Programmes
Grants for the public good of the ZooBC network.
The Foundation funds work that makes ZooBC more useful, more secure, more understandable, and more accessible. Published rubric. Staged milestones. Public updates. Real evidence when the work ships.
Programme status: preparing to fund.
The grants programme is designed and open to applications. Payment infrastructure will activate as initial funding closes — see Transparency for the allocation approach. Draft and submit your application now; the review process runs continuously and applications received during the ramp-up will be reviewed as soon as the committee is seated.
Categories
The Foundation funds across the full stack of what it takes to keep an open network alive. If your work fits, apply — the category is a routing hint, not a gate.
Core protocol
Consensus, cryptography, node internals, upgrade paths.
Developer tooling
CLIs, SDKs, dev-tooling, testing frameworks.
Wallets & UX
Self-custody, hardware wallet integrations, mobile clients.
Node & infrastructure
Node deployment, monitoring, reliability, edge participation.
Explorers & analytics
Chain data explorers, on-chain analytics, dashboards.
Security & audits
Audits, formal verification, incident response, bug bounties.
Education & translation
Documentation, translations, courses, workshops.
Local communities
Local meetups, ambassador chapters, regional programmes.
Research
Peer-reviewable work: consensus, agent economics, storage.
AI agents on ZooBC
AI-agent transaction patterns, allowance primitives, safety.
Real-world use cases
Non-crypto-native use cases that ship with real users.
Third-party integrations
Bringing ZooBC into wallets, exchanges, and third-party apps.
The rubric
A grant is worth publishing the rubric for. Every application is scored against these criteria and every decision is defensible on their terms.
Publishing the rubric is what separates a grants programme from favouritism. The Foundation commits to scoring every application against the criteria on the right and disclosing conflicts of interest for each decision.
Technical merit
Does the work stand up to scrutiny by someone competent in the domain?
Ecosystem impact
Would this measurably help the network, its users, or its builders?
Open-source commitment
Will the deliverables be published under a permissive licence with a clear maintenance intent?
Budget realism
Is the requested amount defensible against the scope? Are milestones sized to derisk?
Maintenance plan
What happens after the grant ends? Who keeps the work alive?
Team capability
Track record, prior work, transparency about limitations.
Stages
Every awarded grant goes through the same six stages. Applications sit at stage 1 until the review committee moves them.
Application
You submit a proposal with scope, milestones, budget, team, and links to prior work.
Review
Public rubric applied by the grants committee. Conflicts of interest disclosed. Committee may request revisions.
Approval
Approved grants publish here with scope, amount, and milestone schedule.
Milestones
Payment is milestone-gated. Each milestone requires public deliverables.
Public updates
Recipients post progress updates that appear on the grant record here.
Payment
Payments occur on-chain against the approved milestone, recorded permanently.
Eligibility
- Individuals, teams, companies, NGOs, and universities.
- Any jurisdiction that is not under Foundation sanctions policy.
- Verifiable prior work in scope (open-source repos, papers, previous grants).
- A named accountable person willing to publish progress.
Not funded
- Speculation, market-making, or trading strategies.
- Promotional or influencer campaigns without deliverables.
- Closed-source work with no open component and no maintenance plan.
- Work that only benefits a single commercial recipient.
Grants directory
Every awarded grant appears here with recipient, amount, category, and milestone status.
No grants awarded yet.
The Foundation has not awarded any grants under this programme. When one is awarded it will appear here with recipient, amount, category, and milestone updates. We won't seed the directory with fake or vestigial entries.
Be the first application →Ready to apply?
Applications are open. You'll need a project name, category, budget, scope, milestone plan, team, and links to prior work. Drafts can be saved and returned to.