Summary
It was an eventful few weeks (8/2 – 8/20) for the Grants Program. Below are the key highlights:
- The NEAR Grants Program and Filecoin announced a join grants program focused on storage projects (link)
- NEAR Grantee Liquality announced a $7M funding round to support their growth (link)
- July was our most successful month in terms of new grants approved (12) and capital deployed (~$140K)
Results
- 4 new grants signed for $120K in committed capital
- ~$60K in deployed capital to 9 grants this week
- Textile completed their final milestone. We are already discussing a follow-on grant for additional work the team is doing around file storage and the mainnet launch of their product
- 6 new grant applications
- Tech Reviews / Interviews: 7
- Contracting: 10
Challenges & Blockers
- Developing our fast grants program and working through some operational challenges to launch the beta
- Aligning on the best ways to support our grantees with marketing, PR, and comms initiatives
Action Items
- Kicking off account management introductions of existing grantees to the Ecosystem Success team
- Publishing initial summaries of the major funding groups within the NEAR Collective (Grants, OWC, Community Fund/Council, Asia Global Fund)
- Closing several large grants by the end of the month with major native build projects