Grants Program Update, February 2024
The Sia Foundation has grant funding available for community contributors! The Grants Program was created to fund research, development, developer tools, and anything else that will support and further our mission of user-owned data while enriching the Sia ecosystem.
Just design a proposal that meets our requirements, submit it to our forums, and wait for review by our grants committee. If your grant gets approved, you’re on your way to creating the next great project on the Sia storage network.
Check out our site for more info.
The Current State of Grants
I mentioned that the committee was getting a lot better at finding what they want out of grant proposals, and I can think of no better way to illustrate that than the fact that we have zero new approvals this month. It’s not for lack of trying — the committee has nine reviews (some grants were reviewed twice in this time) under their belt since the last update. But between fine-tuning the quality we expect, as well as the expectations of proposals themselves, nothing has made the cut yet.
One thing that the committee is definitely leaning toward is requiring Small Grants as a stepping stone to a larger proposal. For example, demonstrate that your use-case is viable for Sia with $8,000 over two months before requesting $50,000 for an eight month commitment.
We’ll continue with the mindset, because it feels much better for the program overall. We’ve also got some other changes in mind for the future of the program, but those will be developed over the coming months.
Anyway, on to some select updates!
Proposal: Sia Enterprise Tooling
What is it?
“The goal of this project is to store Terraform state files on the Sia network and build a custom Terraform binary which natively integrates with the Sia network.”
Grant Status
Rejected
Notes
The committee didn’t love the focus of this proposal, as it looked like not only a new request for storing Terraform files but also funding to cover support for the proposer’s previous project. We like to be more precise than that, and didn’t see a pressing need for the main body of the project either.
As always, even with a rejection of a proposal in its current form, the prospective grantee is welcome to resubmit if they feel they can address the committee’s concerns.
Proposal: SIA-ONE Ecosystem Dashboard
What is it?
“Sia-One is designed as a central hub for the Sia network to simplify this process. It provides a centralized platform where users can easily access projects and activities within the Sia network. The platform offers a comprehensive, categorized list of all Sia projects and their details as well as every aspect of the Sia network from overall development, forum activity, to grants and articles shared by Sia Foundation.”
Grant Status
Rejected
Notes
This is a big idea, and risks lots of manual work to keep it updated. The committee liked the idea of a clean dashboard full of info that can easily auto-update, but something like this was also attempted with an older grant called Alphaday that never saw any real traction or use in the community.
We’ve got an updated version of this proposal ready to review, so we’re excited to take a peek and see if it’s more aligned with the committee’s expectations.
Proposal: Fabstir 2
What is it?
“Additional grant proposal (previous here) to get Fabstir Media Player 2 polished and user-facing. It is to have a live public platform for permissionless use with the core abilities to stream videos, transcode uploaded videos via Sia peer-to-peer network and tokenise said content for Web3 decentralisation on Polygon PoS.”
Grant Status
Proposed
Notes
After some discussions with proposer JulesLai, who has big plans for Sia and his own web3 projects, we had him re-submit for a new proposal to put the polish on his first grant. The hopes are that this will make the Fabstir media player user-facing (and friendly) and create a foundation for future proposals in the Sia ecosystem.
Coming Next
We encourage the community to provide their feedback and ask questions on the Sia Forum! Community contribution and input is the best way to push proposals and projects to the next level.
You can see the list of all proposals here, and our proposal requirements here. See you next month!
