The Sia Foundation welcomes contributors from all over the world to come and build on Sia through our Grants program. Our goal for this program is to fund research, development, developer tools, and anything else that will support and further our mission of user-owned data while enriching the Sia ecosystem.
The following section outlines the proposal requirements, the proposal process, and evaluation criteria for the Sia grant program. Read on to get started on your own grant application.
- Name of organization or individual and project name.
- Purpose of the grant: who benefits and how the project will serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data.
- Code contributions must be open source.
- Timeline with measurable objectives and goals.
- Any potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project.
- Budget and justification.
- Reporting requirements: Progress reports to the foundation/committee and to the community.
- Create a proposal with the above requirements in mind.
- Submit your proposal at https://forum.sia.tech/c/grants/proposed/.
- Open discussion will ensue in the comment section from the community.
- The Grant Committee convenes every two weeks to review the following:
- New proposals, to accept, reject, or request more info.
- Existing grants, to assess their progress.
- Newly completed grants, to review their outcomes.
All proposals are reviewed by the Grant Committee. When evaluating a grant proposal, the Committee considers the following factors while utilizing a scoring matrix to ensure a thorough vetting process.
- In line with Foundation’s mission: Does the proposal address a recognized need in the decentralized cloud storage community? Is the need consistent with The Sia Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?
- Community Impact: Will the project provide a meaningful volume of services and/or people served in the decentralized cloud storage community (in particular the Sia community)?
- Goals, Objectives & Outcome: Are there clear goals and objectives written? Are measurable outcomes evident?
- Deliverable: How well does the individual/organization demonstrate the ability to deliver and measure proposed outcomes?
- Risks and Technical Feasibility: Is the risk reasonable for the timeline provided? Please be thoughtful if the risk is high enough to impact the outcome of the project.
- Budget Justification: How well does the applicant justify the budget?
- Luke (Sia Foundation)
- Nate (Sia Foundation)
- Chris (Sia Foundation)
- Manasi (Sia community)
- Mike76 (Sia community)
- Redsolver (Sia community)
The Sia community would love to see the following projects built. If you are interested in building one of these projects, please reach out to the community on Discord to discuss your proposal.
IPFS is a widely used peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol that supports content addressing. A renterd storage backend would allow an IPFS gateway to store its data on Sia.
FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) is a Unix-based filesystem that allows users to mount a virtual filesystem in userspace. With FUSE integration, users could mount renterd storage as a virtual drive and access it from their local file system. With write support, users could modify files and folders stored on renterd directly from their local machine.
iSCSI and NFS are both network file-sharing protocols commonly used in enterprise environments. Integrating renterd with iSCSI and NFS would allow users to mount remote storage volumes and access renterd storage as a local disk. This would make it easier for organizations to use renterd as a secure and cost-effective alternative to traditional storage solutions.
A Telegram bot (or any other messaging service) that forwards any urgent renterd alerts from the Alerts API.
With the recent release of hostd, the Sia Foundation would like to see the community get creative and build new benchmarking and scoring tools. Interested in building a benchmarking tool for Sia? Apply for a Grant!
Running a host requires good stability and uptime, it would be useful to have monitoring tools that track status and alerting tools that send email or SMS notifications when a node goes offline. Interested in building a monitoring tool for hostd? Apply for a Grant!
Sia is a thriving ecosystem of data storage enthusiasts, open source software, and commercial data storage platforms. Apply for a Sia grant and start contributing.
Private and decentralized open-source cloud storage app with encrypted file sharing and media streaming support.
Content-addressed storage, but fast. Works with Sia and any S3-compatible storage provider.
The Sia Central Host Browser lets you explore and filter Sia hosts by a variety of criteria.
SiaShare is an end-to-end encrypted file sharing software that uses the Sia decentralized storage network to store files.
Goal: To incentivize the creation and field testing of novel ideas and small utilities that add value to the Sia ecosystem.
- Approval time: 2-4 weeks
- Timeline: A maximum of three months from grant approval (flexible if you provide adequate justification).
- Reporting: We will continue our existing policy of expecting monthly progress reports from grantees.
- Proposal Format: A concise, short proposal detailing the objectives, method, and expected outcomes.
Goal: Provide more structure for projects with a larger scope and make it easier for the committee and community to gauge progress.
- Approval time: 4-6 weeks
- Reporting: Besides monthly progress reports, all standard grants must propose upfront milestones.
- Milestones: A proposed schedule of milestones should be part of each grant application. The committee reserves the right to accept, modify, or reject proposed milestones to ensure they represent thoughtful and reasonable project evaluation checkpoints. Further payments may be withheld for missed milestones.
- Proposal Format: Proposals should detail the project's scope, objectives, expected results, milestone schedule, and budget breakdown. The inclusion of team members' qualifications and prior work is encouraged (or may be required by the committee on a case-by-case basis).
- Demo day: A short presentation upon completion of the grant or significant milestones at the monthly community call
Goal: To engage in a deeper vetting process, ensuring that large sums are granted to projects with clear plans, experienced teams, and demonstrated abilities.
- Approval time: 8-12 weeks
- Definitive point-of-contact: a clear point of contact that provides updates and engages with the grant committee
- Reporting: Besides monthly progress reports, all large grants must propose upfront milestones.
- Milestones: A proposed schedule of milestones should be part of each grant application. The committee reserves the right to accept, modify, or reject proposed milestones to ensure they represent thoughtful and reasonable project evaluation checkpoints. Further payments may be withheld for missed milestones.
- Examples of previous work: Proposers should present samples of past work and code, helping the committee gauge the team's expertise and capability
- Proof of concept: A small proof of concept should be provided to demonstrate the viability and potential of the project. Can be developed as part of a prior grant.
- Proposal Format: Proposals should be comprehensive, covering the project's in-depth plan, team expertise, prior accomplishments, and expected milestones. A detailed budget breakdown is also required.
- Demo day: A short presentation upon completion of the grant or significant milestones at the monthly community call
Project Name:
Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal:
Describe your project.
Answer here.
How does the projected outcome serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?
Answer here.
Amount of money requested and justification with a reasonable breakdown of expenses:
Consider the following when submitting your budget.
- The Foundation can only pay out grant funds in $USD via ACH or wire.
- Grant payments will be made monthly.
What are the goals of this small grant?
Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:
Will all of your project’s code be open-source?
[Projects can use closed-source components, but can’t develop closed-source code. If any of your project’s code is closed-source, please describe what code and why.]
Leave a link where code will be accessible for review.
Links.
Do you agree to submit monthly progress reports?
[Progress reports must be submitted monthly here in the forum.]
Email:
Any other preferred contact methods:
Use the following template when submitting your proposal.
- Proposals must be in this format in order to be considered.
- Read this entire template before submitting.
Project Name:
Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal:
Describe your project.
Answer here.
Who benefits from your project?
Answer here.
How does the project serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?
Answer here.
Amount of money requested and justification with a reasonable breakdown of expenses:
Consider the following when submitting your budget.
- The Foundation can only pay out grant funds in $USD via ACH or wire.
- For grants of a period of one year or more, payments will be made quarterly.
- For grants with a period of less than one year, payments will be made monthly.
Timeline with measurable objectives and goals. REQUIRED: Milestones with which to judge your progress. Milestones should be easy for the Grants Committee to understand and evaluate as your project moves through its term. The Committee reserves the right to accept, modify, or reject proposed milestones to ensure they represent thoughtful and reasonable project evaluation checkpoints. Further payments may be withheld for missed milestones.
Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:
Will all of your project’s code be open-source?
[Projects can use closed-source components, but can’t develop closed-source code. If any of your project’s code is closed-source, please describe what code and why.]
Leave a link where code will be accessible for review.
Links.
Do you agree to submit monthly progress reports?
[Progress reports must be submitted monthly here in the forum.]
Email:
Any other preferred contact methods:
Use the following template when submitting your proposal.
- Proposals must be in this format in order to be considered.
- Read this entire template before submitting.
Project Name:
Name of the organization or individual submitting the proposal:
Describe your project.
Answer here.
Who benefits from your project?
Answer here.
How does the project serve the Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?
Answer here.
Amount of money requested and justification with a comprehensive breakdown of expenses:
Consider the following when submitting your budget.
- The Foundation can only pay out grant funds in $USD via ACH or wire.
- For grants of a period of one year or more, payments will be made quarterly.
- For grants with a period of less than one year, payments will be made monthly.
Timeline with measurable objectives and goals. REQUIRED: Milestones with which to judge your progress. Milestones should be easy for the Grants Committee to understand and evaluate as your project moves through its term. The Committee reserves the right to accept, modify, or reject proposed milestones to ensure they represent thoughtful and reasonable project evaluation checkpoints. Further payments may be withheld for missed milestones.
Potential risks that will affect the outcome of the project:
Will all of your project’s code be open-source?
[Projects can use closed-source components, but can’t develop closed-source code. If any of your project’s code is closed-source, please describe what code and why.]
Leave a link where code will be accessible for review.
Links.
Do you agree to submit monthly progress reports?
[Progress reports must be submitted monthly here in the forum.]
Do you agree to designate a point of contact for committee questions and concerns?
Name and contact info.
Provide links to previous work or code from all team members.
Links.
Have you developed a proof of concept for this idea already? If not, you can develop this as part of another grant before submitting this grant.
Yes/No and links.
Do you agree to participate in a demo at our monthly community call at significant milestones or after the grant’s completion?
Yes/No.
Email:
Any other preferred contact methods:
Your path to a Sia Foundation grant starts with a proposal. Among other things, your proposal outlines what you want to do, how it will benefit the Sia ecosystem, and how much money you’ll need. Our committee then makes a determination to approve, conditionally approve, or reject, with your next steps provided to you as a response to your proposal.
You can apply for a grant by making a new post in our forum here, under the Grants category. You can refer to this post for proposal requirements.
You can join the Sia Foundation Discord and ask questions in #grants-program.
Our goal for this program is to fund research, development, developer tools, and anything else that will support and further our mission of user-owned data while enriching the Sia ecosystem.
Approved grant funds can cover all costs associated with your project. Common project fees include development, operations, services, and more.
Grants are reviewed and accepted by the Sia Grants Committee and in parallel approved by the Sia Foundation Board of Directors.
- Foundation employees: Luke Champine, Nate Maninger, Chris Schinnerl
- Community members: Redsolver, Mike76, Manasi Vora
They meet every 2 weeks.
One week before the meeting, to ensure committee members and other users have time to review the proposal and ask you questions about the proposal. Not to worry, the committee will review your proposal at the next meeting!
- In line with Foundation’s mission: Does the proposal address a recognized need in the decentralized cloud storage community? Is the need consistent with The Sia Foundation’s mission of user-owned data?
- Community Impact: Will the project provide a meaningful volume of services and/or people served in the decentralized cloud storage community (in particular the Sia community)?
- Goals, Objectives & Outcome: Are there clear goals and objectives written? Are measurable outcomes evident?
- Deliverables: How well does the individual/organization demonstrate the ability to deliver and measure proposed outcomes?
- Risks & Technical Feasibility: Is the risk reasonable for the timeline provided? Be thoughtful if the risk is high enough to impact the outcome of the project.
- Budget Justification: How well does the applicant justify the budget?
Grant committee support will post feedback and/or approval on the forum in your proposal post.
If approved, you’re all set! You’ll then move on to our Post Approval process, which includes communicating with our operations team to complete the paperwork associated with your grant in compliance with United States Law.
If conditionally approved, you’re good to go as long as you commit to making our recommended changes. The committee will communicate further with you during the Post Approval process.
If rejected, it’s not the end of the road. We’ll provide feedback on where your proposal was lacking so you can fix it up and re-apply.
Simply add a new comment to your proposal with the new application and ensure that it aligns with the criteria provided above while also taking into consideration why your previous application was rejected.
Grants are only offered in USD at this time.
If approved, you’re all set! You’ll then move on to our Post Approval process, which includes communicating with our operations team to complete the paperwork associated with your grant in compliance with United States Law.
If conditionally approved, you’re good to go as long as you commit to making our recommended changes. The committee will communicate further with you during the Post Approval process.
Grants are only offered in USD at this time. For grants with a timeline of 1 or more years, payments will be made quarterly. For grants with a timeline of less than 1 year, payments will be made monthly. Grant payments are made the 15th of every month. Please note that it may take a few days for payments to be received.
Monthly reports are due the 2nd of every month after your grant has been approved.
Please use the following template for your monthly report submission:
What progress was made on your grant this month?
Summarize your progress into a few sentences or bullet points.
Links to repos worked on this month:
- Link
- Link
- Link
What will you be working on next month?
Summarize your future work into a few sentences or bullet points.
On the forum where your proposal was submitted, just add a comment to your proposal.
If you’re still within your original grant period and have not finished the scope of your project but funds have run dry, you can request additional funds. The committee will review this request and recommend approval or rejection.
If you’ve completed your project and wish to continue working under a grant, you can submit a new proposal for committee review.
The Sia Foundation looks forward to funding your open source research and development projects.
447,349 block height
84,725 online hosts
381 active hosts
4.00 PB total storage
1.11 PB used storage
9,791 M total registry
97 M used registry
20,995 commits
72 contributors
481 forks
43 releases
