💸 Microgrants for contributing to the Seahorse Language
Superteam now supports Seahorse Language Grants and recommends applicants with high community reputation scores to the Solana Foundation. These are grants for individuals and teams contributing to core development & educational content, and sample programs for and related to the Seahorse language. The Foundation may also support grants beyond these three stated goals of the Grant program. Anyone with an idea or proof of work is welcome to apply and receive funding decision for a $1 - $2,000 grant. The Foundation hands out these grants typically once in two weeks.
📍Areas of focus and RFPs:
👩💻 Code contribution to Seahorse
- "Drag-and-drop" IDL support. Since Seahorse is built on Anchor, it has the potential to easily integrate with other Anchor programs. One way to do this is by adding the ability to import support for Anchor programs by reading their IDL and generating the appropriate bindings, and Rust code to interact with it.
- Program support for important Solana programs. Non-Anchor programs need to have support added manually, similar to how the Solana token program does. There needs to be a way to compose with these in a safe way (i.e. without having to go through Seahorse's Program.invoke API), while each could also have its own clean interface. Important programs of focus here are Pyth, Openbook (Serum community fork), Solend, etc.
Keep in mind the subject-verb way that the token program instructions are added. Instead of doing a invoke(token_program, accounts, data), one can simply call TokenAccount.transfer(...), and the program usage is inferred. This is the preferred way of adding native support for a program, really making it feel like part of the broader language.
🎓 Tutorials, content and sample programs
We have made considerable progress in this space already and are not looking to fund more sample programs and tutorials for now!
- Intro to the token program. For example, an "SPL tokens with Seahorse" would be really important for newcomers in the Solana ecosystem. Bonus: Also cover creating token and mint accounts as PDAs too.
- Intro to CPIs. Raw, Program.invoke CPIs are one of the coolest new features of v2 imo, but they're difficult to use right now (partially due to lack of support for bytes management).
Tic-tac-toe in Seahorse vs Anchor.Tic-tac-toe is the example project shown in the Anchor tutorial, it would be valuable to duplicate this in Seahorse as well, to demonstrate the differences in both.- Seahorse for Python programmers. A specific tutorial aimed at Python-native newcomers in crypto, which focusses on how they might need to modify their code for use in Seahorse.
- Some common programs written in Seahorse. E.g., a simple AMM, a lending program, a
lottery program, etc. Bonus points if program is accompanied with a tutorial for recreating the program as well. - Optimizing compute budget. Currently, the Seahorse compiler doesn't take steps to optimize generated code, which may lead to some expensive compute. This would definitely be one of the harder tutorials to write, requires some very specific knowledge.
E.g.: How overusing integer constructors (n = u64(10)) leads to a potentially expensive .try_from().unwrap() call under the hood.
📥 Apply for an Instagrant now.
The Foundation receive tens of applications every week, and may not have the time to give detailed feedback on every application. Please keep that in mind before you apply.
NOTE: The core team does not manage the Foundation’s grant program. We simply make recommendations to the sponsors of the grant program on quality grant applications. You are also free to apply directly on their website for a grant.
⚙️ How It Works:
- Submit the application form (5 minutes).
- The Foundation does their best to respond within ~72 hours.
- If approved, you'll receive an email notification for onboarding and further steps, and 25% of your requested funding in your SOL wallet will soon follow in our next payout.
- Update the community once a week on your progress.
- As you achieve your self-described milestones, receive the rest of your funding.
- Submit finished work for feedback, review, and distribution.
🤝 Guidelines
- Be Concise: Being clear and concise is always helpful.
- Build what the ecosystem needs: Besides our Grant Proposals, we often see people on Twitter (and elsewhere) saying things like "Solana needs X" or "Solana would be better if it had Y". Use this information!
- Open Source: Being clear and concise is always helpful. What makes decentralized applications so powerful is that it’s built on the premise of being open and composable. Therefore, this grant support teams that intend to open source soon after deploying on Solana’s Mainnet Beta.
🏆 Previous grant recipients
❓Frequently asked questions
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Anyone!
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We try our best to get you a decision within 72 hours.
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We prefer projects that 1) yield results quickly and 2) are executable by the Proposing team.
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The only condition is that you keep the community updated on a regular basis as your project progresses.
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- Proof of Work > Credentials. Anyone is welcome to apply for Instagrants, given they have enough Proof of Work to make the review committee believe the work will get done.
- Speed > Perfection. We want to give grants rapidly. Not perfectly. We trust people to get work done.
- Believers > Consensus. As long as a minimum quorum of the reviewing committee believes it's a good use of funds, we will fund it.
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Unfortunately, our sponsors do not have the ability to provide individualized feedback at this time.
Have a question that isn't answered here? Write to us at [email protected].