Grants Program
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⚠️ The grants program is currently operating in its pilot phase.
Following community feedback on this pilot, we’re committing to:
Publishing an RFC-style post 2–3 weeks before each new wave
Involving delegates and external experts in future rounds via a grants committee
Extending this Pilot Wave application window to June 11 to give applicants more time
Maintaining limited scope and budget during the pilot to reduce risk and enable fast iteration
These changes aim to strengthen community trust, increase transparency, and enable broader governance participation over time.
The Obol Grants Program (pilot) aims to support projects that advance the strategic goals of the Obol Collective by providing milestone-based funding to builders, educators, and contributors working on public goods aligned with the Distributed Validator (DV) ecosystem.
This program is specifically designed to address the execution of the strategic SQUAD Goals outlined in that require community involvement. Each grant proposal must clearly align with one of the grant tracks, which reflect these goals. The grant tracks help ensure that funds are directed toward work that directly contributes to the Obol Collective's mission.
To ensure proposals are aligned with these objectives, each track has a dedicated sub-page with:
A self-assessment checklist to help determine if the proposal is in scope
Guidance on the types of contributions and initiatives encouraged
Detailed evaluation criteria used to assess submissions
The program will operate in 8-week waves:
Application window: 2 weeks
Review & approvals: 2 weeks
Pause to keep track and provide guidance to the new projects: 4 weeks
Funding Disclaimer: The OBOL token amount will be calculated based on the USD value of your grant request using the market price of OBOL at the time your proposal is approved. That means the number of tokens may vary depending on the price at the time of approval.
Phase
Dates
Notes
Applications Open
May 14 – June 11
Anyone can apply during this period
Review & Approval
June 12 - June 25
Committee reviews proposals and approves based on milestone scope. Publish recap of selected proposals and next steps
Pause & Monitoring
June 26 - July 23
Publish recap of selected proposals and next steps
Initial pilot approval committee: 2 members from the Obol Association (Leo & Toma)
Later stages may expand to a formal committee & Tally-based voting
Reviews are rubric-based, and public by default within Questbook. These are structured scoring frameworks that help reviewers assess applications consistently across several criteria, such as:
Alignment with grant track and SQUAD goal(s)
Feasibility and clarity of the milestones
Potential impact and relevance to the Obol ecosystem
Team capacity and track record
Each grant track sub-page includes the specific rubric and criteria relevant to that category.
All funding will be disbursed on a milestone basis only (see above disclaimer)
Future quarterly or annual grant budgets to be approved by DAO governance
The first pilot wave (Wave #1) will not specify any max budget.
Public recap of each wave will be posted on the Obol Forum
Governance voting integration via Tally
Expanded grant committee with delegate participation
AI-assisted review workflows if shown to increase efficiency
The Obol Grants Program is currently hosted under Questbook's open-source plan
All activity will remain publicly accessible through Questbook
Milestone-based funding: Grants are approved as a full proposal, but funds are released per milestone, once validated by the committee. Each proposal must define its expected milestones in advance. Applicants will have the opportunity to clearly outline their milestones during the application process. This includes describing the deliverables for each stage of the project and the success criteria for unlocking the next tranche of funding. A step-by-step guide to structuring and submitting milestone-based proposals is provided in a . These milestones serve as checkpoints for disbursement and accountability.
Grant tracks aligned with :
The program will be managed via , with future integrations possible (Tally, etc). All proposals, reviewer activity, and milestone tracking will be transparent and publicly viewable.