Want to get funding from the ecosystem fund? It’s not a simple task, but it’s not as complicated as you might think either. The key point to understand is: money isn’t given for free; you need to prove that your proposal can bring real value to the entire ecosystem.

This guide is suitable for ecosystem developers, project teams, and individuals seeking funding support. The difficulty level is not low, but if you follow the steps carefully, your chances of success will significantly increase.

First, understand a core principle: the ecosystem treasury indeed holds hundreds of millions of dollars, but the review team values not how grand your dreams are, but whether you can demonstrate that this investment will generate positive externalities—that is, your project must provide tangible benefits to the entire ecosystem. Proposals like "give me money and I’ll help you hype" are basically going to be filtered out.

The first stage of the entire process is called the temperature check. This is the real community interaction phase. You need to initiate discussions on relevant forums, marking them as opinion solicitation. Your post should include several essential parts: a one-sentence summary of your idea; an explanation of why the ecosystem needs this; a detailed description of how to implement it, and an approximate budget.

This step seems simple but is actually the most challenging. Community members will ask all kinds of tricky questions. Some will question your cost estimates as too high; others will doubt the feasibility. The key skill is not to defend defensively but to present a detailed cost breakdown, speaking with data. A clear Excel budget sheet is often more convincing than lengthy explanations.

The goal of this stage is to gather genuine feedback and optimize your plan. If the community engagement is high enough and consensus is strong enough, only then are you qualified to move to the next stage.