Grants Program

The Decentraland DAO possesses a MANA fund that has been set aside to help sponsor and facilitate the continual growth of the Decentraland platform. One avenue used by the DAO to achieve these goals is a grants program that was voted in place by the community.

This grants program allows any member of the community to request funding to make contributions in community building and education, creating 3D content for the world, or implementing new features and improvements to the platform.

Grants can be requested by completing a proposal form within the DAO . If approved by the community, then the DAO Committee will execute the transfer of funds to the grant beneficiary by means of a one-time transfer, or a vesting contract.

📔 Note:According to a Governace Proposal that passed on November 6, 2024, the deprecation of the current Grants Program and Bidding and Tendering process was approved, aiming to create a more effective, strategically aligned funding model.

Grant categories and requirements #

Grant requests can fall under one of eight broad categories: Core Unit, Platform, Documentation, In-world Building, Community Experiences, Social Media Content, Sponsorship, and Accelerator. These categories represent areas of Decentraland that benefit most from community contributions.

Every active grant must:

• Comply with Decentraland’s Content Policy , Terms of Use , and Code of Ethics .
• Provide monthly updates on the Governance dApp .
• Provide a presentation in a video format to be shared publicly.
• Provide recognition of Decentraland DAO’s Support
• Be responsive to the DAO Committee and Core Unit communications.
• Be ready to summarize how the grant funds were used every month.
• Projects should be built or compatible with the last stable Decentraland SDK.

1- Core Unit #

A Core Unit is a team that provides core infrastructure and operations for the DAO. The work done is essential for the organization and grantees from this category may be considered official representatives of the DAO.

Requirements:

• Provide an essential or strategic value to the DAO.
• Build in the public, publishing open source code and documentation.

Performance metrics:

• Define their own performance metrics based on their goals. These must be clear measurable metrics.

2- Platform #

Platform grantees create tools and applications that extend the power of the Decentraland platform or provide alternative ways to explore Decentraland’s ecosystem.

Requirements:

• Build in the public, publishing open source code and documentation.

Performance metrics:

• The number of contributions made to the main repository of code.
• Publish the tool or application to the production environment and provide usage metrics.

3- Documentation #

Documentation grantees focus on the creation of free educational content about how to contribute, build and play on Decentraland. The content should be published on official mediums to be found and preserved for posterity.

Requirements:

• The topic shouldn’t be already well-covered in the official documentation.
• Provide examples of documentation done in the past.
• Describe the format of documentation to be produced.
• Documentation should be in English (when added to the Awesome Repository or Decentraland Documentation)
• Productions thought to be published in official mediums (Decentraland Blog, Awesome Repository, Decentraland Documentation, Decentraland DAO youtube channel / social media, Decentraland Foundation Youtube Channel / social media)

Performance metrics:

• The number of contributions to Decentraland Documentation
• The number of contributions to the Awesome Repository.

4- In-World Building #

In-World Content grantees develop attractive experiences in Decentraland that generate retention of users. The experiences can take the form of scenes, games, and events, in any case, consumed by players through the reference client.

Requirements:

• Deploy content or host events in Decentraland.

Performance metrics:

• Newley populated land, Active Users, Returning Users, Time on Scene.
• Events created and number of attendees to the event.

5- Community Experiences #

Aims to bring people together in-world to generate community engagement. This can include creating wearables and emotes, or organizing events to gather with others and ignite fun community interactions. A proven track record of organizing and facilitating community events, initiatives, or educational programs is highly valuable.

Requirements:

• Define how your project will contribute to community building in the Decentraland Ecosystem.
• Development of attractive experiences in Decentraland that generate retention of users in the form of events, exchanges of wearables, emotes or other interactions consumed by players in-world.
• The proposal should include how you will collaborate with other community builders, Core Units, or projects to foster cross-community partnerships.
• The proposal should include the development of resources, tutorials, or guides that help explore the Decentraland Metaverse or onboarding new community members for these experiences.

Performance metrics:

• Number of community members engaged or impacted through Community Experiences initiatives. This can be measured by event attendees, wearables minted, or other pertinent metrics based on the specific proposal.

• Feedback and testimonials from community members regarding the value and impact of the proposal’s contributions. This can be shown in the monthly updates of the grant as quotes from users who come to the community building experiences or other stakeholders. - Growth and activity metrics of the community platforms, scenes in-world forums, or social media groups facilitated by these Community Builders.

• 6- Social Media Content #

Grantees from this category produce content on social media platforms such as Twitch, Twitter, Youtube, Tik Tok, and Discord. The grant aims to reach new users and keep them engaged.

Requirements:

• Explain audience size and relevancy to Decentraland.

Performance metrics:

• Number of pieces to be produced
• Total of views and interactions of the created content.
• Engagement metrics (likes, retweets, reach, retention)
• Mentions in other media outlets.

7- Sponsorship #

Grantees applying to this category hold conferences, side events, community meetups, hackathons, and contest prices that target audiences relevant to Decentraland.

Requirements:

• The event is happening IRL or online but outside of Decentraland.
• Ensure Decentraland DAO brand awareness during the event.

Performance metrics:

• Number of attendees and level of brand awareness.
• Evidence of the project execution (photos, videos, publications).
• Mentions in media outlets.

8- Accelerator #

A private company or revenue-generating initiative looking forward to receiving an investment from the DAO.

Requirements:

• Revenue share with the DAO or alternative value proposition.

Performance metrics:

• Return of Investment

Grant tiers #

Grants may be requested for any amount within one of two possible tiers, regardless of the grant category. For example, you may request a Content Creator grant in either of both tiers. The specific tiers, and their ranges, are:

Lower Tier:

• Up to $20,000 USD, payable in stablecoins or MANA using a Vesting Contract, or a one-time payment (after 30 days).
• Vesting duration can range from 1 to 6 months.
• Votation period: 2 weeks.
• Votation threshold: 2M VP.

Higher Tier:

• From $20,000 to $240,000 USD, payable in stablecoins using a Vesting Contract.
• Vesting duration can range from 3 to 12 months.
• Votation Period: 2 weeks.
• Variable votation threshold, using the formula: 1.2M + TOTAL_BUDGET * 40VP/USD .
  • E.g. $60,000 USD requires 3,600,000 VP
  • E.g. $120,000 USD requires 6,000,000 VP
  • E.g. $240,000 USD requires 10,800,000 VP

When are payments made for each tier? #

Funds for grants are made available to the beneficiary address via vesting contracts. The grantee selects the starting date when requesting the grant, which can be either the 1st or 15th of each month following the day of the grant’s approval. These contracts vest every 30 days from the starting date. After this period, the owner of the beneficiary address may withdraw the vested funds on a monthly basis.

Grant Budgeting System #

The DAO has an income of 1.8M MANA every month and it has set up a limit control to not spend more than 70% of such a stream. This mitigates the risk of running out of funds, securing the long-standing operations of the DAO. The Decentraland Grants Program is divided into four periods (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4), effective since January 1st, 2023. At the beginning of each quarter the maximum amount of money that can be allocated through the Grants Program is defined using the formula: 5,500,000 * MANA_PRICE * 0.7. This means the DAO at maximum capacity will be spending 70% of the MANA received from the vesting contract.

The DAO agreed on a governance proposal on limits for each category of grants. The DAO refreshes and recalculates the category budgets using the MANA price at the beginning of each quarter. When a category reaches its budget, No more grant requests will be accepted for that category.

The allocation per category is the following starting on Q2 2024 (April):

• Platform 50%
• In-World Building 15%
• Core Unit 15%
• Community Experiences 10%
• Sponsorship 2%
• Accelerator 2%
• Social Media Content 4%
• Documentation 2%