Dusk Network Opens $5.000.000 Grants Program

Call for talent aims to boost blockchain impact on the future of finance

AMSTERDAM, June 1st, 2021 - Dusk Network has opened their Grants Program. The program was revealed on April 9th during DuskCon, the first ever Dusk Network Conference. It is the first of its size in The Netherlands: $5.000.000 offered by a privately held company focusing on blockchain technology.

Who can apply

The Dusk Grants Program seeks to engage (independent) projects, developers, researchers, academics, or community organizers that want to accelerate the growth and accessibility of the Dusk Network blockchain platform. The program is open to anyone and everyone, though applications need to be relevant to Dusk Network.

Specifically, they are looking for initiatives in the following areas:

  • Ecosystem tooling and improved infrastructure: i.e. hardware wallets integration, mobile wallet integration, smart contract creation suite, etc.
  • Research proposals for future-proofness of the network: (layer-2) scaling, sharding, quantum-resistance
  • Applications and use-cases that drive mainstream adoption: multi-signature contracts, privacy-respecting decentralized finance

Application process

For the Dusk team, privacy and transparency are not only central elements in their network. Privacy and transparency are also deeply embedded in their company culture. That is why the process is as transparent as possible, while respecting applicants’ privacy. Applications are reviewed by the Dusk team from different angles such as business impact and tech feasibility, and after a successful onboarding shared with the public.

The Application Flow is as follows:

Inquiry form

Formal proposal

Evaluation

Tech deep-dive

Funding decision

Onboarding

All applications will be reviewed and receive a first response within one week after submitting the inquiry form. If the conversation moves forward, the team will continue with the formal proposal process. The entire process will be assessed by experts from the core team.

In the coming year, a newly instantiated Governance Council consisting of core team members and reputable industry developers will start to govern the grant program. This dedicated team of 7 people will also govern the network’s Community Development Fund (CDF), and is tasked with securing the long-term future of Dusk Network. Further down the line, the team aspires to govern the network directly on-chain through a decentralised governance procedure. 

Why Dusk Network launches their own grant program

Since Dusk Network was founded in 2018, it has amassed the backing of many talented blockchain developers. And now, the project is heading towards its TestNet phase, to be opened to the public soon. With the $5,000,000 grant program, the team aims to attract new industry talent to build upon its foundation and utilize the network’s unique capabilities.

We are approaching our public Testnet phase, a key milestone towards the future financial ecosystem powered by blockchain technology. Dusk Network solves blockchains confidentiality problems through smart contracts that keep sensitive data private; a revolution for smart contracts. Now is the time to invite brilliant talent to build (financial) applications and use-cases on our infrastructure. Are you ready to embrace innovation and develop new business models? Apply to our program. - says Emanuele Francioni,  Tech Lead at Dusk Network.

Tapping from own experiences with grant applications

Dusk has had experience in the past with grant programs or public funds, and discovered their challenges early on. There is a clear mismatch between what the market demands of high-tech companies, and what a typical grant program is able to offer. Governmental programs are oftentimes behind in knowledge and experience, and choose to fund well-understood, but typically outdated initiatives, thus doing little for the deep tech sectors. Finally, the majority of programmes steer towards a consortium approach, neglecting the industry’s individual talent and speed. A grant program of our own offers the exclusive ability to implement a process that we think is best practice, and also leverage this to educate policy makers around us. 

Commercial Director Pascal Putman is looking forward to meeting the talented people behind the upcoming applications: To install a new way of doing business in a traditional ecosystem, we need all the creative thinkers and visionaries we can get. There are many examples of grants that turned successful; MetaMask started from a grant, and they’ve now reached more than a million monthly active users. Nothing is impossible. 

The program is estimated to fund over 35.000 hours of work related to the Dusk ecosystem. For good measurement, this can be 100 smaller initiatives, or up to 20 larger projects and range from smaller funds to a million dollar size.

About Dusk Network

Dusk Network is an open source blockchain for financial applications. Data protection and privacy-preservation play a major role in Dusk Network, as well as its design for regulatory compliance. The blockchain is eco-friendly, thanks to its Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism; a novel and efficient method of reaching agreement on the current state of the global ledger. Notably, the blockchain supports privacy-friendly smart contracts. Companies use the Dusk Network to power financial applications, issue tokens, trade and collaborate on a global scale. Dusk Network is built by a team of experts from Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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About Dusk

Dusk in a nutshell

The power of decentralized finance, the privacy of fintech institutions, and the control of financial market infrastructures - at the fingertip of all users.

Dusk is the first global computer with privacy-preserving dApps built for real world adoption and assets (RWA). Dusk protocol has been built from the ground up for financial applications and services, providing a secure, private, and scalable infrastructure for the digital economy. Dusk ultimate goal is to enable a full and decentralized financial market infrastructure (FMI) powering clearance anb settlement, post-trading services, and corporate actions for securities and digital assets.


Technically, Dusk is a layer one, zero-knowledge friendly, proof-of-stake blockchain network protocol with an emphasis on privacy and compliance.

Simply put, Dusk is privacy-centric global ledger for real world applications and assets.

Official documentation for the Dusk platform via: https://docs.dusk.network/

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