Today we are excited to launch the Rubicon Grants Program. This program will fund individuals and teams who contribute to Rubicon, an order book protocol built on Ethereum Layer 2 (L2). Contributing can take many forms including code, content, research, dashboards, translations, memes, or something else. This program is particularly special to us because the first funding Rubicon received was a grant!

To get involved, join the Rubicon Discord and visit the #contributing channel. If you have a project in mind, you can apply for a grant by submitting the Application Form.

Our Grants program is continuous; contributors can apply for funding at any time!

Once an application is submitted, our team will share feedback and suggestions during a two-week Review Period. At the end of the Review Period, a grant will either be accepted or rejected. Do not worry if your application is rejected, you can always apply again.

We evaluate every grant application on a case-by-case basis. Here are some guidelines for prospective Rubicon grantees when planning their projects:

• Measure Impact

• Be Specific

• Improve Accessibility

Inspired by retroactive public goods funding (RPGF), our program will also issue retroactive grants! This will start as retroactive grants issued on a subjective basis by our team to contributors who made an impact but never applied for funding. Over time, it will transition to a community-led process where discussions, polls, and other coordination tools determine retroactive grant recipients.

If you plan on contributing code or building a project on top of Rubicon, it must be on Optimism in order to receive an OP grant.

To start the Rubicon Grants Program off right, we are issuing three retroactive grants to awesome contributors who made an impact without the expectation of funding:

1. A few months ago, Discord user destiny translated the Rubicon Docs for our Chinese community (and wants to continue translating more resources!) 🇨🇳

2. User Experience Research (UXR) consultants from the University of Southern California’s Masters in Applied Psychology Program did Usability Testing on the Rubicon App that produced great insights for improving our interface and DeFi interfaces in general 💻

3. So far Discord user Axiomatix has produced the highest quality Rubicon memes 🤝

The Rubicon Grants Program is only possible because of the Optimism Foundation. As part of their distribution to early projects, Rubicon received a token allocation that passed through an Optimism Governance vote. It’s rare for a DeFi protocol at our stage to be able to reward contributors with grants, and for that we are thankful. 🙏

All grants are issued in the OP token with the target of distributing 135,000 OP (currently ~$98,000) in grants over the next 6 months!

Thanks for reading!

• Rubicon App

• Twitter

• Discord

• Docs

• Blog

• Newsletter

• Github

• Reach us at contact (at) rubicon (dot) finance

Alea iacta est.

(This post is for educational purposes only. Nothing in it should be construed as financial advice. Do your own research before making investments)