Gno.land Funding and Grants Program - Quarterly Report: Q4 2023

The Gno.land Funding and Grants program identifies talented and passionate developers, researchers, and tinkerers to interact with Gno.land, enhance the platform's usability, and help build the core infrastructure and tooling needed for mainnet. After a strong start in Q3 2023 from our grantees, we awarded four additional grants in Q4. Let’s take a look at their progress and what’s coming up in Q1 2024.

Q4 Funding Breakdown

The total amount paid out in Q4 for grants was just under $317,000, spread out over the four grants: Teritori, Berty, Onbloc, and Dragos (Flippando). This work was split over essential stress-testing, debugging, and development on Gno core, and building social, gaming, and project management dApps to extend the platform’s functionality. Each grant recipient received milestones for deliverables and tracked their progress through regular public and internal syncs, hackerspace journey updates, blog posts, documentation, and developer calls.

Berty Technologies (delivery May 2024)

After successfully meeting their deliverables in Q3 and creating Gno Native Kit (formerly GnoMobile), Berty was awarded a second grant in Q4 to experiment with smart contract integrations around social media. Through the development of GnoSocial, the team has created a test bed for building decentralized social media-style apps and helped to stress test technical issues in Gno.land.

In Q4, Berty delivered V1 of GnoSocial, which includes basic Twitter-like functionality. GnoSocial will be implemented on mobile using the Gno Native Kit framework, with a minimal desktop app and a read-only web version also in the scope. Aside from this work, Berty contributes to Gno core development, helping raise issues and merge PRs. You can follow their progress in hackerspace issue 51.

Teritori (delivery February 2024)

After delivering the moderation module in Q3, Teritori received a second grant to carry out research and implement a conflict resolution module and an on-chain project management tool. Their work also continues on the escrow module build. As an active contributor, the Teritori team helps improve Gno core as well, getting more PRs merged, participating in regular meetings, and writing documentation. Read more about Teritori in their hackerspace issue 7.

Dragos (Flippando, delivered January 2024)

To experiment with gaming in Gno.land, Dragos received a grant to port his on-chain memory game Flippando from Solidity. Flippando is a simple memory game—with a twist. Players uncover tiles and must find their matches to win the game. The result can be minted as an NFT and assembled to create larger, more complex NFTs and digital “paintings.” The beta version of Flippando is now live on the testnet, and you can read about his experiences in developing the game on the Gno.land blog here or visit hackerspace issue 33.

Onbloc (ongoing)

After producing consistently awesome work and being our longest-standing contributor, Onbloc received a grant in Q4 2024 to continue iterating on Gno.land tooling, Adena, and to help build Gno.land core in preparation for mainnet release. Part of the scope was to support contract-to-contract interaction issue 757, lead a multi-node testnet initiative, write pure Gno packages, and help debugging the GnoVM, among many other initiatives. Onbloc is also adding additional security to the Adena wallet and an “Airgap” feature, which you can read more about in hackerspace issue 29. We’ll also release a detailed blog post soon, so stay tuned.

Coming Up in Q1 2024

We’re looking forward to more exciting developments in the coming year as we focus on the road to mainnet. In Q1, grantees will mainly focus on debugging Gno core, developing smart contracts and libraries, building and porting dApps to Gno.land, and creating educational materials to help grow the community.

Blockchain software and virtual reality technologies firm Varmeta are under evaluation for a grant to support account sessions and build the Gno.land Unity SDK to make blockchain more accessible to game developers (you can track their progress in hackerspace issue 43). We’re also finalizing a grant for a DAO tinkerer and a research report, as well as evaluating the extension of a second grant to Dragos to port his popular project management app to Gno.land.

We’re steadily building out the Gno.land platform and our ecosystem of grantees and contributors. Let us know if you want to join us by submitting an application at any time on the Funding and Grants repository. We’re always on the lookout for ideas to advance the platform.

Tags: #gnoland #funding #grants

Written by christina, michelle on 07 Feb 2024

Published by g125em6arxsnj49vx35f0n0z34putv5ty3376fg5 to gno.land's blog