Open-source infrastructure and development is a critical component to the inherent security properties that make blockchain technologies valuable. We have consistently taken a direct role in financing the developers and teams building next-generation smart contract infrastructure and applications in an open-source manner, whether that be by participating in the Ethereum ecosystem through past Gitcoin Funding rounds, bug bounty programs, and hackathons, or supporting other blockchains and the wider Chainlink ecosystem via the Chainlink Community Grant Program.

We remain committed to the continued growth of the Ethereum ecosystem, which is why we are taking part in Gitcoin Grants Round 8 as a matching partner to fund community-selected projects focused on improving Ethereum’s infrastructure. By supporting Ethereum’s top infrastructure projects and developers, as selected by Gitcoin’s quadratic funding model, we take another step closer towards the collective vision of Ethereum as a public good that’s openly accessible and able to underpin increasingly more advanced smart contract applications. Our goal is continue contributing to and taking part in Ethereum’s development so it can secure higher value smart contracts, provide a better user experience to various stakeholders, and serve as a reliable backend for a more diverse set of decentralized applications built by the open-source community.

We believe Gitcoin’s quadratic funding model is worth supporting as a fair and decentralized way of ensuring that everyone in the Ethereum community has a voice in which projects are funded regardless of the amount of capital given by any individual donor. We will be donating additional funds to Gitcoin Grants Round 8 in order to match individual donor contributions given to popular projects. By matching funds, we can boost individual donations that go towards funding projects with broad community support. The result is more funding for open-source projects building infrastructure widely in demand by the broader Ethereum community.

We have always viewed Ethereum and other blockchain ecosystems as a critical infrastructure that will fundamentally redefine how we as a society exchange value, leading to fairer, more efficient systems where users are able to better retain the full value of their data and assets. DeFi has demonstrated how open-source technology can enhance our financial system, and we are now seeing Ethereum smart contracts go beyond DeFi and start generating value in other markets like insurance, gaming, NFTs, asset tokenization, and more. We feel it’s our mission as a leading protocol in the blockchain space to actively fund the development of open-source community initiatives across these different markets, especially the underlying infrastructure in which all these projects, including Chainlink, rely on. We look forward to continuing our support of Ethereum, both through our own research and development, and support for the many great minds and developers in the greater Ethereum ecosystem.

There is still time to propose a project to be eligible for Round 8 funding: https://gitcoin.co/grants/new

You can also support the community by donating to the grant requests: https://gitcoin.co/grants/

We’d like to thank our community and the wider Ethereum and blockchain ecosystem for their support. We’re excited to empower developers everywhere to create secure, decentralized systems that enable us to redefine our industry with universally connected smart contracts, ultimately improving the lives of people around the world.

To find all of our latest updates visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter.

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