Our Core RFPs

Introduction

As mentioned in our introduction article, we are aiming to be as intentional as possible with what we fund through the Neutron Grants Program (NGP) by ensuring that it aligns closely with Neutron’s long-term strategic goals. As such, in this article, we introduce the concept of NGP Core Requests for Proposal (RFPs) which are a short list of ambitious grants we wish to prioritize and provide larger amounts of funding for based on our team’s research and conversations with key stakeholders in Neutron and Cosmos. The Core RFPs will all fall within our initial proposed Areas of Focus and all squarely fall within our existing mandate as we will explain below.

Areas of Focus

As mentioned in the original proposal, to best align with the strategic goals of the Neutron ecosystem, we will explicitly focus on the following areas for grant funding:

• Developer Tooling and Experience: Proposals that improve the process of developing applications on Neutron such as developer documentation, RPC and Relayer infrastructure, analytics, infrastructure around testnets, and hackathons
• Protocol Development: Efforts to introduce improvements to the Neutron blockchain itself
• User-facing Infrastructure: Efforts to improve how users interact with Neutron directly in the form of wallet integrations, hardware wallet support, MEV-mitigation tools, and faucets
• User-facing Applications: Applications that users will directly use and get value from
• Joint Funding: Jointly fund opportunities with other Cosmos ecosystem Grants teams that seek to benefit the ecosystem as a whole
• Research and Education: Initiatives and content which has the aim of educating users and developers on the Neutron ecosystem or pushing forward key technical areas of interest which can help add value to Neutron

Within each of these pillars, we will present Core Requests for Proposal (RFPs) to help guide the initial wave of prospective grantees. These Core RFPs, in contrast to our general RFPs, are earmarked for large sums of funds given their importance to Neutron’s long-term strategy.

Core RFPs

• Neutron as a Settlement Layer for Rollups (Protocol Development) — $200K
• Staked Assets and Fixed Rates Vaults (User-facing Applications) — $50K
• Tooling to Improve Neutron’s Governance (Developer Tooling and Experience) — $50K
• Stablecoins, Synthetics, and Derivatives as well as Applications that Support Such Use Cases (User-facing Applications) — $200K
• Significantly Improving the Ease of Developing CosmWasm Applications on Neutron (Developer Tooling and Experience) — $100K
• Social Apps for Users in the Interchain (User-facing Applications) — $100K

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Neutron as a Settlement Layer for Rollups

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.

Staked Assets, Fixed Rates, and Other Advanced Vault Strategies

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. Local vaults are eligible, but applications that leverage Neutron’s ICTX and ICQ infrastructure to create cross-chain vaults will be preferred.

Tooling to Improve Neutron’s Governance

Ways to drastically improve both the voter turnout for Neutron’s governance and improve grassroots governance engagement — 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, Derivatives, and Other Similar Applications

Stablecoins, synthetics, and derivatives are key to the decentralized finance ecosystem of any chain and we are looking for novel proposals which help bootstrap a Neutron-native ecosystem. There are potential designs for collateralised stablecoins or other assets which track the price of other indices or assets which may uniquely take advantage of Neutron as a base-layer blockchain and Cosmos-specific features like IBC, ICA, and ICQ.

Significantly Improving the Ease of Developing CosmWasm Applications on Neutron

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.

Social Apps for Users in the Interchain

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 which take advantage of the Cosmos stack on Neutron, especially those which aren’t purely financial. Examples include token-gated chatrooms, online bulletin boards which are signed using a user’s address, or other social applications which may be built on NFTs or other blockchain-native primitives.

NFT ISSUANCE PLATFORMS, MARKETPLACES, AND FINANCIALIZATION-FOCUSED PRODUCTS

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.

Next Steps

You can find more information about each of the Core RFPs at the links provided which will also help explain the process for applying for the relevant grant. We hope that this article has helped inspire some members of the community to tackle some of the most pressing issues Neutron faces and help provide innovative products and research for the wider community. Feel free to send an email to grants@neutrongrants.com or message us on Twitter at @NeutronGrants.