The Polygon network exists today because of the Polygon community. The developers, builders, creators, enthusiasts and fans who are Polygon’s biggest advocates and most helpful supporters have shaped Polygon into what it is today. As the community becomes more self-sustaining, our duty at the Polygon companies is to continuously nurture and develop the most engaged towards decentralization by collectively building, developing, adopting, and sharing best practices across web3 so that anyone can realize their vision of the future.
While larger enterprises building on Polygon have generated headlines, the Polygon companies wants to continue to see projects of all shapes and sizes build on Polygon. Builders are on Polygon not just because the gas is cheap, phenomenal speed or that the protocol is built on Ethereum. They want to build on the Polygon network because they know others will be there too.
As such, we are constantly looking for ways to improve and enhance Polygon community programs. As part of this effort, we have decided to sunset some programs and to enhance others to better serve the Polygon community.
A few key updates:
Sunsetting Grants One of the programs that we will be sunsetting is the grants program. Grants played an important role in kickstarting the growth of the network, and getting builders to build on Polygon. We need to move to more sustainable sources of funding as we grow and the vouchers program has been an incredible program bringing Polygon ecosystem contributors together. Now, early-stage projects will have access to more vouchers from partners in order to get started even more quickly. More details on our voucher program can be found [here]. We will still receive and consider the final cohort of grant applications submitted on or before 12/15/2022.
Expanding our Guild Program Guilds serve as a way for local communities around the world to connect with Polygon. Following the success of the Web3: Made in India Tour, we have decided to expand the Guild program in 2023. Learn more about Guilds near you here
Rebooting Advocates Program One of the programs that we are enhancing is our advocates program. This program has been successful in bringing together members of the Polygon community who are passionate about the protocol and its development. We are looking to expand the program to support more advocates and to provide them with the resources and support they need to be effective in evangelizing for the Polygon ecosystem.
** Elements of Polygon DAO To Be Added to Polygon Village** Polygon DAO is in the process of winding down with select elements being added to Polygon Village, a program we launched last year to help our community grow and build. We’ll now be expanding elements of this program to extend across the entire community. As such, Polygon DAO will transfer its social handle to us and we will use it as Polygon Village and will support all of our broad ecosystem and early-stage projects.
New Community Participation Program Like all great communities in web3, people participate because they care, and they care because they are actively engaged, giving and receiving benefits, making the entire ecosystem better. To that end, we are launching a NFT-based community participation program, which we’ll be sharing more details about in early 2023. That will give value back to our community in new and interesting ways.
Polygon Discord We are consolidating all of our Discords: Polygon Developers, Polygon DAO and Polygon Studios under the existing server, “Polygon,” and rebooting all of our channels to provide timely and accurate information and moderators who can help. You can join the flagship Polygon Discord here
Expanded Polygon Forum The Polygon Forum provides the community with a central space for Polygon to share updates and for the community to ask questions, make proposals and engage in discussions. We’ll now expand topics to provide more updates and work to improve response times.
Village Wonders Village Wonders is a 3 month pre-acceleration cohort with dedicated support, mentorship and funding. Our initial cohort of the Village Wonders program had a strong showing of the innovation happening within our community. In 2023, we will be evolving this program to bring more direct technical support.
We will host a town hall in the new year to share more details about each of these programs. In the interim, please feel free to share your questions, ideas and other comments here in the forum.