Research and Education
We have decided to award the Web3FC team a grant of up to $10,000 and a further $10,000 in Hackathon-related prizes as part of their effort to run their Cosmos Hackerhouse in Barcelona between December 2 and 8. The Web3FC has successfully hosted a vast array of events within our industry. It is well-primed to run this Hackerhouse, which will involve four Neutron-specific workshops and four paths for hackathon-related bounties.
Neutron Grants Program
October 15, 2024
Applications
We have decided to award the Eclipse team a grant of up to $40,000 to build and launch their Equinox product, the first governance aggregator built on top of Astroport DEX. We believe Eclipse Equinox could be a successful product that helps bootstrap capital and attract attention to Neutron and Astroport. The Eclipse team has been a consistent builder within the Neutron community, so we are excited to support them.
We have decided to award the Vendetta Markets team a grant of up to $40,000 to build and launch Vendetta Markets, a prediction market for esports, on Neutron. The Vendetta team, led by André and Gustavo from Astroport, have extensive experience building within the Cosmos and on Neutron, and we believe that they are a more than capable team to launch this exciting product on Neutron. Furthermore, Vendetta presents an interesting chance to attract users who wouldn't usually use crypto or Neutron.
October 1, 2024
Protocol Development and Infrastructure
We have decided to award the Range Security team a grant of up to $96,250 to implement an advanced version of IBC Rate Limits in Neutron, building upon Osmosis' v2 implementation and introducing chain-level USDC-based quotas leveraging Skip Connect price feeds. The Range Security team is one of the best in the industry, and IBC Rate Limits are essential to help ensure the long-term security of Neutron.
We have decided to award a grant with a maximum size of $80,000 to DAODAO to build out their governance delegation feature on Neutron as part of their latest deployment. DAODAO is a proven team within the Cosmos and has already executed on building critical infrastructure on Neutron via a previous grant. This delegation feature will help improve governance participation at Neutron.
Obi is a platform for launching smart accounts and simplifying the process of interacting with blockchains such as Neutron. The Obi team previously had experience launching developer courses within the Terra ecosystem, which means they have the required skills to launch these courses successfully. The courses will be available for free on YouTube and Thinkific, starting with the first course, "Quick Start & Rust for Smart Contracts."
We have decided to award Ark Protocol a grant of up to $10,000 to build out the necessary infrastructure for an ICS-721 NFT bridge to and from Neutron. This will help facilitate cross-chain transfers of NFTs between Neutron and other chains, which is important as Neutron's own NFT ecosystem begins to flourish. As a result, we are excited to support Ark Protocol.
July 5, 2024
We have decided to award Blockwave Labs a grant of up to $80,000 to build an arbitrage bot vault on top of Neutron's Duality DEX module. This vault will allow users to deposit their funds, which will then be used to arbitrage prices on Neutron's DEX module and the chain in general. This grant will further help bootstrap activity on Neutron and its Duality DEX module, which seeks to garner liquidity and trading volume.
We are giving out a retroactive grant to Deploydon, one of the members of the Neutron Innovators Program and creator of nfa.zone, ngmi,zone, and NewtBot for the work he has done on Neutron and for him to facilitate incentivizing future usage of nfa.zone. 15,000 USDC has been granted to support Deploydon's existing work and 22,000 NTRN to incentivize users on nfa.zone going forward.
We have decided to award Margined a grant of up to $80,000 to build their Locust market-making vault product on top of Neutron. These vaults will run market-making strategies on top of Neutron and Duality using Authz. We believe this will be a perfect way to help bootstrap using Neutron's Duality DEX while allowing end users to benefit, and we are delighted to help support this initiative.
We have decided to award StakeTax a grant of up to $10,000 for its integration with Neutron and to reward Neutron for using the platform in the future.
We have decided to award a grant with a maximum size of $125,000 to Superbolt, an NFT marketplace and issuance platform, to launch exclusively on Neutron soon. We believe there is a need for a leading NFT platform for Neutron and the wider Cosmos, which the Superbolt team is primed to meet.
We have decided to award a 3,000 USDC per month grant to Kiruse, a developer with experience working with LionDAO and Terran.One, to work on a crypto-native strategy game on Neutron.
We have decided to award a 3,000 USDC per month grant to Gabe, the founder of ArenaDAO — a wagering platform being built on Neutron. The Neutron Innovators Program offers grantees a monthly stipend to create whatever they want on Neutron without the strict milestones of a typical grant, and we believe Gabe is an excellent candidate for the program, given the innovative work he is doing on Neutron.
We have decided to award a grant with a maximum size of $80,000 to ApolloDAO to build vaults for the launch of the liquid staking protocol Drop, Fission Finance, and other use cases on Neutron. Apollo is an experienced team within the Cosmos ecosystem, and this grant will help them provide users with user-friendly ways to access yield on Neutron.
We have decided to award b9Lab a $110,000 grant in collaboration with the Osmosis Grants Program, which has provided a matching grant, for them to build out a CosmWasm developer learning portal. One of the biggest blockers to applications succeeding on Neutron is having top-tier developers who are proficient in CosmWasm, and we believe that funding this free and open CosmWasm developer portal will help accelerate this.
April 24, 2024
We have decided to award a $70,000 grant to the Hopers team to build Electron, a Neutron-native DEX, which we believe will help expand Neutron's existing DeFi community given the Hopers team's extensive experience building applications and communities within the Cosmos.
We have decided to award a $105,000 grant to Asteroid Protocol, the inscriptions protocol on Neutron, to build a bridge to Neutron for their native fungible tokens (CFT-20s). Inscriptions have seen strong traction on Bitcoin, and Asteroid's inscriptions are a new and strong use case for the Cosmos Hub. Allowing Asteroid to leverage Neutron's smart contracts and native DeFi ecosystem is a natural synergy and we believe this will only help grow both Asteroid Protocol as well as Neutron's DeFi ecosystem.
We have decided to award a $125,000 grant to Sturdy and Pacman, the co-founders of ApolloDAO, to build and launch Fission Finance, a protocol that enables the splitting of yield-bearing tokens. The last year has proven the use-case of the splitting of yield-bearing assets and fixed yields and we believe that the market for such products in Cosmos is extremely large. Fission Finance is the best bet on this within the Cosmos and for Neutron especially given the team's expertise already building ApolloDAO.
We have decided to award a 51322 NTRN grant to Coinhall, the leading interchain terminal for the Cosmos and Neutron to support their existing work done to integrate with Neutron and to also support their continued work, including their integration with Neutorn's duality module. As Neutron's DeFi ecosystem continues to flourish, we recognize the importance of supporting applications such as Coinhall which have found strong product-market fit already and help users trade across Neutron's main trading venues.
We have decided to award a 20,000 USDC grant to Leap Wallet, one of the leading wallets for interacting with Cosmos. The grant will improve the bridging experience for Neutron as the Leap team works with us to build out a custom bridging interface and solution to fix some of the issues we have identified with onboarding users to Neutron.
We have decided to award a 60277 NTRN grant to Celatone, one of the leading block explorers within the Cosmos ecosystem, to build out smart contract verification infrastructure for Neutron specifically. As we begin to see new and interesting applications and smart contracts launch on Neutron, it's important to have appropriate infrastructure that allows users to verify the smart contracts that they interact with in a robust manner — such infrastructure is common in the EVM world but has been limited outside of it.
We have decided to award a 6,000 USDC per month grant to Deploydon, the individual behind the nfa.zone, bankrupt.zone, and Newt Bot. The Neutron Innovators Program offers grantees a monthly stipend to build whatever they want on Neutron without the strict milestones of a typical grant, and we believe Deploydon is the perfect candidate as the inaugural Neutron Innovators Program grantee given the innovative work he has already done on Neutron.
Developer Tooling and Experience
We have decided to award a grant to the Cosmology team of 75,000 USDC to integrate Starship, an interchain development platform for Cosmos chains, with Neutron. We believe developers could greatly benefit from Starship being fully integrated with Neutron by improving their cross-chain testing experience and are delighted to support them.
February 26, 2024
We have decided to award a grant to the Reclaim Protocol team of 50,000 USDC to integrate and launch their project on Neutron. We find the concept of on-chain verifiable credentials extremely compelling, and this grant could help make Neutron the center for all applications and Cosmos chains looking to access verifiable credentials for existing Web2 online profiles.
We have decided to award an 82,619 NTRN grant to the Range Security team to integrate Neutron into their product line exhaustively. The goal of this grant is to fund Range Security to bring the Neutron ecosystem to the next level in terms of DeFi security infrastructure and user experience for DAOs and governance.
We have decided to award Amulet Finance a 65,225 NTRN grant to launch its application on Neutron's Mainnet. Amulet Finance is an excellent example of a new application on Neutron that takes advantage of the chain's native interchain features, and we are optimistic that it will help massively grow Neutron's burgeoning DeFi ecosystem.
We have decided to award a 95,000 USDC grant to Astromint to launch their decentralized stablecoin on Neutron's Mainnet. Astromint is a unique take on launching a decentralized stablecoin for the Cosmos, and we are excited to continue to work closely with them as they get closer to launch.
We have decided to award a grant of 25,000 USDC and 39,135 NTRN to the Velo team to launch the Velo prediction markets on Neutron with a full redesign. We believe that the Velo team has the potential to design a unique prediction market and betting platform for both Neutron and the Cosmos, and we are excited to support their launch.
We have decided to award a 10,000 USDC grant to the team (Deploydon) behind NewtBot — the NEWT-themed generative AI telegram bot. NewtBot has become popular within the Neutron community, and we are excited to fund the NewtBot team to extend the application to include NFT functionality.
We have decided to award a 50,000 USDC grant to the team behind Isaac — the NEWT-themed cross-chain telegram trading bot. We are excited by Isaac as an experiment in building new cross-chain, user-friendly trading interfaces for Neutron and the Cosmos, and this funding will help support the Isaac team on future innovation.
Core RFP
We are looking to support efforts within Neutron to build platforms to help developers seamlessly issue NFTs, build differentiated marketplaces on Neutron, and, especially interestingly, create various products that take the place of useful means to financialize NFTs across the Cosmos.
February 12, 2024
As part of our first grant batch, we have decided to award a grant to Abstract Money of 25,000 USDC to integrate the Abstract full-stack CosmWasm framework with Neutron fully. We believe the tooling for building CosmWasm applications is not yet at a level comparable to that of other mature, smart contract ecosystems (Ethereum, for example), and this is a step in getting it there.
January 15, 2024
As part of our first grant batch, we have decided to award Shogun a grant of 150,000 USDC to build their MEV-minimizing order matching engine and DEX aggregator on Neutron. We consider Shogun a very interesting experiment in interchain finance and would be a great example of our thesis as Neutron as the interchain decentralized finance hub. The grant consists of an upfront payment of 50,000 and two milestone-based payments (with KPIs).
Calculated Finance is a product that has found success on other Cosmos chains, and we believe supporting them with their Neutron-based integration will provide users on the blockchain with significantly more options when it comes to interacting with DeFi — which should only help grow Neutron's burgeoning ecosystem.
As part of our first grant batch, we have decided to award a grant to DAO DAO to bring full Neutron governance support to the DAO DAO frontend. DAO DAO is the leading governance platform on Neutron and is already heavily used. We believe this grant will make it significantly easier for developers to launch their own token and NFT-based DAOs on Neutron and improve the user experience of interacting with governance in general.
As part of our first grant batch, we have decided to award Bro_n_Bro Validator a grant to extend the work on their open-source Spacebox Indexer and build an open-source indexer for Neutron (including the recent Duality and Block SDK modules). This grant is for 120,000 USDC, broken down into an upfront payment and two milestone payments.
Sponsor development that makes Neutron a more appealing settlement layer for rollups. The RFP should not sponsor the migration of smart-contract dApps to rollups, but it may be used to bring rollup projects planning to settle to other networks to settle on Neutron instead.
October 23, 2023
Sponsor the democratization of advanced DeFi strategies featuring single-sided liquidity, leveraged staking, no-liquidation leverage, fixed rates, delta neutrality and other attractive risk/reward profiles via the development of permissionless vault contracts.
Ways to drastically improve both the voter turnout for Neutron’s governance, improve grassroots governance engagement, and create more expressive governance actions — in the form of voting vaults where NTRN holders can delegate their voting power or through other means to substantially increase both voter turnout and engagement.
Stablecoins, synthetics, and derivatives are key to the decentralized finance ecosystem of any chain and we are looking for novel proposals which help bootstrap this for Neutron. There are potential designs for collateralised stablecoins which may uniquely take advantage of Neutron and Cosmos-specific features like IBC, ICA, and ICQ.
We are looking to fund initiatives that help onboard the next generation of developers to Neutron to build leading CosmWasm-based applications and make it easier for new developers to build applications easily — given the gap in developer education between CosmWasm and Solidity development, for example.
We are looking for the next generation of consumer apps which take advantage of the social graph of the Cosmos and the Interchain and find ways to introduce interesting and fun use cases that take advantage of the Cosmos stack on Neutron, especially those which aren’t purely financial.
