Boosting the SSV Ecosystem with A New Grants Strategy

The ssv.network DAO (SSV DAO) is excited to share a major update to the SSV Network’s grants strategy, designed to align more closely with the ecosystem’s evolving needs and opportunities. This new approach not only fosters innovation but also strategically enhances the ssv.network ecosystem, ensuring continued growth and success.

This blog post summarizes the new grants strategy and includes an awesome success story straight from the ecosystem, SSV Scan. For the full picture, see the proposal on the SSV Forum.

Current Grants Program: A Snapshot

The current grants program ([DIP-5]) has been instrumental in supporting teams to build decentralized staking applications and services on the SSV network. Thanks to these efforts, SSV now boasts over 23,000 validators and 745,000 ETH staked, just months after the mainnet launch. The SSV grants committee (GC) has awarded over $3 million in grants across more than 60 projects, fostering a robust ecosystem containing various staking use cases and tooling.

The existing grants fall into one of these categories:

• Staking Pool Development
• Staking Service Development

Important note: The grants page will be updated soon, with an announcement to follow.

Why the Change?

As the SSV Network has matured, integration and development have become simpler and require less engineering effort. This has rendered some of our grant milestones less relevant. The SSV ecosystem has become simpler and easier to build on and integrate, requiring little to almost no engineering work (i.e., StakeWise Vault integration or integration of the P2P Staking API). With easier integration and development on SSV, seed funding for early stages like MVP and testnet milestones is no longer as critical. The incentivized mainnet program already effectively drives TVL growth, rendering separate TVL milestones redundant. In light of these developments, the DAO has decided to refactor the grants process to align with the network’s continuous evolution.

The New Grants Strategy

The revised grants strategy focuses on fostering innovation through open grants for unique use cases and strategic partnerships for critical ecosystem components. SSV DAO is streamlining the funding process by discontinuing seed funding and TVL milestones but will continue supporting existing grantees and maintaining bug bounties and micro-grants.

Key Changes:

• New Application Process: Temporarily close grants and reopen with the new strategy.
• Stop Seed Funding Grants: No more seeding grants for staking services and pools.
• Support Existing Grants: Guide currently approved grants to completion.
• Discontinue TVL Grants: To avoid conflicts with the incentivized mainnet program.
• Emphasize Open Grants: Focus on grants for unique and critical ecosystem components.
• Maintain Bug Bounties and Micro-Grants: These programs will continue under current guidelines.

Instead of broad grants, SSV DAO may form strategic partnerships for critical ecosystem components, ensuring dedicated development and ownership by the DAO and mitigating dependency risks. Focus areas include performance & metadata data providers, alerting & monitoring solutions, alternative SSV client implementations, operator solutions and cluster selection, developer tools, major player integrations (e.g., RocketPool, Lido), and community programs (e.g., Becoming a Liquidator).

Next Steps

1. Consultation and Alignment: Finalize the new strategy in consultation with SSV Labs’ teams and incorporate community feedback.
2. Update Grants Portal: Reflect the new strategy on the grants website and update application terms and conditions, including KYC/KYB requirements.

Success Story: SSV Scan

SSV Scan, a network explorer developed by DragonStake and Polkastats, exemplifies the success of the grants program. This explorer has significantly enhanced the network’s transparency and usability.

SSVScan.io offers a comprehensive suite of features that empower users to evaluate network performance over time, focusing on operators and validators. It provides detailed metrics on operator attendance, participation, and consensus per epoch, enhancing transparency and informed decision-making. Users can also track fees, validator growth, and revenue, gaining a deep understanding of network dynamics and making informed staking choices based on operator performance and network evolution.

The SSV DAO is excited to announce an extended partnership with DragonStake through a new grant aimed at scaling SSV Scan to support over 100,000 validators and beyond. This initiative highlights the new strategy’s focus on strategic partnerships for critical infrastructure.

Not only is DragonStake a builder in the SSV ecosystem, but they are also verified operators that have been running highly performant nodes since testnet. The SSV DAO is happy to have them as an integral part of the SSV ecosystem.

Learn more about the creators of SSV Scan:

• DragonStake
• Polkastats

Conclusion

These changes will streamline the grant process, better align incentives, and foster innovative development on the SSV network. Additionally, the SSV DAO is excited to see more success stories as in the case with SSV Scan.

The SSV DAO values your feedback and participation in this transition and looks forward to your thoughts and contributions. Thank you for your continued support and commitment to the SSV network.

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