Grants Program Weekly Update 8.23

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