Privacy blockchain Dusk establishes $5 million grant program

The crypto space has grown significantly in recent years, with various projects harnessing different blockchains for their solutions. Dusk Network, a blockchain focused on privacy, now offers projects the opportunity to apply for funding for Dusk-related endeavors. 

“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,” Dusk said in a public statement on Tuesday. “The program is open to anyone and everyone, though applications need to be relevant to Dusk Network.”

Originally unveiled back in April, the grant initiative touts $5 million in total, available for allocation to various projects. Interested parties must apply for grant funds, with applications running through a six-step process, starting with an inquiry form and ending with onboarding, according to the public statement.

The statement listed a number of particular project niches in which Dusk is interested in allocating grant funds, including mainstream adoption-driving projects.

Since the launch of Bitcoin’s blockchain in 2009, various other blockchains have emerged, such as Ethereum, on which projects can build solutions. Dusk aims to offer a privacy-focused blockchain, which projects can harness for building.

Dusk’s team currently oversees the grant endeavor, including approvals, although Dusk plans on forming a specific unit for grant overwatch. “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,” the statement said. “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,” the statement added. “Further down the line, the team aspires to govern the network directly on-chain through a decentralised governance procedure.”

According to the statement, Dusk has not yet openly fired up its testnet. How can projects build on or with Dusk if the network has not yet launched its mainnet, however? "The initiatives that we are looking for now, are scoped in such a manner that they can be developed now in collaboration with us, and testing can be done in a private testnet," Dusk Network tech lead Emanuele Francioni told Cointelegraph. 

Additionally, Francioni noted:

"Also, there are libraries and tooling independent of our network, such as PLONK. This library is already extensively used by many other projects. As we are building an open source solution, these libraries can be accessed already via our Github and used by anyone who is interested in the technology."

UPDATE June 2, 14:44 UTC: This article has been updated with information Cointelegraph received from Dusk Network after initial publication.