Proponent: Tribe/AngelHack 13Ghf2T883ZobjngC1BAgR1BWvK2P7qP37gGxHDVFf3fjbmw

Requested DOT: USD$359,000.00 | 50279.70 DOT

DOT calculated via EMA7 on the day of the official submission, 21 May 2024, at 16:00 (+UTC) - 1 DOT ~ 7.14 USD. Conversion: $359,000 USD ~ 50279.70 DOT

We are proposing to run the 2024 iteration of the Polkadot Relayers. This program 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 in 2022, with its second edition in mid 2024. These runs saw a high success rate in 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. As Web3 continues to provide opportunities for the underprivileged and geographically underserved, we believe that there’s all the more a need to reach out and grow Polkadot’s presence in these regions.

As such, we want to concentrate our existing efforts in growing Polkadot’s developer presence and respective community in APAC. This is because we strongly believe that Asia has the potential to become a strong foundational backbone to grow Polkadot and its influence around the world. We’ve also solidified this hypothesis of Asia being a key region to focus on through various conversations with Parity, our parachain partners, and other members of the Web3 Foundation across 2021-2024. Our past efforts in the region have also seen successful traction and we believe the attention on these events will continue to grow exponentially with consistent effort and initiatives.

We initially submitted this proposal on the Polkadot Forum as part of the Decentralised Futures initiative but due to time constraints and our strong belief that we need to carry out this initiative in APAC for H2 2024, we are seeking support from the community and therefore the Treasury for the go-ahead to kickstart planning.

This first milestone request is USD$359,000 and it includes the budget required to operate this program, travel grants disbursement, and any IRL event expenses we are looking to undertake as part of the program. The funding requested will cover operating expenses as well as both the virtual and in-person logistics costs to launch and execute this program.

You can view the full proposal here.