Dora Grant DAO — Long-term Funding Program Kicks Off

4 min readOct 20, 2022

Dora Grant DAO is a community-driven program to fund the hacker movement — explore and assist hackers with innovative ideas, and eventually help them build important products for the future of multi-chain Web3 ecosystem.

The grantees will be offered the valuable opportunities to obtain funding to further develop their projects (BUIDLs) and achieve milestones that they have set out. Meanwhile, they will also get access to the Dora community and corresponding resources helpful for the teams in the further development.

All BUIDLs will be screened before entering community voting. The first screening and funding round of Dora Grant DAO will provide up to $200k to fund BUIDL proposals, based on zero-knowledge voting results of vcDORA community. Voting will happen on DoraHacks.io.

Eligibility

Dora Grant DAO will fund three types of BUIDLs/ideas in the 1st review round:

1. Multi-chain Web3 infrastructures and toolings solving critical problems;

2. Crypto-native applications;

3. Intersections between crypto and other frontier technologies;

The 1st screening round is based on several criteria to make sure that BUIDL proposals entering vcDORA community voting session would meet the mandate of Dora Grant DAO:

1. A real, legit team.

2. The team members have proper background and intention to build the proposed product.

3. The team is product- / technology-focused.

4. The team builds products based on the First Principles.

5. MVP / early-stage product available and team is actively developing with a clear roadmap.
*Or, funding BUIDL idea is possible when the idea is thoroughly thought through. In this case, papers or articles are required to present the idea, its development and application in the real world.

6. Early-stage BUIDLs (pre-PMF is acceptable): startups/projects that have not launched private round, seed funding round or any further fundraising rounds.

7. BUIDL proposal should be aligned with the interests of vcDORA community.

Timeline

Registration: September 28th onwards (long-lasting)
Opening Ceremony [LIVE]: Oct 8th, 20:00 SGT (Replay >)
Screening Result Announcement [1st round]: October 23rd to 25th
Grant Proposal Submission [1st round]: October 23rd to 25th
Community Voting [1st round]: October 26th to November 3rd

Entry to Dora Grant DAO Long-term Funding Program will be always open for application, but application review and fund distribution will happen periodically in sequential rounds.

How Dora Grant DAO Supports Early Projects

Grant Funding: Long-term submission and periodical funding distribution; the 1st round of application review offers up to $200,000 in the funding pool.
Connect With Other Startups & Developers: A hub provided for forefront Web3 BUIDLers and entrepreneurs.
Gateway to vcDORA Community: 3K+ DORA community members will know your projects and vote to support.

How to Apply?

1. Visit Dora Grant DAO Hackathon to submit a BUIDL and fill out the required information (see Application Guide for tutorial).

2. BUIDLs that pass the initial screening must submit a Grant Funding Proposal to Discourse — DoraHacks Community Governance Forum.

3. After being selected for the Grant, BUIDLs will go through Community Voting and receive grant funding, however per may vary on the Community Voting results.

Note: Grantees with Iterative BUIDLs can re-apply to the future rounds of Dora Grant DAO.

Funding Pool Allocation Rules

Dora Grant DAO comes in a total amount of $200,000 in the 1st application review and funding round, and the rules for allocation are as follows:

Selected BUIDLs must submit a Grant Funding Proposal prior to participating in the Community Voting.
Community Voting will determine which BUIDLs‘ Grant Funding Proposal will be approved.
The prize will be awarded in the order of the Community Voting results. Starting with the first place, the following BUIDLs will be allocated the proposed amount until the $200,000 prize pool has been distributed.

How to Vote by vcDORA

Voting Period (for 1st round of screening): Oct 26 — Nov 3.

The voting ticket used here is vcDORA, short for “voice credit DORA”, free community governance credit generated by staking $DORA tokens.

vcDORA is the general non-transferable voice credit for DORA community governance, and the amount of vcDORA associated with an address is related to the amount of DORA staked, the duration of staking, and time elapsed since the initial staking date.

It has following features:

Decaying spontaneously and linearly: the vcDORA one holds will turn ZERO at the end of staking period. Please note to stake and vote at the reasonable time.

Non-transferable: vcDORA is designed to grant the governance credit to the stakers (the staking addresses), therefore it’s exclusive (or in popular term “soul-bound”) to the staker and is not allowed to be transferred.
Irrevocable: Staking is not allowed to be cancelled because it’s based on interactions with a smart contract. But it’s ok to increase staking amount or to prolong the staking period to get more vcDORA.

More about vcDORA https://doraresear.ch/2022/09/16/vcdora/

More rules of voting will be released before voting session starts. Please join DoraHacks Discord to stay updated.