The Uniswap Grants Program began in 2021, and over the course of 18 months funded $7M to 122 grantees. Since the founding of the Uniswap Foundation in August 2022, the Grants team has awarded 33 grants via two waves of grants totaling ~$2.7M.
As we designed our funding strategy for 2023 and beyond, we initially looked to our grant recipients for input. We shared a survey with previous grantees and received 27 responses. Below are the takeaways from the survey and how we are incorporating that feedback into 2023.
The Program generally: People love the program - the majority of applicants would recommend it to a friend and 92% said they would apply for another grant.
The Team: People love working with the Grants team. We received countless comments on how kind and helpful the Grants committee is. We’re thrilled to have the team as part of the UF to expand the program.
Timeliness: Getting grant applications reviewed and approved quickly.
Community growth: We see a constant stream of new grantees applying for grants, then becoming members of the Uniswap community.
Grants Slack: Once a grantee is approved, they are added to a Slack Group. We heard from the community that the Slack group is helpful.
Clarity and Transparency: On the grants process, and the criteria for which grants receive funding and which do not.
Pre-Application Communication: Today, the ways in which applicants learn about grants and have their questions answered are fragmented across multiple platforms.
Ongoing Grants Team Support: Respondents suggested a more structured program for following up with and assisting the grantees, and Office Hours for the internal Slack where grantees can fire off questions and get quick answers.
Ongoing Community Support: UF can better highlight past grants tools, content, and projects to the community so they can be leveraged more broadly.
We also asked grantees where we should focus more grants funding in the new year. Responses to the survey focused on making LP Tooling a priority, followed by Content and Community-focused initiatives.
We are listening to feedback, and prioritizing and iterating on process, strategy and programs. In 2023, you can expect us to be iterative, try new things, measure our success and scale.
Here are 3 things we are doing in Q1 2023:
Launching a website, which will share the Grants process and funding criteria, as well as our strategies for each of the categories the Foundation invests in. Our goal here is to establish one clear place for learning about the Grants program, and to provide additional clarity and transparency.
Showcasing previous grantee tools on the website so that the community can learn about and use them.
Launching new funding programs that will offer different avenues by which to get funded, while providing more strategic value to the Uniswap community.
We’re extremely excited to boost the Grants program in these ways. While we take these steps forward we continue to focus on our mission of serving Uniswap by funding grants which grow and strengthen the Protocol and community. We’ll continue to create tight feedback loops between iterations to ensure that we are best allocating the capital that you as the community have generously entrusted us to allocate.
Thank you and Happy New Year!