Open-source infrastructure is vital to the blockchain ecosystem, supporting a vast network of permissionless decentralized applications (dApps) that secure more than a hundred billion dollars across DeFi, NFTs, insurance, gaming, and other Web3 verticals. This infrastructure is supported by a global community of developers who work tirelessly to create the tools necessary to enable the growth of the smart contract ecosystem.

In support of open-source development, we are excited to announce that we are joining the upcoming Gitcoin Grants Round as a matching partner. Our financial contributions will go towards the development of Ethereum infrastructure that the community deems the most important as decided via Gitcoin’s quadratic funding model. By democratizing funding, Gitcoin incentivizes developers to build key infrastructure and tooling such as open-source programming libraries, lightweight Ethereum clients, new Ethereum upgrades, more reliable monitoring tools, new testing suites and deployment tooling, and more. Gitcoin also provides financial compensation via open-source grants for the maintenance of highly critical existing infrastructure that helps ensure Ethereum dApps remain secure and operational at all times.

Our support of Gitcoin Grants is part of our continued efforts to contribute financial resources directly to developers working on Ethereum and the broader blockchain ecosystem. Previous contributions have involved joining past Gitcoin Grant rounds, arranging bug bounty programs, and organizing hackathons. Additionally, the Chainlink Community Grant Program provides key resources to the many development teams and researchers building a more secure and functional Chainlink Network. As always, we encourage talented individual developers and development teams to apply to the grant program here, or if you are an academic researcher and want to collaborate, contact us.  

Democratizing Financial Support With Quadratic Funding

Beyond generating financial support for Ethereum developers and creating an effective mechanism to enable the community to fund public goods, Chainlink continues to participate in the Gitcoin Grants program in large part due to its use of the quadratic funding model. Quadratic funding works by prioritizing projects with the largest number of individual donors from the community, giving individual contributors more influence over which projects receive funding from contributing partners, regardless of the donation size. Importantly, Gitcoin employs several Sybil-resistance mechanisms to mitigate voter manipulation and uphold the integrity of the community-driven selection process.

Supporting Gitcoin Grants as a matching partner is part of our broader goal of supporting Ethereum and other blockchain ecosystems in creating a more economically fair world where decentralized infrastructure enables agreements backed by cryptographic truth. As Ethereum infrastructure supports thousands of individual smart contract developers and dApp users across the globe, it’s essential that these developer tools and frameworks are properly funded and well-maintained.

Thanks to secure and reliable decentralized infrastructure, the DeFi ecosystem continues to grow and provide people across the globe with permissionless access to a wide range of financial services that were previously inaccessible; non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are redefining what it means to own digital property; and hybrid smart contracts are helping to bring insurance products to previously underserved regions. We look forward to funding further development of open-source Web3 infrastructure, as well as supporting smart contract developers through Chainlink decentralized services. 

How to Join Gitcoin Grants

There is still time to propose a project to be eligible for funding. You can do so here. 

The next Gitcoin Grants Round will begin on March 9 and finish on March 24. You can find more information here. 

We want to thank the Chainlink community and the wider blockchain ecosystem for their passionate support and continued efforts in building high-quality open-source infrastructure. We’re honored to provide developers everywhere with the decentralized services they need to create hybrid smart contracts that improve lives around the world.

If you want to learn more about the Chainlink Community Grant Program, check out our recent 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.