Grants

Thesan

Dusk’s grants program is named after Thesan, the Etruscan goddess of the dawn.

Thesan

noun /ˈθɛ.sæn/

is associated with the rising sun, the breaking of dawn, and the awakening of the world each day.

She is depicted as a radiant and youthful goddess, and often portrayed with wings and a torch to symbolize the light she brings. Thesan also represents childbirth and the giving of new life.

What is Thesan?

The Thesan grants program is designed to infuse the Dusk ecosystem with innovation and growth, by supporting projects via grants, investments, and Calls for Proposals (CFPs).

Thesan primarily focuses on:

DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
RegDeFi (Regulated Decentralized Finance)
Privacy enhancements
Integration of real-world assets (RWAs).

Dusk Funding

Embracing the ethos of open source within the Dusk ecosystem, and in line with our commitment to making Dusk a truly decentralized protocol, we seek to support projects and people that contribute positively to the community and allow others within the ecosystem to benefit from, learn, and build upon these contributions.

There are two main categories for projects asking for a grant:

Requests for Proposals (RFPs) . This involves projects Dusk is actively interested in funding, according to predetermined specifications and objectives.
Other projects that are directly proposed by the community. Even if these projects do not appear in existing RFPs, their development benefits the overall Dusk ecosystem.

In addition to the above, and depending on the maturity of the project proposal and the experience of the applicant, ad-hoc deals involving funding for equity can be discussed.

How to Apply

Application Process

Fill out the Thesan application form. The information requested is highly useful for the Dusk team to properly evaluate the grant. For this reason, make sure to take your time to answer all the relevant questions in detail.

As the application may require some time, it is reccomended to write your answers first in a text file and later on paste them in the form.

In your application, be sure to:

Provide a detailed breakdown of the milestones. As this is a milestone-based grants program, we ask you to provide a detailed description of each milestone. This milestone-specific information should include a features list, cost breakdowns, and approximate timelines. Make sure to add a final milestone consisting of a 1-year maintenance of the delivered repository(ies). This last milestone ensures that the team can commit to maintaining the project for at least one year.
Provide a high-level plan documenting how the team intends to make the delivered project sustainable in the long run and/or how to build it into a business. You are welcome to include suggestions for future collaboration with Dusk. This ensures that applicants have a clear motivation to maintain the provided repository(ies) after the final milestone is completed.

Selection Process

Requirements

Being able to enroll in a KYB process. This means that either the grant receiver is a physical person who can issue invoices for the milestones payments, or there is a company or legal entity that can apply for the grant. Applicants from prohibited jurisdictions will not be considered.
Software provided is open-source and available via an Apache 2.0 license, which should be included in every relevant Github repository. The software delivered should be independent of any proprietary software for its full functionality, meaning that any dependency on external software or IP also needs to be compatible with Apache 2.0 license.
Transparent Budgeting and Milestones Breakdowns. This implies that there needs to be a detailed budget proposal that details well-defined milestones, with their associated costs and timelines. A final milestone covering 1 year of maintenance of all the project repositories needs to be added.
Long-term commitment to the project. To ensure a solid foundation for the whole Dusk ecosystem, applicants are requested to show commitment to the maintenance of the project even after the successful completion of the final milestone. This commitment can be shown by providing a post-grant plan, which covers at least 1 year from the end of the last milestone (the 1-year maintenance one). This plan should include details of how the applying team intends to make the project financially sustainable and/or build it into a business. It is also possible to include suggestions for future collaborations between the Applicant team and Dusk.

Guidelines

Evaluation Guidelines

Thesan is open to a variety of proposals but looks for several key elements in all applications. Your application stands a better chance of approval if it documents the following elements:

Detailed technical specifications. The application includes detailed technical specifications and descriptions of its core components along with their scope. It is useful to share GitHub profiles of team members to demonstrate previous coding experience.
Clear Benefit to the Dusk ecosystem. The project has a clear positive impact on the Dusk’s ecosystem, and it helps to provide a solid foundation for developers and future projects.
Detailed Milestones and Budgeting. It is important to carefully consider and justify the funding amount you are requesting. For these reasons, applicants are requested to provide a milestone-based budget, which should be detailed enough to clearly justify the funding requested and its scope. Cost breakdowns of each milestone can be based on the number of full-time employees working on every milestone and their required time. It is highly encouraged to provide an approximate timeline/duration for each milestone.
Long Term Commitment. There is a clear willingness to maintain the project in the long run. This can be shown by documenting the concrete steps to transform the grant project into a running business or self-sustaining product. We highly appreciate a well-thought-out plan, and we encourage including any suggestions for a future collaboration with Dusk.
Prior experience. Applicant teams have verifiable technical expertise or shown evidence of preliminary research/work. For this reason, we encourage applicants to share the Github profiles of the team members, the Github repositories the team has been working on, and any previous research carried out.

Decision & Follow-Up

Applicants will be informed by receiving an email to the email address provided in their application about the decision on their proposal. Dusk’s team will strive to get back to each applicant as soon as possible, regardless of the outcome of the submission.

Successful applicants will then coordinate with the Dusk Business Team to finalize the terms of the grant agreement.

Milestone Guidelines

To ensure a smooth and rapid assessment of milestones’ completion, we kindly ask you to provide extensive documentation and testing:

Documentation. Documentation is vital for other developers to understand how your project works. For this reason, along with software deliveries, detailed technical documentation needs to be provided, including:
- Required dependencies and configurations.
- Necessary steps to install, compile, run, and test.
- Comprehensive list and description of API calls utilized in the project (if applicable).
- Overview of the entire project architecture, along with detailed descriptions of each individual component.
Testing. To ensure the quality and functionality of each milestone delivery, it is required to include a comprehensive testing suite. Logical components of the delivered code should be accompanied by unit tests, and integration tests need to be provided when applicable.
Formatting and Style. For any Rust code, it is highly encouraged to stick to the Style Guidelines. For other coding languages, it is recommended to follow established standards.

Join the Dusk ecosystem

Funding is available for the wider ecosystem for projects that benefit Dusk. This can range from protocols built on Dusk, protocols that will make use of Dusk’s technology, compliance, and privacy, or broader initiatives like security and auditing, events, hackathons, and documentation.

If you have an idea that is of benefit to the Dusk ecosystem, token holders, and makes good use of the tech stack, we’re looking forward to your application .