Grants Program Weekly Update 7.28

Summary

It was an eventful two week (712 – 7/28) for the Grants Program. Below are the key highlights:

• Grant Program member CurioInvest announced their plans to tokenize assets on NEAR during ETHcc. Yessin provides some brief remarks during the event. (link)
• The Grants Program / Funding Platform has completed formulating its OKRs for Q3
  • The Grants Program and now an element of the broader Funding Platform
• The Grants Program is partnering with the NEAR India Accelerator to support a subset of the projects with grants

Results

• 6 new grants signed this week for $93K in committed capital
• $19,500 in deployed capital to 3 grants this week
  • Cron.cat completed their final milestone. We are already discussing a follow-on grant for additional work the team is doing around NEAR dev tools
• 5 new grant applications
• Bi-weekly pipeline
  • Tech Reviews / Interviews: 7
  • Contracting: 8

Challenges & Blockers

• The Grants Program has been absorbed into the broader Funding Platform mandate which increases the scope of initiatives and OKRs
• Continue to improve coordination related to invoicing but remains a point of friction
  • Coordinating with NF Operations on a plan to improve. Will be in Zuig next week to work directly with the team to resolve

Action Items

• Spending time in Zuig next week to connect with the FLO (Finance, Legal, Operations) team to work directly around unlocking some friction points
  • One-click to sign grant agreements
  • Ironclad contract process and innovation tooling
• Connecting w/ Ecosystem Success, Community, and PR teams to develop ideal working protocols