Funding Platform within the NEAR Ecosystem_Nicole Tay

okay great hi everyone and welcome to why you should apply for a near foundation grant my name is nicole tay and i'm the strategy and communications lead for the funding team at the near foundation i learned about decentralized tech in 2017 actually through like a public health lens and since then i left my job in pharma advertising to pursue my love of decentralization and in particular to participate in this grand human experiment of if we can use decentralized tech to decentralize power for this reason i do a lot of education work primarily aimed at like zoomers on tick-tock i was drawn to the near foundation because of yes a bunch of like really cool people that were very nice but also like just how much decentralization is baked into the dna of everything the nf is doing so i think what really stands out to me about the near foundation is our commitment to decentralization as a technology and a philosophy it's really the cornerstone for the deep cultural investment that we've made in a multi-chain future diversity equity and inclusion and accessibility starting with a multi-chain future we are here to help build an integrated and collaborative cross-chain world one where blockchains can work together to build simple scalable and secure ways of onboarding the world to web 3. aurora and rainbow bridge are two such projects allowing users and devs to easily move assets between the near and etherium ecosystems de i is a massive important component to the nf and what we do on the funding team as we're thinking about deploying 250 million dollars into this global ecosystem and building this decentralized future we know that we can't do this alone nor should we we want local leaders to decide what's best for their communities in adopting decentralized technology that's why we want to diversify the communities this capital reaches as well as the types of projects that we fund an equitable decentralized future does not happen without marginalized communities and it does not happen without diversity and inclusion lastly in terms of accessibility we have a strong commitment to education as well as user experience and design in the same vein as dee and i if you're building for a for mainstream adoption in an effort to ultimately decentralize power we need simple accessible ux all right so drilling down from our values let's take a look at our ecosystem uh the takeaway here is that we have a lot of activity and now we have a ton of funding to support it jumping into our core vision on the funding team specifically these are the four focus areas that we're really aiming towards in terms of overall success of our platform we want to support the creator triangle provide easy access to existing resources in the ecosystem obviously you know support new projects and ideas through funding and to really set up projects and partners to succeed with us by aligning on milestones for growth as far as the broad funding platform grants comprises a part of the many funding opportunities at the near foundation notably within grants the proximity lab program is focused on defy grants and the aurora program is focused on projects built on aurora so any applications that we receive at the near foundation grants program we will reroute them appropriately to either proximity or aurora based on where your application is situated since launching mid last year we have been so stoked by the growth of the new york foundation grants program to date we have funded over 400 projects and awarded over nine million dollars in fiat and tokens so you might be wondering what types of projects should apply and honestly the limit is your imagination these are some of the categories of projects that we've funded so far again d5 grants are being handled by proximity labs i also wanted to call out our education grants the near foundation has had a bullish focus on education there is an entire education team devoted to education grants for everyone from just like total newbies to teachers designers and of course like seasoned deafs so let's take a closer look into some of the cool projects that we've res that have already received grant funding this is a video but it's not playing [Laughter] if i pull this up will it be obnoxious oh it is playing oh jeez well i knight is a new play to earn cognitive game that stimulates mental health and productivity so in the game you actually work with other players to come up with new ideas and this is a sneak peek of their veer vr experience oh geez um arose studios is an 8 000 member artist collective based in lisbon so this is like one of our like really out of the box thinking ideas where again it doesn't have to be just limited to like an application the nf provided them with a physical studio space to support low-income artists and the grant also included residencies where artists can become familiar with like nfts and crypto and decentralization all while creating and exhibiting their work um also very excited about awesomeneer which is a community managed project it functions as sort of like your go-to project directory for all of the cool dapps being built on near and using aurora this has been an amazing resource for new projects coming in to really understand what the ecosystem looks like and where to find potential partners next we have crypto heroes which just launched and is a dow based play to earn crypto game it's an rpg in which you have like a team of heroes including like a knight a mage and an assassin you basically battle evil bosses and minions to win loot and level up and lastly unschool is an educational program that we funded out of india as we know there has been a widening digital divide as well as a dire need for talent in the web 3 space unschool helps to address a lot of these challenges they have over a hundred thousand active users and students and we're working with them currently to build out free blockchain courses this means that web 2 devs can learn assembly script and rust to build apps on near courses for non-technical folks and entrepreneurs will teach them about decentralized apps so that by the time they want to start or join an existing web3 project they have all the fundamentals to jump right in so let's say that you have decided to submit a grant amazing yes this is a look into what the process is like immediately after you submit which does typically take about six weeks there is an initial screen of your application to make sure everything is there you know uh moving on there is a technical review so we have folks on our team um globally with just deep technical knowledge who'll be checking out the technical details again if your project is a technical one they're essentially looking for any technical road maps githubs etc and they're asking if the proposal makes sense technically as well as if the team has any history of previous projects or deployments if everything checks out we move on to an interview just to level set all the applications before things get started and lastly a decision will be provided cool so the previous slide kind of covers the first three steps of this broader grants process um we are 100 here to help throughout the application and we really try to provide as much direction as we can so like if you're missing any parts of your your application or if there are any remaining questions before we can just give you like that stamp of approval you'll notice here that there is an onboarding process after acceptance we have a dedicated ecosystem success team to help you reach your milestones they are ready to help with things like finding new team members within the near ecosystem resolving technical hurdles and of course providing any introductions to other projects this is all in an effort to get you to launch okay cool so now we hit like the wizard of oz component where we sort of like it's a peak behind the curtain um i kind of put these together as a way to think about like best practices but also like some hacks for your application to make sure that it really stands out and can and that it can be really the best before you by the time you hit like that submit button um so these are the areas that tend to be uh the most frequent source of delays as well and it's typically because someone on the funding team will have to follow up typically outside of the interview step to just get more clarity um which is why i say brevity is the soul of wit we go through many applications and the quicker we can understand your project idea the faster we can get you going we of course want you to provide important ample details but it may not necessarily be better to for your application to be longer or more wordy in this vein you might consider asking would my project summary make sense to to an everyday crypto enthusiast milestones and timelines are also a really key component of the application we would strongly prefer no more than five milestones because more than that is just like a lot of stuff to keep up with um and it could very well be that you know your project only needs like one or two like for example um if your project spans like two months and you're receiving like 30k maybe you only need like two milestones the type of milestone will also be contingent upon what type of project you have and the stage that it's at so uh for example a milestone for adapt might be launching but a milestone for an education program might be like just developing the course in that same vein if your project is at a later stage and has launched already your milestones may look a little bit less technical so they might be related more to like user adoption [Music] conducting research is a totally valid ask for funding especially if you don't have a clear idea of the technical components yet it's actually awesome to see early stage projects building in that time for research because it could very well be that by the time you you're done conducting the research and you've created this technical roadmap the budget and scope of what you intended to build ends up being like a lot larger than what you anticipated and lastly does your budget fit your project stage and proposed scope so you know let's be let's be real big lengthy projects can be really tough to scope we're all still working with emerging technology so the more we can take things like step wise the better we can set you up for success overall so here are some helpful categories at the bottom to really think about like grant amounts um in the like less than 100k category we have the ability to move pretty quickly on these projects so as i said before the whole grants process to typically takes like six weeks but if your like application is super buttoned up and you're like taking into consideration possibly some of these best practices and hacks then we have seen applications go through in as little as two weeks um moving on to the 100 to 250k range this range requires more in-depth discussion and collaboration to really structure the proposal which is why you see that we're taking at least two rounds of interviews as opposed to the one uh compared to that 100k range applicants in this bucket uh really shouldn't expect to kind of just like send in one application and just have that process be totally done this is going to be a bit more involved than that and lastly at the 250k range this is where we introduce a formal committee review with members of the near foundation community you might need to pitch for example or collaborate with us to draft a memo you can think about this in the same way as an angel investment in terms of the amount of involvement obviously not equity driven of course okay to formally apply for a grant please visit near.org backslash grants you'll also find our full faq about the process as well as information on our refer and earn program so even if you don't have like a submission in mind yourself maybe one of your friends has a really amazing idea or project so you can earn up to 100k in your tokens for successfully referring them to our program and special to eat denver we're offering some perks to projects that apply during the conference and the hackathon this means that you can receive priority in connecting with our team about funding opportunities so don't forget like if you're actually in the application on our website um make sure that you list east denver in your app as where you learned about this program so lastly come hit us up the three of us josh corey and i are here in person representing our much larger funding team um josh up here is our head of funding for all types of funding related questions corey our strategic fund manager can answer questions about our vc network and you can come and hit me up about grants you may also email us directly for any specific questions that you have i'll also be at the near booth today from three to five after this presentation and i just wanted to say thank you so much for your time funding for your project is near [Applause]