Additional Guidance

Open Source Guidance #

Open source refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible. Open-source software has source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. Open-source software, hardware, and data solutions encourage greater transparency and security and help reduce costs by developing, collaborating, and fixing in the open. It helps create developer-friendly tooling and approaches that streamline an integrated development environment, helping to develop code more efficiently and providing ease of use for developers. In all cases, as an essential deliverable, projects must include high-quality documentation as learning resources of the proposal. Cardano Open: Developers (technical) is the most relevant track in Fund 11 to open source solutions.

Areas of interest #

Proposals may focus on open-source technical solutions that:

• standardize, develop, support, or provide utilities for full-stack solutions and IDEs,
• create new libraries, SDKs, publicly available APIs, toolchains, and frameworks.

What we do not fund #

Cardano Open: Developers (technical) will not be funding projects that:

• do not develop new code or contribute to or support existing open-source developers. For example, a learning resource guide to developing on Plutus, Marlowe, or other smart contracts platforms like Aiken. In this case, the Cardano Open non-developers
• are inherently non-technical (For example, a community event or hackathon to bring more developers or users to Cardano. In that case, it should apply to the Cardano Open: Ecosystem - non-technical track.)
• are not open-source and are producing proprietary software, hardware, or data.

Submitting Milestones for your F11 proposal #

A milestone is a specific point within a project’s life cycle to measure the progress toward successful completion. They are signal posts for a project’s major deliverables and a measurable reference point that marks a significant event or a branching decision point within a project. What are the key actions you need to take to deliver your project?

How will you demonstrate and evidence that you have completed these actions?

Clearly defined milestones as part of your proposal submission will demonstrate to the reviewer that you clearly understand the significant points within your project’s life cycle and that your progress toward your project’s successful completion and delivery can be measurably demonstrated.

As part of your submission, specifically, to demonstrate your capability and feasibility, you are asked to list the key milestones you will need to achieve to complete your project successfully.

At this stage, you are only asked to list the milestones broadly. Doing so will demonstrate to the reviewer that you know what key steps are needed to complete your project. If your project is voted for to receive funding, you will be asked to submit a more detailed Statment of Milestones as part of your onboarding process.

This will include providing further details on the acceptance criteria for each milestone, the date of delivery and cost for each milestone, and the evidence you will submit for review after each milestone.

When defining your milestones, consider that you are effectively presenting a simplified project delivery plan.