Pioneers Prize

Solve big challenges for the biggest bounties in blockchain.

Incentivizing Innovation in the Polkadot Ecosystem

Learn more

Introducing the Polkadot Pioneers Prize

Got what it takes to be a Polkadot Pioneer? The Polkadot Pioneers Prize encourages talented people to solve some of the biggest challenges facing Polkadot and Web3 and win up to 993,286.08 DOT in prizes. In this historic first, prizes will be funded in a completely decentralized way via Polkadot’s on-chain Treasury.

Unlocking the power of Polkadot’s Treasury

The Polkadot Treasury is managed by the network’s token holders via Polkadot’s on-chain governance system. Currently containing more than 20 million DOT tokens, the Treasury is designed to fund projects that benefit the Polkadot ecosystem. The Polkadot Treasury represents a completely new paradigm, where decentralized networks have the financial agency previously limited to centralized organizations.

If you are interested in viewing the on-chain bounty proposal that brought the Pioneers Prize to life, you can view the proposal here.

How to get involved

1

Check the Bounty Categories

Visit the Pioneers Prize Notion page and search through the available Bounties.

2

Draft your proposal

Your proposal should address a problem, outline a goal, give a detailed account of how you will reach that goal, and include any ongoing maintenance needs. As much as possible, you should itemize the tasks to be completed so fees can be evaluated and milestones can be followed.
View the proposal template

3

Submit your proposal

Follow the submission steps and register your entry to the Bounty.

4

Pitch Call

Once your proposal has been through an initial screening and feedback process, the team will be invited to a pitch call with the Curator.

5

Curator Selection

If approved, the requested funds are earmarked/locked in the Bounty pool, and the Child Bounty is ready to be assigned to the Curator.

6

Child Bounty Creation & Claiming

Once the payment structure has been agreed and the Curator has been assigned to the newly created Child Bounty, the recipient can claim the Child Bounty.
More information

7

Report back to the Community

Be sure to report back to the community in discussion forums on the progress your project makes, showing relevant deliverables, results, links to work done, and any success metrics if relevant. This is crucial for ensuring accountability and community alignment, particularly if you want to continue working with Treasury funds in the future.

Bounty Categories

A full list of Bounty categories can be found on the Pioneers Prize Notion page.

Previous Recipients

A full rundown of the innovative projects which have been funded from this Bounty can be found below:

Zprize

About Zprize

Zero-knowledge cryptography is a groundbreaking new technology enabling privacy, interoperability, and scalability for Web 3.0 protocols and applications. Like the DARPA Grand Challenge, select teams will compete for monetary prizes spanning a range of categories. Over $7M in prize money has been committed, along with token grants from sponsoring projects.

All winning submissions will become open-source libraries for the benefit of all. We hope this foundation can support the next generation of decentralized protocols and applications to enable secure, interoperable, and scalable applications for the next-generation web.

Pioneers Prize Open Division Challenge

Accelerating elliptic curve operations and finite field arithmetic (WASM) focuses on maximizing throughput/minimizing latency of operations on client-type devices and blockchain-based VMs, specifically the WebAssembly (WASM) runtime.

Zprize Winners

1

Yrrid Software

Amount: 15,372.50 DOT
Github repo submission

2

mitschabaude

Amount: 5,912.50 DOT
Github repo submission

3

Manta Network

Amount: 2,365 DOT
Github repo submission