The ATOM Accelerator DAO (AADAO) is proud to announce the recipients of our latest grants: Pro Delegators, La Multisig, Hypha and Dora Factory.
By awarding dedicated grants, the AADAO is able to support initiatives that drive infrastructure enhancements and foster new use cases and onchain activity for the Cosmos Hub. The latest grants aim to support the introduction of Partial Set Security (PSS), develop innovative funding mechanisms, and boost global awareness. These efforts are poised to significantly advance the Cosmos Hub and its growing ecosystem.
In total, $354,000 in grant funding was awarded in this batch — $20,000 of which is already being returned by the time of this announcement, and $184,000 is expected to be paid out in 2024. The remaining $150,000 will be earmarked in our assets for the AEZ Quadratic Funding Program, which runs for 24 months.
The Atom Accelerator exists to accelerate the funding and development of key initiatives to support the Cosmos Hub. However, our current system of grouping grants into batches for approval and announcements has inadvertently caused delays that need not exist. Some of the grants in this batch, as well as all grants going forward, will be approved and paid out on a rolling basis. We would announce these grants at the time of approval, and update our website and dashboards accordingly.
In the blog below, we provide a brief summary of the recent grantee projects. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for spotlighted content on how each project brings value to the Hub.
Pro Delegators
Pro Delegators, a cross-chain validator across the interchain, who actively contributes to the Cosmos Hub community, has proposed an impactful solution to address the lack of detailed economic understanding among validators and consumer chains regarding the Interchain Security 2.0 (also known as PSS)
With a $15,000 grant from the AADAO, Pro Delegators plans to deliver a comprehensive spreadsheet modeling PSS economics, along with a thorough post in the Cosmos Hub Forum to foster education and awareness. Additionally, they will release a 15-minute video covering all the technical and fundamental aspects changed by the introduction of PSS.
These initiatives will further spread awareness and understanding of the upgrade, helping to ensure a smoother transition and greater engagement with the new economic framework.
Visit the Pro Delegators website or join their Discord.
La Multisig
La Multisig, founded in 2021, is a Web3 content hub that provides educational content in Spanish and marketing services to help Web3 projects expand in Latin America (LATAM).
Leveraging its large network and marketing experience, La Multisig aims to improve user and developer onboarding for the Cosmos ecosystem in LATAM, particularly in Argentina. Argentina is already home to over 115,000 developers and a third of the population uses stablecoins for daily purchases.
To kickstart a dedicated Cosmos Hub community in this region, La Multisig will organize two in-person events. Leveraging our $12,000 grant, one small-size event will be held in Buenos Aires in the next few months, and a second mid-size event will be held at the end of the year, both focused on kick-starting and sustaining an ATOM community in the region. These events are expected to boost end-user awareness and developer adoption of the Cosmos Hub and AEZ among LATAM users.
Visit the La Multisig website or follow them on X.
Hypha Workers Co-op
The introduction of Partial Set Security (PSS), also known as ICS 2.0, in the recent Gaia v17 software upgrade for Cosmos Hub, brings forward a more complex economic framework for network participants. To address this transition and provide further network support, Hypha Worker Co-operative, renowned for its management of testnets and governance improvements, has secured two grants, one for the ISLE testnet with a funding of $50,000 in USDC to provide incentives for testnet participation, and a second for the “day-to-day” Testnet Incentives program with a funding of $77,000 in USDC. [note: by time of publication, only $30k of the $50k for ISLE testnet was used, with the remaining $20k being returned back to AADAO. Learn more here.]
ISLE testnet aimed to prepare the Cosmos Hub for this transition through comprehensive education and incentivized participation in the testnet. Through this effort, Hypha sought to raise awareness about the positive effects of PSS and ISC 2.0 on the Atom Economic Zone (AEZ), enhancing validator and stakeholder confidence. The ISLE testnet has been successfully completed, find the results report here.
After an already successful pilot program that began last year, the six-month Testnet Incentives Program aims to support Cosmos Hub validators’ participation in the Hub’s Interchain Security testnet — where new software is tested and new consumer chains are initially onboard — by incentivizing validators to reliably participate, providing feedback to consumer chain teams, helping other validators join the testnet, and more.
By leveraging their experience from past successful initiatives, such as the Game of Chains incentivized testnet, Hypha is poised to facilitate a smooth transition to PSS and increase overall mainnet validator participation, significantly supporting the advancement of the Cosmos Hub.
Visit the Hypha website or follow them on X.
Dora Factory / DoraHacks
DoraHacks, the leading multi-chain Web3 developer platform, has over 120,000 monthly active users globally across 100+ ecosystems, offering hackathons, bounties, quadratic funding, and more.
Dora Factory, its infrastructure arm, recently concluded the first-ever native Cosmos Hub quadratic funding round for AEZ builders and community members, gathering nearly 400 unique contributions.
Recognizing the importance of quadratic funding in identifying market gaps and ensuring support for essential AEZ public goods like IBC Relayers and popular Cosmos SDK modules, Dora Factory introduced the AEZ Quadratic Funding program. With Cosmos Hub governance approving this Quadratic Funding program, the Atom Accelerator DAO is both adding funds to the match funding pool and playing a role in aligning the program to the needs of the AEZ.
With $200,000 in funding to be distributed across 10 quadratic funding rounds, the AEZ Quadratic Funding Grant is a 24-month program. Its goal is to support the sustainable development of public goods and appchains in the AEZ, helping shape the future of the vast Cosmos ecosystem and ultimately giving rise to new cornerstone applications within Cosmos. Learn more about AADAO’s support for the AEZ Quadratic Funding Program here.
Visit the DoraHacks website or follow them on X.
Are you driving value to the Cosmos Hub?
Funded by the AADAO, Hypha, DoraHacks, Pro Delegators, and La Multisig are launching strategic initiatives to enhance the Cosmos Hub’s infrastructure, activity and use cases. These efforts are expected to significantly contribute to the Hub’s growth by addressing current challenges and fostering new opportunities for development and collaboration within the ecosystem.
To best adapt to the increasing number of impactful grant applications and their development, the AADAO will now release grants on a rolling basis, no longer in set batches.
Are you building a project that could help drive value for the Hub? If so, be sure to check out our Funding Themes and apply for a grant today.
About the Atom Accelerator DAO
AADAO is a governance-mandated DAO of the Cosmos Hub. We have been formed and mandated to drive value for the Cosmos Hub, supporting initiatives that either directly create economic impact or produce value that can drive its growth.
In 2023, we deployed $3.8 million in grants to 39 recipients — resulting in, among other things — a $22m USD airdrop to the Community Pool, an AEZ Accelerator program to expand the AEZ, a successful hackathon with 42 project submissions bringing innovations to the AEZ — and many other key initiatives. Read about them in our 2023 Impact Report.
