Announcing the NEAR Foundation’s $1 Million NEAR Grants Pilot Program

Today the NEAR Foundation announced the launch of the NEAR Grants Program during the virtual ETHDenver hackathon opening ceremonies. In the first half of 2021, the NEAR Grants Pilot Program will award $1 million (USD equivalent) in grants funding and resources to promising teams whose work will foster and expand NEAR’s technology and community. 

NEAR Grants will support projects that share NEAR’s mission to accelerate the world’s transition to open technologies by growing and enabling a community of developers and creators. The NEAR Grants Pilot Program will award grants and bounties across four streams: Open Source and Public Goods; Startups; Education Initiatives; and Bounties. 

Successful grant applications may include projects extending the NEAR infrastructure, developer tooling and documentation, validator and staking resources, open source libraries, public goods projects, research & development, decentralized applications with open source components, educational materials for developers, social impact, and interoperability solutions. 

“The NEAR Foundation is proud to launch the NEAR Grants Program at ETHDenver. As the NEAR ecosystem grows, we’re excited to support talented teams with big ideas and introduce them to the accessible, cutting-edge development experience of the NEAR platform. We hope the ETHDenver attendees will explore our bounties at the hackathon and consider applying for a NEAR Grant,” said Erik Trautman, CEO of NEAR Foundation.

The NEAR Grants Program has been in beta since late 2020 and has already awarded grants to eleven teams building infrastructure, developer resources, and interoperability solutions on NEAR. A selection of the beta grantees includes: 

• Liquality (cross-chain atomic swaps)
• WalletConnect (wallet interoperability)
• Abridged/Collab.Land (token-permissioned communities)
• Narwallets (browser wallet)
• NEAR-Staking.com (validator resources)

Open technologies succeed on the efforts of a constellation of builders and creators. The NEAR Grants Program’s goal is to make participation in the NEAR ecosystem accessible and empowering for all.

Apply Now

Prospective projects are encouraged to visit near.org/grants and submit a grant application to the NEAR Grants Pilot Program today!