The Vision

Granted is a milestone-based granting solution providing visibility, bidirectional communication & accountability for sponsors & developers- to help all of us builders get further, faster.

Visibility. For both sponsors & developers.

Bidirectional Communication. Progress & funding notifications.

Accountability. Clear milestones & deliverables.

The Problem

The current state of grant programming is manual, labor intensive & inefficient- distracting both sponsors and developers from doing what they do best, building. The state of grant funding is very web2 and it’s not a good look.

For the sponsor, there is a lack of clarity and accountability about project progress and completion from the developers. This black void is especially awkward in an industry built on transparency. The pain point is further highlighted in the bear, as a lot of sponsors are now questioning the progress of projects they have invested in (and asking wen return on investments?).

For the developers, finding grants is often time-consuming. We love a good notion page or twitter thread, but sifting through protocols is not an efficient use of the time when we could be spent building *cough shit-posting. Once a grant is awarded, the expected milestones, deliverables and payout processes are unclear, leaving us asking wen funding?

Speaking directly with protocols, we have received feedback that many experience these pain points. For example. Harmony protocol communicates deliverables via notion, accepts and reviews grant via a talk forum, often chases developers deliverables via telegram, and coordinate multiple core team member to sends funds. There is competition for visibility between sponsors for developers- a pain point mentioned by a Cronos team member. There is also a lack of accountability & follow-through from developers. Likewise, hearing developer feedback from Gitcoin grants, there is a lack of clarity from protocols about necessary milestones & timelines- developers are left questioning wen/how funding?

For both parties time is spent on the unnecessary instead of the innovative.

The Solution

Granted is a milestone-based granting platform for sponsors and developers to issue and apply for grants. Streamlining the grant process by notifying and tracking all the progress on projects being built so that both the developer and sponsor have open, bidirectional communication. It’s something we like to call transparency.

The Experience

As a sponsor:

1. I access my token-gated portal via Unlock Protocol and indicate the number of grants I am funding, and outline the expected deliverables, timelines & payout for each funding tranche.

2. Once a developer is approved, they are notified via EPNS and streamlined through the first milestone.

3. I, the sponsor, am notified whenever they have completed a milestone.

4. I review their milestone to ensure deliverables are met. Once you click approved, funding is sent via Polygon, Optimism or Harmony

5. The next deliverables for the developers are automatically provided, repeating the process until the project is completed. Freeing up time for important things like touching some grass or whatever else protocols get up to.

The platform provides a birds eye view of all granted projects- categorizing them by the milestones completed, making it easy to keep track of the progress of our granting program. This allows us to see who is getting shit done, and who may have gone to one too many NYC NFT parties.

As a developer:

1. I search through the granting index and apply for relevant projects each on different protocols. I access my portal via wallet connect can apply, see all past applications, and milestone progress.

2. My application is stored via IPFS, and I am notified once my application is accepted via EPNS. I am presented with a roadmap of all expected deliverables and payouts, along with the first milestone, expected timeline and amount I will be paid once the first tranche is appropriately completed.

3. Once I submit a milestone, the sponsor is notified.

4. Once reviewed, I am notified, funded via Polygon, Optimism or Harmony and the next expected milestone is released.

5. Process is repeated until project is completed.

If, like most of us, I am working on multiple projects at once, I have an overview of all my projects and progress. My deliverables are also visible for potential sponsors 👀, creating a positive reputation system and increasing the likelihood that future applications will be granted.

Wallet connect: We are using wallet connect as it is the web3 standard for connecting blockchain wallets to dapps. Developers will be able to first explore available grants and when they are ready to apply, they will connect their wallet to access the portal. Wallet connect will provide secure connections between the Granted platform, sponsors and developers wallets - making the granting process social, smooth and seamless.

Polygon For our applications process we are deploying our smart contracts on Polygon as it is offers scaling and infrastructure support to Ethereum decentralized applications (dApps) and is not plagued by the high transaction fees and network congestion that impacts the Ethereum network.

Optimism: We wanted to make our granting platform multi-chain, and at Granted we are super optimistic about supporting public goods, because public goods are good 😍 Nothing more to say here, we think it’s an obvious choice.

Harmony: Our Blu3 scholars team was generously sponsored by Harmony protocol and we wanted to solve a major pain point for the team (the granting process) while also deploying Granted applications via their smart contract. We are confident that our product will help support their team to do what they do best- build.

IPFS & Filecoin will be used to store the data for the applications in a decentralized and easy to use manner. Filecoin is completely open-source, enabling developers from all over the world to us our protocol. We loved how easy it was to store our applications.

Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) we are using the decentralized communication & notification protocol for Web3. Using the protocol, both sponsors and developers can send on-chain or off-chain notifications tied to wallet addresses in a multichain, open, platform agnostic way- this is perfect considering we are using Polygon, Optimism and Harmony. This will provide efficient, open communication for sponsors to hear about the deliverables being met and developers to get notified wen funding

Unlock is an open source, Ethereum-based protocol that we used to token gate sponsor access. This allows the sponsor to manage their grants, applications and funding without a centralized middleman.