Neutron Grants Program 2024 Report
Introduction and Overview
On October 9th, 2023, a proposal was made to launch the Neutron Grants Program (NGP): a DAO-adjacent program for Neutron to support relevant technical research, application development, and other initiatives within the Neutron economy. The program was run through the Neutron Grants Foundation and structured to allow for smart-contract-based transparency and accountability mechanisms hardwired into its governing rules.
The NGP was initially funded with 20,000,000 NTRN tokens, with 16,000,000 earmarked for future grant spending and 4,000,000 allocated for operational expenses in line. Further details about the initial structure of the grants program can be found in our initial governance forum post. As of last month, the NGP completed its first year of operations and the rest of this report will provide a retrospective on the grant program, breaking down the various metrics we have measured, providing an update on our relevant grantees, and providing an overview of the finances of the Neutron Grants Foundation. Following this, we will be able to lay out our plan for the future of the Neutron economy and how we will support it via grants.
Grant Funding Breakdown
Since our launch, the NGP has received more than 130 applications, forming a mixture of applicants who decided to apply to us independently and a large amount of proactive sourcing from the grants team. Through our rigorous grant review process, the NGP funded 36 excellent grantee teams across six grant batches. The chart below shows the number of grant applications we receive per month.
These 36 grantees have been approved to receive funding over the year, totaling $1.80M and 320,578 NTRN in grant funding, of which $742,250 and 186,528 NTRN have already been paid as of November 12, 2024. We had a variety of applicants across our various categories, with a particular focus on applications, developer tooling, and infrastructure.
The grant applications that we ended up approving followed a similar distribution to all other grant applications. We heavily focused on supporting applicants who aimed to grow DeFi use cases on Neutron. We are glad to have supported over 30 teams in building unique applications and infrastructure on Neutron.
Throughout the year, there has been a consistent focus on user-facing apps and infrastructure, with the total per-batch grant funding reflected in the dollar value of grants given out month-by-month. As important infrastructure, such as DAODAO or indexers, were funded in earlier batches, we focused less on infrastructure and more on protocol development and research.
The chart below breaks down total grant funding approved by category, demonstrating the focus on supporting teams building new applications on Neutron. Some of the largest other grants were in the infrastructure and protocol development categories. We note that one of the grants in our developer tooling category (Abstract) ended up returning their grant due to a change in business priorities.
Research and education was the least-funded grant category, attributable to the fact that there was a much smaller sample of quality grant applications. Ideally, research and education grants would be focused on high-quality technical research or data-related work.
1-Year Retrospective
The first year of the NGP’s grant giving can be considered somewhat successful, with significant grant successes, including our work with our NIP Innovators (who have already launched several products on Neutron), DAO DAO and Range—both of which now support critical infrastructure on Neutron—and several other applications and products that are used every day.
We believe that many grantees would have benefited from the NGP’s more hands-on approach, assisting with Go-To-Market, Product Development, and Marketing efforts and positioning them for further non-grant-based fundraising.
Out of the eleven applications listed on Neutron’s DeFi Llama page, four of them (Apollo DAO, Margined Protocol, Amulet Finance, and CALC) were funded or partially funded by the NGP, and several other applications or experiments have also captured mindshare over the last year. This is a good base, to begin with, but the grant program has not done well enough to properly support builders on Neutron with ambitions to build the next generation of financial applications.
Going forward, we will likely transition to giving smaller grants, especially for applications, to support these grantees in seeking further funding. This will ensure that grantees do not rely solely on grant funding to succeed while also avoiding adverse selection, which is common with larger grant sizes in new ecosystems. Alongside these smaller grants, we will provide intensive Go-To-Market support and mentoring to ensure that teams building on Neutron can hit the ground running when attempting to attract users and capital—thus best positioning them for further external follow-on funding.
Grantee Updates
Neutron Innovators Program
Deploydon (Grant)
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Deploydon has launched several successful and fun applications on Neutron during his tenure as a Neutron Innovator, including NFA Zone, Squared.Zone, Bankrupt.Zone, NGMI.Zone, and Newts
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Deploydon’s tenure within the NIP is a perfect example of the upside of the program as a path for developers new to the ecosystem to gain the freedom to experiment without worrying about funding. He is now part of the Neutron core development team, where he continues his creative work
Kiruse (Grant)
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While continuing work on her planned on-chain game to be built on Neutron, Kiruse has also experimented with several other applications such as Dropnote (a fully on-chain, wallet-to-wallet messenger) and CW-Pipeline (a developer tool to start CosmWasm projects more efficiently)
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In addition, she has been working with Superbolt, an NFT marketplace that is also an NGP grantee, to assist them with front-end work ahead of launch
Gabe, Founder of ArenaDAO (Grant)
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Gabe is diligently working on ArenaDAO v2 whilst making strides in partnering with various Esport organizations (VFL and Mazer), who will host the first events that utilize ArenaDAO
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The current focus going forward is on further making ArenaDAO more suitable to the Esport community and onboarding gamers through partnerships
Completed or Partially Completed Grants
Leap Wallet (Grant)
- We awarded a grant to Leap to support them in building the infrastructure that is currently used to power the app.neutron.org/bridge onboarding experience, which has been a significant unlock for onboarding new users to the Neutron ecosystem
Eclipse Equinox (Grant)
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Eclipse recently launched their Equinox vaults, which you can learn more about in this Twitter thread
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The TVL of Equinox has almost hit 30,000,000 ASTRO at the time of writing, which is a testament to the amount of nascent demand for this product, and we expect Equinox to grow alongside it
Vendetta Markets (Grant)
- Vendetta, a prediction market targeting the Esports market, successfully launched on Neutron and has since been focusing on finding early product-market fit during some of the more prominent Esport events, such as LoL Esports 2024 Worlds
Obi CosmWasm Developer Course — Heretolearn.xyz (Grant)
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HereToLearn successfully launched its first developer course, which was an introduction to Rust available on both ThinkIfic and YouTube
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The next course will be squarely focused on CosmWasm development, and we aim for it to be a strong educational resource for entrepreneurs looking to build businesses on Neutron
NewtBot (Grant)
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NewtBot is an early project by Deploydon which was a Telegram bot for AI-generated images of Neutron’s unofficial mascot, the newt, which would then be minted and sold as an NFT.
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This grant strengthened the Neutron community and was an early example of Crypto x AI experimentation.
Isaac — Telegram Bot (Grant)
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The team behind Isaac — the first cross-chain Telegram bot — successfully launched on Neutron and carried out the grant milestones, which included integrating the bot with both Kujira and Osmosis
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One other integration and use case was where Isaac was used to snipe new memecoin launches on NFA.Zone, an example of composability between NGP grantees
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Unfortunately, Isaac is no longer maintained, given a drop in Telegram-bot-based activity across the industry
Celatone (Grant)
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Celat.One successfully launched smart contract verification on their website, which allows both developers to verify the provenance of their contracts via the block explorer and users to ensure that they are interacting with safe smart contracts.
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You can see an example of a verified contract here
Asteroid Protocol (Grant)
- Asteroid, the inscription protocol built on Cosmos Hub, successfully launched their fungible token bridge to Neutron, which is now the center of liquidity (via Astroport) for all tokens built using Asteroid
Amulet Finance (Grant)
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Amulet successfully launched on mainnet and currently has vaults and markets live for ATOM, dATOM, and stATOM.
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The Amulet team is now focused on successfully bringing their self-repaying loan product to market and attracting new capital.
StakeTax (Grant)
- StakeTax, integrated with Neutron, provides an easy way for users to download CSV files of Neutron transaction data, which are compatible with commonly used tax software.
Reclaim Protocol (Grant)
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Reclaim successfully deployed their contracts on Neutron mainnet, which allows developers to bring external data from other websites on-chain in a secure manner
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We are now actively working with Reclaim to find entrepreneurs looking to integrate with their SDK
DAODAO (Grant)
- DAODAO was an early grantee who has helped build essential DAO infrastructure that the Neutron DAO, the Neutron Grants Program, and other Neutron projects have used consistently over the last year
Calc Finance (Grant)
- Calc has been integrated with Neutron early into our tenure and has provided users with a variety of investment strategies to meet their financial needs
Spacebox Indexer (Grant)
- The Bro-n-Bro Validator team successfully open-sourced an indexer for the core Neutron modules and Neutron’s recently launched DEX module, which provides a cheap and effective tool for businesses looking for live Neutron blockchain data
Velo (Grant)
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Velo launched its predictions product this month, which will provide options for Neutron bettors to bet on political and cultural outcomes.
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The success of Polymarket during the United States election cycle is evidence that prediction markets are here to stay as an information-gathering tool
Web3FC ATOM Hacker House (Grant)
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We are excited to have supported the ATOM Hacker House in Barcelona in early December, a week-long event with an explicit focus on onboarding new developers and entrepreneurs to build on Neutron
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The event served as an onboarding tool for new developers to Neutron, and there are several promising teams who we will be working with going forward
Margined Protocol (Grant)
- Margined recently launched their redemption rate arbitrage vault for Drop ATOM (dATOM) on Neutron—one of the first of several strategies they will be launching on Neutron in partnership with other DeFi applications
- Alongside the launch of Duality recently, the Margined team has successfully deployed several market-making vaults which form one of our core efforts to bootstrap liquidity on our integrated DEX
Grants In Progress
Superbolt (Grant)
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Superbolt is gearing up for the launch of their NFT Marketplace, Launchpad, and gamified NFTFi product suite in the coming months
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Our Neutron Innovator, Kiruse, has been assisting them with front-end development work over the last month as they push forward toward launch
Range Security (Grant [1] [2])
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Range Security has been working on integrating Neutron into its security monitoring product line and integrating a modified version of the IBC Rate Limits v2 module into our chain
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All the work on integrating Neutron with their product line has already been completed, including work on their transaction simulator (which is now compatible with Neutron) alongside their Range Trail product and Risk API
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In addition, a version of the IBC Rate Limits module has already been integrated into Neutron, which is a testament to the ability of successful grants to drive positive protocol progress
b9Lab CosmWasm Developer Course
- b9Lab is one of the most notable and successful firms focused on developer education, and we are excited for them to finalize their CosmWasm developer course before the end of the year
DAO DAO v3 (Grant)
- As part of their v3 roadmap, DAO is working on implementing a delegations feature, which we have funded to improve voter turnout in Neutron governance.
Ark Protocol (Grant)
- With the upcoming launch of Superbolt, Neutron’s first NFT Platform, Ark Protocol is planning to launch their ICS-721 NFT bridge on Neutron this month, alongside their Interchain NFT Product
Starship (Grant)
- Neutron is successfully integrated with Starship — an interchain development platform for Cosmos chains — and developers can learn more about how to use it within the setup here
Electron (Grant)
- Electron is currently preparing to launch their RWA DeFi platform for launch on Neutron’s mainnet
Blockwave Labs — QVE Vault (Grant)
- Blockwave Labs successfully launched the first iteration of their arbitrage bot on Neutron, and they are currently working on other strategies and building a track record of operating on-chain
Apollo DAO (Grant)
- Apollo has a track record of releasing several yield farming vaults on Neutron with millions of dollars in TVL. Soon, they’ll launch their Droplet farming vaults following their recent UI upgrade
Discontinued Grants
Abstract Money (Grant)
- The Abstract team decided to pause work on their grant and returned their initial grant payment
Shogun (Grant)
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Since receiving NGP funding, Shogun successfully raised VC funding from Binance Labs, Polychain Capital, and others
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They are now in the process of continuing their application’s cross-chain rollout, but work on Neutron and Cosmos has been deprioritized
AstroMint (Grant)
- AstroMint has been working on iterating on its stablecoin economic design as it continues to develop its product, but it has faced difficulties in progressing
CoinHall (Grant)
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CoinHall has successfully integrated with Neutron and was primed to support the launch of Neutron’s Integrated DEX, Duality, as the next milestone in its grant
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However, their acquisition by Jupiter has refactored their product roadmap
Fission Finance (Grant)
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Fission recently launched its product on testnet and is in a position to launch its application on Mainnet
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However, due to legal issues around safely launching the application, we are unsure whether they will be able to launch on Neutron
Financial Overview
As of November 12, 2024, the Neutron Grants Foundation holds the following assets worth approximately $7.21M.
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Neutron Grants Giving Fund: 13.73M NTRN and $443,130 USDC ($6.26M est. USD value)
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Neutron Operational Multi-Sig: 1.09M NTRN and $489,400 USDC ($949.03K est USD value)
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Total funding approved (USD): $1.82M
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Total funding paid out (USD): $748.50K or 41% of total funding approved
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Total funding approved (NTRN): 320,578 NTRN
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Total funding paid out (NTRN): 134,050 NTRN or 42% of total funding approved
The charts below illustrate the NGP’s expenditures over the last year compared to the initially budgeted expenditures. As we can see, the NGP operated well within our budget for all categories except Operational Expenses, which was slightly above budget and can be attributed to our 2024-25 blockchain tax software subscription required for the upcoming year of Neutron Grants Foundation operations.
The chart below illustrates the monthly expenditure per category over the last year (excluding October 2023, where we saw a 20M NTRN inflow from the successful passing of Proposal A-14). Most operational expenses (we categorize compensation separately as per the initial governance proposal) were consistent throughout the year aside from grant funding, which peaked in April and July, and compensation funding, which peaked in April 2024 (when the initial cliff period for vesting of committee members’ NTRN passed).
Below are screenshots of the Neutron Grants Foundation’s balance sheet and most recent Profit and Loss statement as of 31 October.
Please note that in regards to the “Deferred Income” line on our balance sheet, our accountants, Harris & Trotter, having reviewed the initial Neutron Grants Program Proposal and discussed it internally, believe a modification is necessary to how revenue is recognized. Previously, they had recognized the initial 20M NTRN governance injection through the P/L in the YE 31/12/2023. However, they believe this treatment is slightly flawed, so they have amended the treatment to move more in line with IFRS15. The impact of this is that revenue is now recognized throughout an estimated period, which we determine to be nine years, based on the Funding and Budget subsection of the Proposal. This is now reflected in the accounts through the reduction of revenue and the creation of a deferred income liability.
You can also view our full accounts for the year ending 2023 here. After a year of operations, we are in a healthy financial position, which puts us in the ideal position to continue executing our mission to support growth within the Neutron economy.
Looking Ahead
The NGP has had a relatively successful first year but could have done better in onboarding the best builders and entrepreneurs to Neutron and supporting their go-to-market. Our strategy will change to facilitate this moving forward.
To this end, Lanre, the NGP’s Grants Lead, will become the Head of the Ecosystem at the Neutron Foundation. As part of this move, we are planning to transition the Neutron Grants Foundation to a subsidiary of the Neutron Foundation (subject to governance approval and legal work). This will allow us to be more closely integrated with Neutron’s core team as we aim to have a much more holistic approach to grants and Neutron ecosystem project development going forward.
This transition will enable Lanre to focus more systematically on existing grant initiatives while seamlessly integrating them into broader efforts to grow the Neutron economy. These efforts include ecosystem incentives, audit sponsorships, relayer support, and other campaigns designed to support builders and entrepreneurs on Neutron, all while introducing new audiences and markets to our vision for integrated finance.
Over time, we plan to expand the Ecosystem team to focus on comprehensive support for Neutron’s ecosystem, including technology, infrastructure, and go-to-market (GTM) strategies. This growth will enable us to enhance grant funding efforts, build on the past year’s successes, and learn from our challenges.
Looking ahead, we see grants as a vital tool for supporting public goods infrastructure on Neutron and as a pre-venture-funding or bootstrapping mechanism for entrepreneurs. The Neutron ecosystem team will work closely with these entrepreneurs, helping them reach the market through GTM support, marketing, product development, audit sponsorships, and more. Neutron must take a more hands-on approach to grants and ecosystem support to cultivate a thriving ecosystem and on-chain DeFi economy.
We intend to present a proposal outlining any necessary changes to the NGP’s structure to align with this vision. Subject to governance review and approval, we aim to reopen our grant program at the start of the new year.