Energy Web has launched two initiatives to advance blockchain innovation and its bid for a Polkadot parachain slot.
These are a Community Fund Grant programme to support innovative projects aligned with the organisation’s mission and a crowdloan scheme to participate in the parachain slot auction.
The Community Fund Grant programme, which has been initiated by the Energy Web Chain Validators, is aimed to support the development of tools and infrastructure to accelerate the real-world adoption of the EW Chain and related open-source software in support of the global energy transition.
Based on specific requirements applicants must meet, it features a tiered grant system intended to support different types of projects, from small-scale ideas such as building simple components to improve Energy Web’s tech stack to larger ones such as building new solutions or conducting pilots involving energy assets.
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The amounts available range up to €25,000 ($26,850) for smaller projects of not more than four months duration up to >€100,000 ($107,380) for projects up to 1 year in length.
With Energy Web entering the Polkadot environment and developing its next-generation Energy Web X blockchain, the opportunities for innovation are even greater, the organisation says.
“Impact-driven innovation and open-source technologies are deeply rooted in Energy Web’s mission and values. Applicants will be required to tackle tangible challenges and must be willing to share project results in a transparent way.”
Applications are being accepted on a rolling basis and are then subject to review and assessment.
Polkadot crowdloan
The objective of the crowdloan initiative is to support Energy Web to gain a parachain slot for Energy Web X on the Polkadot Relay Chain and thereby enable it to leverage the security and scalability benefits inherent in that infrastructure.
However, due to the limited availability of the parachain slots, a competitive process is in place to allocate them.
To determine which projects get to connect their parachains to the Polkadot Relay Chain, lease periods – known as ‘time slots’ – are auctioned off, with each lease period lasting for 12 weeks.
Projects can bid for up to eight slots at once in a crowdloan, for a total of 96 weeks of lease time.
The crowdloan scheme works with contributors lending their DOT (Polkadot) tokens for the Energy Web X launch via the Polkadot crowdloan mechanism. In the event of not winning an auction, the contributed DOT tokens are immediately returned. Otherwise, if an auction is won, the tokens will be returned at the ending of the lease, 96 weeks after it begins.
To incentivise participation, Energy Web has instituted a rewards programme offering 1$EWT (Energy Web token) for every 1$DOT placed.
Funds raised via the crowdloan are being used in auctions beginning on September 5, 2023 and concluding between September 19 and September 24, 2023.
If awarded a parachain slot, the launch would be targeted for October 23, 2023.
