Guidelines for Starknet grants
On a bi-monthly basis, we open applications for projects within the Starknet ecosystem seeking grants. The objective is to support innovative and useful projects in their goals. After applications are submitted, a voting process is conducted by a committee selected by OnlyDust, based on specific criteria. Once projects have been selected, grants are distributed. However, the question remains: What should projects do with their grants? How can they be distributed fairly?
Below, we provide several guidelines to address these common concerns and assist you in managing the grants in a more fair manner.
DP or no DP?
In order to ensure fair distribution of rewards, we suggest the following guidelines depending on whether you have a Developer Program (DP) or not.
For those that have DP, we recommend that you use the grants you have received for this round to future contributors. We suggest this on the basis that budget allocated through DP allows you to already reward the core team on a monthly basis. Nevertheless, we recommend that 10-15% can be allocated to members of the core team that manage external contributors, help out in creating good first issues, code reviews or monitoring contributions.
For those that do not have DP, we recommend that you allocate 50% of rewards to the core team and regular contributors. You can keep the remaining 50% for future contributors, as a means to incentivize new talents. This ensures the project remains strong and continues to evolve with fresh perspectives.
What if I have DP and have hired a freelance?
Freelancers are great and can help you grow your project. We believe that if the freelancer stays for less than three months in the team, you can use the Starkness grant to reward them for their work. If the freelancer becomes a regular, i.e. you’ll be working with them for three months or beyond, we recommend that you use DP to reward them.
How do I identify what a contribution is for rewards?
Although this would depend on your project, your goals and the issues that you open, a contribution should be identified as either a technical contribution or direct promotion of your own project.
For the former, a technical contribution can be in the form of a pull request, a task resolved, a code review or “other” such as documentation, reviewing text, translation etc. We recommend that for each issue you have opened, a reward should be granted.
For the latter, a direct promotion of your own project would be anything that is to attract potential contributors, such as meet-ups, conferences, events.
How much per contribution?
We recommend the equivalent of $200-500 of a day’s work, depending on the seniority of the contributor. Of course, this is a recommendation and depends also on the task itself.