the community creates next! You can fill out a grant application here!