Grants and Funding

The Solana Foundation Funding Program aims to connect builders, creators, and founders to the best source of funding for their work. This may be through the Solana Foundation or other ecosystem sources.

Solana Foundation Funding

In the Solana ecosystem’s open-source spirit, the Solana Foundation supports projects that generate public goods for the community and give other ecosystem participants the opportunity to learn from and build on your work.

The Solana Foundation primarily provides funding in the following ways:

• Milestone-based grants for public goods
• Milestone-based convertible grants for public goods with a commercial component
• Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for specific ideas the Foundation is looking to fund

How to apply

Please note that the following are a set of guidelines for the Solana Foundation funding application only. Ecosystem sources of funding may have different processes.

Guidelines for Evaluation

While the Solana Foundation appreciates a broad diversity of ideas in grant applications, there are a few common threads that the team always looks for.

• Public Good

  We typically consider a project to be a public good if it either makes a significant open-source contribution to the Solana ecosystem, or if it has a meaningful free community offering. Depending on the circumstances, we may also consider a novel proof of concept to qualify. Projects that are primarily commercial in nature usually won’t qualify for a standard grant from the Solana Foundation, and should consider a convertible grant.

• Open Source

  Not all projects require code, but they should be built in the spirit of open-sourcing your learnings for everyone to learn from. Projects should benefit the community at large, and while not all parts of the project should be open source, the usable parts should be available to all.

• Only Possible on Solana

  The proposal should make it clear why the project is building within the Solana ecosystem, as opposed to other places or other ways. Why Solana? How does the Solana protocol help the team or project achieve its goals in ways that are not possible elsewhere?

• Clear Use of Funds

  We encourage you to be thoughtful about how much you’re requesting and present a clear plan for how the funding will help you accomplish your goals. Set clear, measurable funding milestones, and make sure the funding you request is correlated to the impact to the community your project is providing.

Please note that this criteria list is not exhaustive, and grant approvals are at the discretion of the Solana Foundation Capital Team.

Ecosystem Funding

Beyond the Solana Foundation, there are a broad array of funding options available to projects in the Solana ecosystem. Depending on your project’s stage of development, geography, or vertical, some of these options might suit your needs.

Hackathons

The Solana Foundation works with Colosseum to run online hackathons. These competitions enable anyone with an internet connection to jumpstart their next project on Solana and join the fastest ecosystem in crypto.

Select hackathon winners have the opportunity to join Colosseum's accelerator program where they will receive pre-seed funding, mentorship, technical resources, and more.

For more information on the latest Solana Hackathons, sign up for a Colosseum account colosseum.org.