The ssv.network DAO (SSV DAO) has announced a significant update to its grants strategy, aiming to better align with the evolving needs of the ecosystem. This revamped approach emphasizes fostering innovation and forming strategic partnerships to ensure the continued growth and success of the ssv.network ecosystem, according to SSV network.

Current Grants Program: A Snapshot

The existing grants program, known as DIP-5, has been pivotal in supporting the development of decentralized staking applications and services on the SSV network. With over 23,000 validators and 745,000 ETH staked just months after the mainnet launch, the program has awarded more than $3 million in grants across 60+ projects. These efforts have fostered a robust ecosystem featuring various staking use cases and tooling.

Current grants fall into categories such as Staking Pool Development and Staking Service Development. However, with the ecosystem’s maturation, certain milestones have become less relevant, necessitating a strategic shift.

Why the Change?

As the SSV network has evolved, the integration and development processes have become simpler, requiring less engineering effort. This has made some grant milestones, such as seed funding for early stages and TVL growth incentives, redundant. The incentivized mainnet program already effectively drives Total Value Locked (TVL) growth, reducing the need for separate TVL milestones. Consequently, the DAO has decided to refactor the grants process to better suit the network’s continuous evolution.

The New Grants Strategy

The revised grants strategy focuses on fostering innovation through open grants for unique use cases and forming strategic partnerships for critical ecosystem components. The updated approach includes the following key changes:

• New Application Process: Temporarily close grants and reopen with the new strategy.
• Stop Seed Funding Grants: Discontinue seeding grants for staking services and pools.
• Support Existing Grants: Guide currently approved grants to completion.
• Discontinue TVL Grants: Avoid conflicts with the incentivized mainnet program.
• Emphasize Open Grants: Focus on grants for unique and critical ecosystem components.
• Maintain Bug Bounties and Micro-Grants: Continue these programs under current guidelines.

Instead of broad grants, SSV DAO may form strategic partnerships for critical ecosystem components, ensuring dedicated development and ownership by the DAO and mitigating dependency risks. Focus areas include performance and metadata data providers, alerting and monitoring solutions, alternative SSV client implementations, operator solutions, and cluster selection, developer tools, major player integrations, and community programs.

Next Steps

1. Consultation and Alignment: Finalize the new strategy in consultation with SSV Labs’ teams and incorporate community feedback.
2. Update Grants Portal: Reflect the new strategy on the grants website and update application terms and conditions, including KYC/KYB requirements.

Success Story: SSV Scan

SSV Scan, a network explorer developed by DragonStake and Polkastats, exemplifies the success of the grants program. This explorer has significantly enhanced the network’s transparency and usability, offering a comprehensive suite of features that empower users to evaluate network performance over time.

The SSV DAO has announced an extended partnership with DragonStake through a new grant aimed at scaling SSV Scan to support over 100,000 validators and beyond. This initiative highlights the new strategy’s focus on strategic partnerships for critical infrastructure.

DragonStake, a verified operator in the SSV ecosystem, has been running highly performant nodes since the testnet phase, making them an integral part of the SSV ecosystem.

Conclusion

These changes aim to streamline the grants process, better align incentives, and foster innovative development within the SSV network. The SSV DAO is enthusiastic about seeing more success stories like SSV Scan as the new strategy unfolds.

The DAO values community feedback and participation during this transition and looks forward to continued support and commitment from its members.

Image source: Shutterstock

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