Polkadot Relayers 2023
Proponent: Tribe/AngelHack 13Ghf2T883ZobjngC1BAgR1BWvK2P7qP37gGxHDVFf3fjbmw
Requested DOT: USD$175,000 for first milestone
We are proposing to run the next iteration of the Polkadot Relayers for 2023.
The Polkadot Relayers is a community-first early-stage incubator programme that seeks to grow talented builders in their endeavour to build dApps on Polkadot’s parachains. The inaugural launch of the Polkadot Relayers took place last year in 2022, and was successful in accomplishing its initial objective of bringing together developers and entrepreneurs, as well as providing individuals with a platform to actualise their innovative ideas. This year, the Relayers program seeks to focus on nurturing committed project teams looking for mentorship, investment, and ecosystem support whilst they build on Polkadot. The 2023 edition seeks to improve on the learnings from the Relayers program in 2022, building on participant feedback and working very closely with 7 dedicated parachain teams to create a cohesive initiative that gives back to the Polkadot ecosystem.
We are submitting this proposal for a total treasury funding of USD$291,400, with our first milestone requesting for US$175,000. This includes the budget required to operate this program and travel grants (see Appendix A for full budget breakdown). We are also looking to split funding up into different milestones, as seen in the Budget Proposal below. The funding requested will cover operating expenses as well as both the virtual and in-person logistics costs to launch and execute this program.
Our full proposal can be found here.
Highlights for Relayers 2022 can be found here.
Comments (2)
Hello! We invite a member of the team to join AAG next Thursday at 3:30pm UTC to help us better understand this initiative! Please reach out on Matrix @ jay-chrawnna:matrix.org Thanks! 🙏
GM! I was hoping that you'd come on AAG to discuss the Polkadot Relayers with me :D
I have reached out to some people who participated in the last Polkadot Relayers session, and just wanted to share my findings and those people's feedback – hopefully it can be useful for both the organizers and the overall community!
These are not my own opinions, this is what was relayed (heh) to me by people who attended last years programme
Target Audience is entrepreneurs – getting them to build on web3 (probably they have some web2 background)
Positives from last year:
Main goal was to let entrepreneurs learn what is possible on Polkadot, let them know why they would want to build here
Education about how to be a founder, how to design a project, business model, go to market, etc.
Focusing on real business models and use cases, not hype
What could be better
Organization was quite poor especially at the start, even one of the main managers got replaced. This lead to teams not being aware of what to do, and actually resulted in Hashed Network sort of leaving / not participating in the scheme due to poor organization
Management team were not knowledgeable about Polkadot to answer peoples questions
Showcase day needs to be better organized - last year there was hardly any VCs that showed up, in fact it was just BitGreen and Parity so I'm told
Is it really possible to go from 0 to VC funding in 3 months?
Wasn't promoted effectively, participants weren't sure if this was an official programme
If your project doesnt get funding, it's hard for you as an individual to get a job in web3, unlike the Polkadot Dev Academy for example - so a lot of it rests on the showcase day
Thoughts about how to improve / questions
You state that you have worked with with Parity and W3F before - get a focal point there who can ask / delegate engineering & tech questions
Have it be marketed by Polkadot accounts – let people know what is going on – get them to participate
Make it very clear as to the purpose of the Showcase day – do you really think it's possible for people to start from 0 and get VC funding after 3 months? Projects i spoke to said they weren't very well prepared for Showcase day. The market doesn't have appetite to fund early stage idea start ups, it needs MVPs as a minimum. Maybe make it clear that the Showcase day is for getting feedback from experts, which then can help you to go on and work on your project after the course is over
If VC turnout at showcase day is something that is planned - then which VCs? How are you approaching them?