World Assets, Ltd., (Worldcoin) a wholly owned subsidiary of Worldcoin Foundation and issuer of “WLD”, announced the launch of the Worldcoin Community Grants Program that will be supported by the Worldcoin Foundation in “accordance with its aims and objects, in order to support, grow and encourage adoption of Worldcoin projects.”
Beginning with the inaugural Wave0, the Community Grants Program is a commitment to focus on “building resilient technology and more equitable systems by empowering a robust community of builders to advance the Worldcoin Tech Tree.”
In the first three inaugural waves, the Worldcoin Foundation has committed “an initial pool of 2M WLD in funding across three grant tracks.”
Subsequent waves may increase grant award commitments “as projects grow to identify new opportunities and impactful solutions for the community.”
Currently, the Community Grants Program consists of different grant tracks:
- Community Grants (up to 5K WLD) are available for community organizers, event sponsorships, ongoing hackathon projects and other similar initiatives
- Project Grants (up to 25K WLD) are available for larger scale projects such as those described on the RFP page
- Open Track Grants (no set budget) are available for the most significant and ambitious projects, some of which may also fulfill projects described on the the RFP page
The Foundation may, at its discretion, “choose to make grants directly in USDC or a similar stablecoin type asset rather than in WLD.”
This approach provides flexibility to “the Foundation to take into account a variety of commercial and regulatory considerations given the global nature of the grants program and the Foundation’s objectives of transparency, sustainability and regulatory compliance.”
Grants are available in all areas relevant to advancing the Worldcoin Tech Tree, such as:
- World ID applications
- World ID protocol
- User agent
- Hardware
- Operations
Each grant track follows different evaluation guidelines and timelines “to sustainably accommodate their respective audience.”
Community Grants will be the fastest to “be processed, whereas Project Grants may take additional time to allow for more comprehensive evaluations and detailed project scoping. For the Open Track, teams are invited to apply without constraints.”
These kinds of collaborative efforts can “take longer in order to best align project scopes and motivations.”
Note that these categories and focus areas “are non-exhaustive and meant to inspire novel solutions to speedrun the Worldcoin Tech Tree.”
Grants are available to creators, builders, technologists and other humans and organizations who contribute “to the health and growth of the Worldcoin community.”
Grants are not available “to, or intended for, people or companies who are residents of, or are located, incorporated or have a registered agent in, the United States or certain other restricted territories.”
Grant applications are open “from December 6 through December 22, 2023, and recipients will be announced in January, 2024.”
The Worldcoin Foundation is now accepting grant applications directly.
As mentioned in a blog post:
“The goal of the Worldcoin project is to ingrain humanness and financial equitability in the global digital infrastructure. Grand challenges in the next decade are global income inequality, governance of existential risks and distinguishing humans from artificial intelligence. Humanity needs a protocol to solve these challenges. Worldcoin aims to be this protocol.”