Lido Ecosystem Grants Organization

We strive to fund individuals, projects and initiatives which benefit both Lido and/or the surrounding space while maintaining efficiency and accountability for big developments

Any blockchain developer, crypto enthusiast or a member of community can be a participant of this program. If you're improving the ecosystem or general awareness about Ethereum, PoS, DeFi, etc. and have a solid plan on how to meet your goals - we're here to support you

Grant Classification

LEGO grants are sorted into four different piles by expected size and impact:

Name
Description
Approver (LEGO)
Grant amount
Sandgrain
Contributions that are nice to have, yet not detrimental. Can be easily evaluated by a single person.
1 member
up to 1,000 USD
Approver: 1 member
Grant amount: up to 1,000 USD
Pebble
Pebbles are non-critical, small things that are beneficial for Lido but not so trivial to call a sand grain.
2 members
up to 10,000 USD
Approver: 2 members
Grant amount: up to 10,000 USD
Boulder
Boulders are big, important things that are imperative to be carried out by experts and thoroughly evaluated by core contributors.
Council vote
up to 100,000 USD
Approver: Council vote
Grant amount: up to 100,000 USD
Mountain
Mountains are critical improvements to Lido that have a significant impact on its growth, security, operations, etc.
DAO vote
~100,000 USD +
Approver: DAO vote
Grant amount: ~100,000 USD +

Successful grants

These are just some of the successful LEGO grants we’ve seen completed over the last few months.

Grant Size
Proposal
Description
Mountain
Grant of $1M equivalent in ETH paid from Lido treasury to the first of its kind legal activism DAO to bootstrap a new community of lawyers and builders working side-by-side to legitimize and protect shared creative values of the DeFi space.
Boulder
The Tempus Finance integration of stETH into their fixed yield offering.
Pebble
A successful Rabbithole quest to drive growth in TVL and active stETH holders.
Sandgrain
A small thank you grant to Toni Wahrstatter for the MEV-Boost dashboard showing MEV-Boost dynamics, main contributors and many more!
Sandgrain
Sangrain grant to Alberto Cevallos for this neat and handful unit converter.

For the full list of disbursed grants, please navigate here.

Grant Application Process

To apply for a grant, please follow the process outlined below:

1

Contact

Make contact with the LEGO person responsible for your specific area of contribution (or just any LEGO person who will forward you to the relevant point of contact) on Telegram to introduce yourself and your idea.

Good practice is to prepare a short pitch of the proposal:
Title: What is the grant application about?
Author(s): Who will be working on the proposal (experience, previous major achievements)?
Purpose: How will it aid the Lido ecosystem? Why is it important?
Summary: A brief summary of the grant application (3-4 sentences)
Details: timelines, expenses estimates.

2

Discuss grants terms

Hash out the terms, timelines, and deliverables in personal communication with the relevant LEGO member. They will get approval or rejection according to the LEGO process.

3

Review

The proposal is shared on research.lido.fi and amongst LEGO committee members for review. Upon approval, communication channels will be set up and nominee will receive funding.

4

Present

Upon completion, the creator is invited to introduce the grant work and showcase their developments to the LEGO committee.

The timeline for grant execution will differ based on the size of the grant opportunity as well as the number of committee members needed to take part.

LEGO Committee

LEGO is built up around 2 unique segments - LEGO Council & LEGO Nominees. Any LEGO member can send sandgrain, coordinate on pebbles and motion towards Boulders, while only LEGO Council votes on Boulders.

LEGO Council

The LEGO Council is comprised of 8 LEGO partners with a range of backgrounds and experience, each responsible for a specific segment of Lido with a capacity of 15,000 LDO equivalent per quarter to facilitate sandgrain and pebble sized grants.

Name
Domain
About
Social
Vasiliy Shapovalov
General, tech
Co-Founder, Researcher
Kasper Rasmussen
Community
Community, Growth & Education
Victor Suzdalev
Governance, Defi integrations
Lido DAO on-chain ops
Sam Kozin
Ethereum liquid staking
Lido on Ethereum dev
Flo
Node and Validation tech
Co-Founder & CTO of Staking Facilities
Tim Beiko
Ethereum ecosystem alignment
AllCoreDevs, Ethereum Foundation
Isidoros Passadis
General, node operation, decentralization, future of staking
Extensive experience in Financial and IT auditing, risk & control frameworks, business process design and implementation
Alex Lykov
General, LEGO ops
LEGO analyst in DAO ops

LEGO Nominees

The LEGO Nominees is an extension of LEGO by up to 20 individuals who manage personal grant budget (10,000 LDO equivalent per quarter, included in total LEGO budget). The list of nominees is managed by a vote of the LEGO Council.

Name
About
Social
Klim
Core dev of Yearn finance
FrontAlpha
Rewards Share and Liquidity Observation Lab
CC
Community manager
Eugene Pshenichniy
Lido on Ethereum dev
Georgios Konstantopoulos
CTO and research partner in Paradigm
Jakov
Protocol Relations (ex. CIO in ShardLabs)
Jbeezy
Former contributor to ConsenSys, Sprice ID, NEAR foundation, Lido DAO
Irina
Lido on Ethereum analytics
TheDZhon
Lido on Ethereum dev

Quarterly reporting

Each quarter LEGO issues reports with an overview and details of granting activity for the past 3 months: