If you've got an idea to build on or improve Urbit, the Urbit Foundation will likely fund it as a proposal.
We have a track record of funding many different kinds of different projects: new apps, developer libraries and documentation, open-ended research, community formation, written and video content, and lots more.
Ready to get started? Here's how the process works:
- Submit your proposal using this form↗
- Obtain approval from the Urbit Foundation and find a member of our community to champion your proposal
- When your proposal is approved the Urbit Foundation and you will start looking for a suitable champion
- Sign our grant agreement
- Submit invoices after obtaining community signoff
Create your proposal
Submitting a proposal starts by clearly articulating your idea and the value it will bring to the Urbit network. Getting the Urbit Foundation's signoff requires approval from an established member of our community and a compelling reason for receiving the requested amount of funding.
Elements of a proposal
Good proposals all include the following:
- A detailed and clear description of the proposal. If you're proposing something technical, user stories are a good idea.
- An overview of why you are the right person for the job. A description of your background, familiarity with the project, and professional/education experience are all good starts.
- Your estimate for date of completion.
- The amount of funding you'd like for the project, denominated in stars.
- What specific deliverables will look like.
It's recommended to break your project into milestones, each of which must have its own completion dates, funding amounts and deliverables. In general, proposals should target a first deliverable within two months of the start of the project. Proposals should have a maximum of five milestones as scoping a project beyond that is impractical, and each milestone should constitute significant enough work to warrant the reward of a full star.
Here are some examples of exceptional proposals for reference:
- Urbit Forms↗ has great demonstration of thinking around technical architecture
- Bitcoin Lightning Development↗ shows well defined user stories and future development opportunities that can inspire potential collaborators
- %pony↗ contains detailed thinking of current affordances of existing software if trying to build analogs to the traditional software stack
- App Store↗ blends the above with a nearly ideal balance of user stories mapped to milestones for clarity of completion, initial architectural thinking, and thinking around unique affordances and challenges of building on a distributed p2p system
After writing up your proposal, fill out this form↗ to submit your idea to the Foundation.
Funding
The Urbit Foundation will provide funding of up to five stars for any one grant.
Our formula for determining how much to value a particular grant is a function of time spent on the project, value to the Urbit universe, and track record of the contributor (either via past work within the grants program, or a relevant external background).
Further funding may be available for continued development pending the successful completion of your grant. Additionally, contributors of exceptionally well completed grant proposals become eligible to mentor apprentices which can support continued development of their application for maintenence and feature additions.
Abandonment
A proposal is considered abandoned when a milestone is more than a month behind schedule and preemptive action is not taken to inform The Urbit Foundation of an adjusted timeline that has been approved by your Champion. When a proposal is considered abandoned, the Urbit Foundation may choose to compensate the work differently upon completion, or not at all.
The intent of this policy is to:
- Reduce the support burden on the Urbit Foundation and community when contributors go silent
- Keep grants current: what's important today might not be important a year later
We try to use this rule in good faith. Reasonable delays due to unforseen life circumstances or project complexity will be tolerated, so long as the contributor is communicative with their champion and/or the Urbit Foundation. In these cases we'll encourage the contributor to modify the timelines and/or scope of their proposals to accommodate new information.
Approval by the Foundation
The Grants team of the Urbit Foundation looks at Grants on a bi-weekly basis. After they have decided on the grant they will inform you whether it is approved, rejected or needs some adjustments. In the latter case someone of the grants team will help you finetune your proposal so it can be reconsidered in the next round.
Looking for a Champion
Finding a suitable champion is important for the success of your grant. Therefore we ask you to stay on the look-out for someone on the network who is capable to champion your proposal. The Foundation will assist you in finding a good champion.
Working with your Champion
Your champion is invested in the success of your project — if they successfully assist you in completing your project, they'll get a small reward as well — so don't hesitate to utilize them.
Here are some guidelines for how to engage with your champion:
- Meet regularly: Those that can champion projects are chosen for their past contributions. This means that they're able to provide hands-on support. This structure works best if you set up a regular check-in, either once a week or every other week. If nothing else, having an accountability buddy is really helpful.
- Stay in touch: Leverage the Urbit network for keeping in touch about your project. Don't hesitate to ask questions! The
[battery payload]group (~dister-dozzod-lapdeg/battery-payload) is a great place to hang out with other developers, ask questions, and share your experiences. - Ask for connections: Champions are well-connected throughout the network and know who's who. If you need support in a particular area that is beyond your Champion's expertise, they should be able to put you in touch with someone that can help.
- Get your work reviewed: Part of your Champion's job is to review your work and get others' eyes on it as well. Let them know when you need something reviewed. Particularly, this is required for getting review and signoff that you have completed a milestone, but can be helpful for other complex asks as well.
If your Champion becomes unresponsive or is unhelpful, let someone at the Urbit Foundation know and we'll take care of it.
Paperwork
After your proposal is approved and Championed, it will be added to this website, and the Urbit Foundation will need to get a signed contributor agreement and collect a small amount of personal information from you as part of our KYC process.
The Urbit Foundation must comply with international law when distributing address space. We try to keep this process as minimal as we can, but there's no way to avoid it entirely without legally jeopardizing the Foundation's operations.
Getting Paid
After you've finished your work on a given milestone, you will need to get signoff from your champion. To do this, you'll want to contact them to share the details of the milestone completed, any relevant instructions, github repos, or app download links, and solicit review from your champion. They can submit their approval by contacting ~marfun-pacpet, at which point you are ready to submit an invoice↗. Once the Urbit Foundation receives approval from your champion and an invoice for the amount agreed upon in your grant or milestone, the Foundation will pay your star allocation to the Ethereum address you have provided.
We approve and issue payments within 30 days of invoice receipt and approval, although often payment is made more quickly. If you have any questions regarding getting paid or submitting an invoice, please contact ~marfun-pacpet for assistance.