Announcing the winners of SCF #9!

Today, we are excited to announce the winners of the 9th round of the Stellar Community Fund (SCF). After one and a half weeks of deliberation, a panel of 49 judges drawn from both the Stellar Development Foundation and the greater Stellar community and ecosystem voted to award 12 projects their requested budgets, and to give away a grand total of over 3.5M XLM.

Similar to the last round, each project specified a budget request. Judges considered those requests when voting, and as a result, the winners range from fun hackathon-style projects to launch-ready businesses building the future of finance. It’s a diverse set of projects, and we’re excited to see what they do next!

Without further ado, here are the winners ranked by highest vote:

1. Stellar Global — $100,000 worth of XLM*

Stellar Global was founded independently with a vision to become a 501 ©3 organization whose mission is to educate, connect and advocate for the millions of people that make up the human network of Stellar. With a vibrant Discord server of almost 1000 members and nearly 20k followers on social media, Stellar Global engages and connects developers, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs across the world. So far, their well known initiatives have been mostly self-funded, but with SCF funding, they intend to scale their operations to grow and engage the Stellar community and ecosystem.

Learn more in their submission.

2. Stellar C SDK — $48,000 worth of XLM*

The main maintainer of the Python Stellar SDK found that contributing code to the Ledger and Trezor hardware wallets requires writing duplicate code for each wallet to parse and build Stellar transactions. To speed up the efficiency of integrating Stellar into various hardware devices, overcat#1929 plans to bring a new C SDK to the Stellar ecosystem and provide full support for building, signing and parsing transactions, saving themselves and other users valuable time development costs.

Learn more in their submission.

3. Kotlin Stellar SDK — $11,500 worth of XLM*

The Multiplatform Kotlin Stellar SDK will allow Kotlin developers to interact with the Stellar network in a pleasant way. Currently, Kotlin can run on the JVM, so developers can use the Java Stellar SDK. However, using Java libraries in Kotlin can feel out of place. Creating a Stellar SDK specifically for Kotlin will improve the development experience of Kotlin developers. Additionally, using the Kotlin Multiplatform, developers will be able to use the SDK to share code between mobile, desktop and browser like iOS and Android.

Learn more in their submission.

4. Command Robotics — $5,000 worth of XLM*

Manufacturing is poised to be disrupted with new technology and practices that have been maturing in different areas. Command Robotics looks to build the next generation of a web-based Manufacturing Execution System and robotics platform which solves some of the key challenges for manufacturers looking to adopt automation. The platform will use Stellar as the real-time financial settlement layer allowing our customers to adopt Robotics using a service model, with an innovative progressive payment settling in real-time as each job is completed.

Learn more in their submission.

5. xBull Market — $56,200 worth of XLM*

xBull Wallet is an open source wallet for the Stellar Blockchain which is available on both desktops and mobile. xBull Market is a fully decentralized and privacy focused P2P market built into xBull Market with the help of the xP2P platform. The combination of both wallet and market can offer a smooth experience to users when they want to exchange non-blockchain funds with those that are on-chain, a solution for when there is no option in form of an exchange or an anchor.

Learn more in their submission.

6. Simple Signer — $10,000 worth of XLM*

Simple Signer means to reduce cognitive complexity to enter the Stellar ecosystem by providing a secure way to sign for Stellar transactions without installing a browser extension, and without providing your private key to the website that generates the transaction. With the requested budget, they plan to deliver an MVP which shows operations inside a transaction and allows users to sign for it, in a simple user interface that can be embedded into any website.

Learn more in their submission.

7. tip me — the global tip — $145,000 worth of XLM*

Buy a t-shirt and tip the people who sewed it. tip me is a German purpose company that developed the global tip to tackle global financial inequality. Through the global tip, they connect people from the beginning and end of global supply chains and enable consumers to be part of the solution to global inequity. With micro payments as their use case, Stellar can reduce their administration overhead by 50% and transfer fees by 90%. With SCF funding, they want to build the integration with Stellar to transfer tips from consumers directly to the individual workers wallets. ‍

Learn more in their submission.

8. Benkiko Finance — $40,000 worth of XLM*

Benkiko is an online micropayments and tokenization platform for Africa, enabling freelancers, online shops and content creators to get paid easily across borders and offer them avenues to invest. Using the on Stellar issued Benkiko USD stablecoin, anyone with a smartphone can create an account instantly, deposit, send and pay online. It also allows developers across Africa to develop solutions for their local market needs and issue tokens for projects and communities for purposes including governance, utility and more.

Learn more in their submission.

9. Skyhitz — $40,000 worth of XLM*

Skyhitz intends to offer music creators a peer-to-peer marketplace were they can mint and trade music NFTs on Stellar and IPFS. Powered by Stellar, Skyhitz helps fund and support music creators by giving them the power to own and hold their creative assets without central authority or middle-man. With SCF funding, they plan to expand our reach to all music creators globally and bring equitable access to quality music through the power of decentralized technology.

Learn more in their submission.

10. Quidroo — $35,000 worth of XLM*

Quidroo is an online factoring platform that helps Nigerian SMEs unlocking their trapped cash flows. They streamline transactions so that SMEs get paid within 72 hours by selling their invoices to investors to get fast cash at favorable rates. Being ‘women first’, they work to increase access to finance in small-scale industries, and use Stellar to optimize quick, transparent, and efficient invoice financing for SMEs. With SCF funding, they intend to grow their team and finish building out the Stellar integration created during the Stellar bootcamp with DFS Lab earlier this fall.

Learn more in their submission.

11. GetPaid — $192,500 worth of XLM*

By the creators of ClickPesa, GetPaid is a place that connects creators, traders and freelancers in Africa with worldwide opportunities, through digital gigs, trade, education and innovation. ‍Their marketplace app plans to utilize Stellar’s ecosystem and technology where possible in the form of token storage, minting of cost-effective NFTs, yield earning, escrow and more. With SCF funding, they intend to grow the GetPaid community, encourage collaboration, and open up access to participate in the NFT economy and more.

Learn more in their submission.

12. Alfred Pay — $215,000 worth of XLM*

Alfred pay is a remittance platform created to provide an easier and affordable way for users to send and receive money. Powered by Stellar, they allow users and businesses to send money cross border at near-instant speeds and at fractions of the cost compared to the traditional remittance system. Alfred Pay provides instant access to local currency or dollars in exchange for a US dollar stable coin by partnering with regulated financial institutions and cash networks. With SCF funding, they plan to roll out their proof of concept in the US, Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Learn more in their submission.

Note from SDF’s ecosystem team

Big thanks to the judges and the Stellar community as a whole for evaluating, engaging with, and supporting these projects, and congratulations to the winners! We wish you all the very best, and look forward to watching your projects evolve and grow.

That said, there were a ton of great — really, really great — projects this round, and we wish we could have funded the lot. So, if you didn’t make the cut this time, don’t give up!

We will open submissions for SCF #10 early next year, and you can take what you’ve learned to do an even better job crafting your next application. Several winners of this round have applied to the SCF before but didn’t win until now, so take this chance to build on your project and strengthen your participation in the Stellar community and ecosystem at large.

See you next year!

*The USD valuation of the award in XLM is calculated using the CF Stellar Lumens-Dollar Settlement Price on December 16, 2021 as administered, maintained, and reported by the cryptocurrency index provider CF Benchmarks Ltd. (using the ticker “XLMUSD_RR”) (available at https://www.cfbenchmarks.com/indices/XLMUSD_RR)

Announcing the winners of SCF #9! was originally published in Stellar Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.