ECOSYSTEM FUND
The criteria, before the money.
The fund is not capitalized and applications are not open. What is published here is the outline of a future process, so a builder can prepare rather than guess.
01 · WHAT THIS IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT
What this is and what it is not
The fund is not capitalized. Applications are not open, no amounts are decided, and no timeline is set.
The page exists anyway because criteria published before the money are worth more than criteria published after it. A builder who can read what will be asked, and what will count, can decide now whether this is worth their time — and can hold us to the same standard later.
There is no application form on this page. A grant application costs hours to write, and asking for hours against a fund with no money would not be made honest by a disclaimer next to it.
02 · NINE SUPPORT AREAS
Nine support areas
The source names these nine and describes none of them. They stand as names.
- protocol development
- open-source tooling
- AI applications
- privacy research
- infrastructure providers
- integrations
- wallets
- developer tools
- community projects
Nine invented descriptions would read as nine decided scopes. Where the source is a list of names, the page is a list of names.
03 · MEASURABLE NETWORK UTILITY
What measurable network utility means
The fund's only stated criterion, and a criterion that is not unpacked is not a criterion.
Funding should prioritize projects that create measurable network utility.
- Measurable
- Something the network can observe without being told. An integration that routes real orders. A provider that serves them. A node someone else runs. A tool other builders depend on.
- Not measurable
- An announcement. A follower count. A partnership with no traffic through it. A roadmap. Anything whose evidence is a claim rather than an observation.
The distinction the source draws is between a project that uses the network and one that grows it. Both are welcome; the second is the one the priority line is about.
Specification pendingWhat is not settled: the threshold. How much observed usage counts, over what period, and how it is weighed against a project too early to have any. The source gives the direction and no rubric, and a rubric written here would be invented policy.
04 · THE APPLICATION OUTLINE
What an application will ask
An outline of a future process, published so it can be prepared for. It has no submit and takes nothing.
- 01What are you building, and which of the nine areas is it in?
- 02Which network utility will it create, and how would the network observe it?
- 03Who is building it, and what have they shipped before?
- 04What exists today — a repository, a prototype, a running service?
- 05What do you need, and for how long?
- 06How would we know it worked?
Each item is a question, not a field. When the fund opens, these become the application; until then they are the shape of one.
05 · HOW IT WOULD BE EVALUATEDSpecification pending
How it would be evaluated
Governance has not decided who evaluates or how a decision is published. A named committee that does not exist would be worse than saying so.
06 · BE TOLD WHEN IT OPENS
Be told when it opens
No wallet address, no amount requested, no budget, no allocation. A page about money that collects a requested amount is an investment surface whatever its heading says.
This site stores nothing and runs no server that could hold a list. To be told when the fund opens, send one line to the only published address — it goes to a mailbox, not a database, and the reply when it comes is one message with the criteria and the process as they stand at that point.
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