Grassroots Support Initiative Update – September 11, 2023

As a follow up to the NEAR Foundation’s previous grassroots support post, we wanted to take a moment to share an update on our progress. On September 4th, we closed the form through which projects could request support until the NDC funding mechanism is live. Over the past two weeks, we have spoken to builders across the ecosystem to understand their needs and begin mapping out the different paths forward to ensure they receive the support they need. 

We have encountered a range of different requests and have been taking a holistic approach to understand the unique needs faced by each project and the resources available to help them achieve their goals moving forward. While financial support is only one part of this, there have been a number of questions about the range of options available, so we wanted to give everyone visibility into the next steps.

Projects looking for funding will first explore internal resources including the BD/Ecosystem success team and ad hoc advisory support via a 1-1 call with the Horizon team, as well as by working closely with the MarketingDAO, CreativesDAO, and DevHub. Projects that do not qualify through any of these routes will have the ability to go to an internal review process. 

To make sure the community voices are heard and involved in the process, members of the Governance Working Group (GWG) have collaborated with NEAR Foundation to define the criteria needed to receive financial support. The criteria the committee will use to make the selections are the following:

• Is the project built on NEAR and live on mainnet?
• Is there a current grant already in place? 
• Are there a minimum 100 monthly active users?
• Does the request cover a maximum of 3 months of runway?

This process should be completed within the coming two weeks, at which point the NEAR Foundation will provide a further update. In the meantime, if you have any questions you can always reach us at [email protected].