Aleo Community Grants Program

We are excited to announce the official launch of the Aleo Community Grants Program.

This program is designed to accelerate our vision of creating an entirely private and totally personal experience for everyone on the web. Aleo utilizes a technology called zero-knowledge cryptography to enable a new paradigm known as decentralized private compute, or zkCloud. From our new layer-1 blockchain which immutably stores programs and data, to a new domain-specific language for writing zero-knowledge powered apps, to our development studio and online REPL, we provide a complete set of tools for the developer who wants to build the next-gen web.

In order to achieve this vision we will be providing community members with incentivized opportunities to make impactful contributions to the Aleo open-source ecosystem.

Whether you're a seasoned developer looking to build an application on Aleo, a designer who wants to build interactive tutorials for our products, or simply a web privacy advocate who would love to help create marketing materials, there is a grant opportunity for you. Grant recipients are not only contributors to our ecosystem, but owners who we hope continue to play a role in our community beyond the scope of the original grant.

For this initial program Aleo has committed $1M in total funding from its treasury.

This funding will be divided across four grant categories, defined by size of contribution (see below)

Across these grant categories we want to create a set of reference applications that showcase the power of Aleo.

There are four specific use cases, along with a fifth miscellaneous category for applicants who would like to submit their own. The $1M in funding will be allocated evenly among each of these use cases (see below)

Aside from the money you would receive from a grant, you will also be given a reputation score based on the quality of your delivered project. This reputation score would identify you as a key player in the Aleo ecosystem and would be used for future rewards and/or benefits.

Application Process

To apply for a grant you must complete and submit an Aleo Grants Program Application.

All applications will be accepted on a rolling basis and assessed weekly by our review committee. If you are selected you will be contacted by Aleo's grants program manager to discuss payment options and next steps. Currently, we are handling grant payments in the form of USD stablecoin, Bitcoin, and Zcash. For more specific details relating to the application process, please read through the application form.

The review committee is comprised of experts across the Aleo team who come from a wide variety of backgrounds. They will review and comment on all applications that are submitted.

[Bonus] Leo Programming Contest #1

In addition to launching the Aleo Community Grants Program, we are also running our first programming contest for our Leo language/compiler.

This is an opportunity for developers to play around with and learn how to build applications using Leo. For this first programming contest we are asking participants to write an efficient sorting algorithm for a list of unsigned 32-bit integers in Leo.

More details can be found on our community wiki, within the Leo Programming Contest page. The 1st place winner of the contest will receive a grand prize of 500 USDC as well as the top spot on our leaderboard and their name etched into our Hall of Fame!