Coda Protocol is setting aside $2.1 million USD in token grants to support community members in activities such as improving the protocol, building tooling and creating content, ultimately ensuring high decentralization upon mainnet launch.
San Francisco, CA June 16, 2020 – Coda Protocol announces the allocation of $2.1 million USD in project token grants that will be awarded to community members and teams in the lead-up to mainnet launch scheduled to occur later this year. The $2.1 million USD dedicated to pre-mainnet initiatives greatly exceeds the amounts generally allocated for project grants by other blockchain projects. The funds will be granted to community members and teams engaged in any endeavor deemed to support the growth and development of Coda, which includes developing the protocol, building tooling, organizing meetups, as well as creating and reviewing new content and resources. Ultimately, Coda has allocated a significant amount of the protocol to these community grants to ensure high decentralization of the network. Additional tokens will also be available after Coda’s mainnet launch for those who are interested in building on the protocol.
There is currently a variety of Coda grant projects that are open for applications. These range from front-end projects, such as building a Snarketplace web interface for at least $10,000 USD in tokens, to protocol-related projects like an alternative client implementation for at least $100,000 USD in tokens. There are also grants for crucial community-building activities. Coda is open to other grant proposals as well. Grant applications will be evaluated based on previous experience in the domain of the project and interest in Coda and cryptocurrencies. For the full list of open projects, criteria and to apply, visit the Grants page.
Perspectives from some of the first wave of token grant recipients include:
Peter Pratscher, Founder at bitfly, the team behind the Coda block explorer, articulated, “We decided to apply for a grant as we believe zk-SNARKS are a main driver for enabling scalability of blockchain protocols. So far our experience with the Coda development team was superb and their tech was well documented and easy to build upon.” The repo of bitfly’s project can be viewed here.
Andrés Solanot, from Figment Networks, one of the validators on Coda’s testnet and the team behind the Hubble suite, shared, “We decided to take on the grant to bring Coda to Hubble because we believe Coda will be an essential piece to Web 3’s scalability with their constant sized blockchain and energy efficient consensus. Working with o1Labs has been a smooth process due to their strong documentation and highly knowledgeable team.”
John Morrow, COO at Gauntlet, a cutting edge simulation platform for building financial models of blockchain protocols, expressed, “We chose to work with Coda because of the promise of a succinct chain, the progress o1Labs has made towards it, as well as the novel economic mechanism for validation and SNARK computation that is a great fit for our platform. Coda’s great documentation and developer resources have helped us make progress quickly on the technical front as well.” Gauntlet will build a robust statistical model of Coda Protocol economics, allowing Coda to provide informed recommendations on choices for key protocol parameters as well as map out failure and success conditions for the protocol achieving efficient consensus.
Individual contributor Gregg Reynolds conveyed, “During Coda’s Testnet release 3.2a, I had trouble building the code on my Mac, so I decided to take a stab at adding Bazel support, just for fun. As it turned out, the Coda team was familiar with Bazel, so my hobby project quickly turned into a Token Grant proposal, and now I’ve been working on it full-time for a couple of weeks. The Coda team – and the community – has been very friendly, helpful, and responsive. Soon we will have a much improved build system, after which I look forward to digging into the code and learning how zkSNARK works in practice.”
Coda hopes these project grants will help to expand awareness about why Coda should be the decentralized infrastructure protocol powering the Web 3.0. Coda is known as the world’s lightest blockchain due to its utilization of recursive zk-SNARKs to ensure the blockchain always stays the same size—about 20 kilobytes (the size of a few tweets). Its lightweight construction ensures high decentralization and inclusive consensus, making it an attractive protocol for developers seeking to create verifiable decentralized apps and enable peer-to-peer payments. A recent user survey revealed that the ease of running a full node on Coda because of the deployment of zk-SNARKs distinguishes it from other blockchains that sacrifice decentralization to achieve high transactions per second (TPS).
Evan Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder of o1Labs, the team behind Coda Protocol, conveyed, “Between the high percentage of the protocol allocated towards project grants and the Genesis token program, we have the pieces in place to ensure all contributions result in ownership of the protocol and demonstrate our commitment to decentralization and inclusivity. Coda’s tech unlocks many new possibilities, and we’re excited to see those built out while expanding ownership in the protocol.”
Coda’s Genesis token program is another endeavor meant to ensure decentralization of the network upon mainnet launch by preparing participants to become the first block producers. The first cohort of Genesis founding members includes such validator teams as Bison Trails, Figment Networks, dsrv labs, and SparkPool.
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About Coda Protocol Coda Protocol, the world’s lightest blockchain, provides a foundation for the decentralized digital economy (Web 3.0), offering scalability to thousands of transactions per second, millions of users, and years of transaction history without sacrificing security. By utilizing recursive zk-SNARKs, the Coda blockchain always stays the same size—about 20 kilobytes (the size of a few tweets). Recursive zk-SNARKs allow nodes to rapidly share and update proof of the correct blockchain state across the network. This breakthrough application of zk-SNARKs solves the issues of scalability and high barrier to entry for nodes that have plagued legacy blockchains to-date. By making it easier for nodes to participate, Coda improves decentralization and therefore security of the network. The Coda blockchain can be easily accessed from any device, including phones and browsers, and can be seamlessly integrated into new decentralized applications (dapps).
About Mina Protocol
Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, powered by participants. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs to design an entire blockchain that is about 22kb, the size of a couple of tweets. It is the first layer-1 to enable efficient implementation and easy programmability of zero knowledge smart contracts (zkApps). With its unique privacy features and ability to connect to any website, Mina is building a private gateway between the real world and crypto—and the secure, democratic future we all deserve.
