The Chainlink Community Grant Program provides financial resources to the many development teams and researchers building a more functional, accessible, and socially impactful Chainlink Network. In order to fuel the growth of the Chainlink community and accelerate the adoption of hybrid smart contracts, the Chainlink Grant Program continues to support work that makes it easier, faster, and more efficient to build and test new smart contracts and applications.

We’re excited to announce that Albert Peci has been awarded a grant to enhance Chainlink Academy—an interactive coding platform and open-source library of community resources that enables developers to learn how to build hybrid smart contracts using Chainlink as a gateway to access external data and systems.

Chainlink Academy helps onboard new developers starting from scratch who want to build decentralized applications with external inputs and outputs, further reducing the barrier to launching a Chainlinked smart contract. The courses currently available on the site include an introductory course covering Chainlink-related topics such as smart contracts and the oracle problem; an introduction to Solidity, its basic syntax, and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM); and a course about how developers can use Chainlink VRF v2 to introduce verifiably random outcomes in their applications.

Following the success of the first iteration of the site, Peci will scale the platform to introduce more content such as courses about Solidity and VRF v2, and new features that will make it easier and more engaging for developers to get started with learning about building smart contract applications. 

These features include:

• Custom NFT badges for each course (already live on the site as a part of this grant).
• The ability to share NFT badges—along with a validity check—on social media natively on the site (already live on the site as a part of this grant).
• Interactive course features.
• An overhauled profile page, including personal stats and badge collection.
• Optimizations for mobile.

Peci has been an active participant in the development of Chainlink Academy following its launch. His familiarity with the site, extensive experience in the blockchain industry as a developer, and alignment with the mission of supporting the Chainlink developer experience with an open-source set of learning tools make him an ideal candidate to support through the Chainlink Community Grants program.

“I’m thrilled to be awarded a Chainlink grant to enhance Chainlink Academy, the community resource that helps create a seamless onboarding experience for new developers looking to build next-generation hybrid smart contracts using Chainlink,” said Albert Peci. “Evergreen developer resources that help aspiring developers get started with building Chainlinked decentralized applications help create a more robust ecosystem with security best practices baked-in while increasing the adoption of smart contracts and Web3.”

Through the Community Grants Program, Chainlink continues to empower innovative teams, academics, and social impact projects that research and develop key tools and infrastructure to accelerate the adoption of hybrid smart contracts, secure oracle networks, and cutting-edge technology capable of creating a more economically fair world.

About the Chainlink Grant Program

If you want to learn more about the Chainlink Community Grant Program, check out our blog post that further expands upon its goals and the criteria for submission. We encourage talented individual developers and development teams to apply to the grant program here, or if you’re a researcher and want to collaborate, contact us.