TL;DR - Backed by the Ethereum Foundation, clr.fund and ETHStaker have teamed up to run a Quadratic Funding (QF) round with a 350,000 DAI matching pool dedicated to funding open source public goods for the Ethereum staking ecosystem. Recipient applications are open now, so if you’d like to join the round, head over to qf.ethstaker.cc to register. If you know a project that should receive support, tell them to join!

We are excited to announce that, with the support of the Ethereum Foundation, we have teamed up with ETHStaker to run a Quadratic Funding round with a 350,000 DAI matching pool, dedicated to funding open source public goods for the Ethereum staking ecosystem.

This round marks a huge milestone for clr.fund, being by far the largest initial matching pool for a Quadratic Funding round run using clr.fund protocol, along with being a critical supporting step toward one of Ethereum’s largest milestones to date; the merge. This will also be our first round to happen on L2 - the Staking Round will run on Arbitrum with contributions opening on May 6th.

With this round, we hope to give some of the public goods infrastructure for the Ethereum staking ecosystem the additional and critical support they need as we all collectively push toward the merge and beyond.

Wait… What is Quadratic Funding?

Clr.fund is an implementation of Quadratic Funding (QF), also called CLR (Capital-constrained Liberal Radicalism). In short, QF allocates a pool of matching funds to a group of eligible recipients using a novel version of Quadratic Voting (QV) to decide the allocation, wherein individuals contribute funds directly to projects they value.This fundraiser rewards projects with the most unique demand, not just those with the wealthiest backers.

QF is the mathematically optimal way to allocate funds to public goods and finds a happy medium between 1-dollar-1-vote and 1-person-1-vote, where contributors are able to express the strength of their preference – where a passionate minority can overcome a dispassionate majority – but a passionate majority should always have the strongest influence.

Learn more about Quadratic Funding at qf.ethstaker.cc/#/about/quadratic-funding.

Why this round?

One of the ways the Ethereum Foundation has historically supported important parts of the ecosystem, like the staking community, is through rounds of grants. The Staking Round we announce today represents an experiment in sharing decision-making over ecosystem support within the Ethereum community, as well as the public goods we all rely on. Through the course of this round we do expect surprises (this will be the largest clr.fund round to date, after all) but we are also excited and proud to participate.

How can I get involved?

If you run an open source public good staking project - whether that’s a technical tool, documentation or guide resources, or you work hard to build a community that supports staking, you can join to receive funding! These are the criteria your project must meet to join the round:

• Related to Ethereum staking or the consensus layer. Your project must support staking on Ethereum.
• Free and open source. Your project must be free to use and any code associated with your project should be available to anyone under an open source license.
• Project ownership. The project you submit must be yours or you must have permission from the project owner.
• Satisfy KYC. Projects eligible to join the round will need to provide basic KYC information - ID and proof of address for individuals, plus corporate documents for corporations - to participate in the round
• No scams. Your project must not put anyone’s funds or personal information at risk.

Due to technical constraints, there will be a limit of 124 projects that can join the round, and it’s first-come first-served! So don’t wait to get involved. You can find more information on how to join the round or to get started at https://qf.ethstaker.cc/#/join.

If you use open source public goods for staking or you want a say in how funds are distributed - you should contribute to those projects! The more individuals who donate to a project, the larger the share of the matching pool they can claim at the end of the round! So give generously, and get your friends involved.

You’ll need to make your contribution in DAI, and the round will take place on Arbitrum. You can find out how to participate as a contributor here: https://qf.ethstaker.cc/#/about/how-it-works/contributors

You’ll also need to be verified as an individual (and not a bot!) by BrightID. You can get started through the round at qf.ethstaker.cc/#/verify.

What dates should I know about?

• The round is open for projects to join now!
• May 16th is the last day to register projects for the round.
• May 6th – Our amazing partners at EthStaker will be hosting a call to kickoff this round – mark your calendars!
• May 6th through May 24th – Projects will be able to receive contributions.

We are incredibly excited to support the staking ecosystem and Ethereum’s bright future. The clr.fund team will see you there.

If you’ve got any questions about this or future rounds, if you’ve found a bug in our code, or you’re simply looking for other ways to get involved, hit us up in our Discord.