Stellar Community Fund — Selection and Budget guidelines

Stellar Community Fund — Selection and Budget guidelines

Applications for the Stellar Community Fund are due August 22nd, which means there are less than three weeks left to complete your submission form! From August 23rd to August 29th 2021, a panel of verified community members selects the strongest 20–50 entries to advance to community discussion and vote. This blog post outlines the criteria on which each submitted project will be reviewed during the Selection Phase, so make sure you keep an eye out for this as you polish your submission.

Make sure you’re following the rules

Applicable law and our internal policies restrict us from providing XLM awards to certain categories of projects. If your submission is in one of our prohibited categories, you will not be eligible for an award, consequently, your project will not be selected. Also, you need to be eligible to receive the award. For more information, please check out the Rules and Guidelines and have each participant complete the Compliance Form sent to you by email.

Fill out your submission before the deadline

An obvious suggestion, though often overlooked. Submissions need to have at least 80% of the required fields filled out, otherwise they will not be reviewed by the Selection Panel. Required fields in the extensive submission form are marked with a *. Of course, we encourage you to fill out all the fields on the submission form so you can give a holistic overview of your project. We want to see what you’re working on!

Request a reasonable budget

Now let’s talk budget. In the current round of the SCF, entrants self-select their project budgets, just as they pick their own features and third-party services. To make requests easier to reason about, projects will denominate their budgets in USD, and the final payouts will be in the equivalent amount of XLM.

All projects will be reviewed according to their budget request: you need to request a reasonable budget that fits with your project and the steps you plan to take to take your project to the next level. How do you set the right budget? What amount is reasonable? Here are a few guidelines the Selection Panel uses that should help you decide your budget request.

Small project scope < $5,000

• Experimental or hackathon-style projects
• Usually single contribution

Medium project scope < $50,000

• Development or launch of a new company or product
• Single or multiple contributor(s)
• Solves a real-world problem

Large project scope $50,000 - $250,000

• Scaling or improving an existing company or product
• Solves a real-world problem
• Should already have users
• Multiple contributors

These guidelines are based on what we’ve seen in previous rounds. Of course, your project may not fall exactly into each of these buckets, but this is generally what panelists will be looking for in projects.

Other helpful guidelines

Aside from asking themselves whether the budget is reasonable for your project, the Selection Panel will objectively go through the following questions when reviewing your submission:

Does the project solve a real world problem and/or benefit the Stellar ecosystem?

SDF supports the development and growth of the Stellar network to further our mission to create equitable access to the global financial system. Therefore, we’d love to see projects that solve real-world problems that further our mission or benefit the ecosystem to create or reimagine tools and resources for others to use and build on.

Does it target a specific audience?

Who would most likely want to buy or use your product and services? What do they need? What do they care about? Knowing your audience helps you figure out what content and messages people care about, and also determines how you build your product. For the selection panel, it’s an indicator for success if you’ve thought through your project and identified your target audience.

Is blockchain (or Stellar in particular) a good solution for the problem?

Don’t use Stellar just to win a prize: the technology you use needs to be a good solution for the problem you want to solve. Make sure you’ve thought through alternatives and indicate why Stellar is a good solution (if not the best) to answer the needs of your audience.

Does the project use Stellar as a core component?

The Selection Panel will also review how your project uses Stellar. Is it a key part of your product or service? Are you using Stellar features to create, store, or transfer value? Have you thought through the best ways to take advantage of the network and its features? Does your project interoperate with other projects in the ecosystem?

Is the project unique?

Make sure your project is unique. Projects that are very similar to what someone has built before you are less likely to be selected. That said, you don’t need to have a unique solution, concept or idea to differentiate from others: you can target a different audience, have different integrations and user flows, or use different marketing strategies, for example. The combination of all of these factors not only sets your submission apart from the competition, but marks a clear path towards success.

Learn more on communityfund.stellar.org and fill out your submission form before 11:59 PM PST on August 22nd. For any questions, reach out to us on the SCF Discord or communityfund@stellar.org. We look forward to seeing what you build!

Stellar Community Fund — Selection and Budget guidelines was originally published in Stellar Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.