The Grants team without a specific reason, only a disclaimer stating they could reject any project without explanation and a recommendation to instead explore other opportunities in the ecosystem, such as joining a hackathon.
This felt disheartening, especially since I had recently won an international ICP hackathon, which included a “grant recommendation” as part of the prizes.
I pushed back because they got my name wrong and it seemed they had not reach the application. The response was from the senior manager who stated:
“You are not a good developer, we only approve the best of the best, if you want to develop on ICP you have to continue to improve as a developer”.
This also surprised me because my code was never public and the grants team never asked for access to my code.
(Perhaps Dfinity they have backdoor access to Github )
Money would have been nice but I never came here for the money -
A relationship with Dfinity and polite conversations would have been more valuable to me than the Grant.
About the project you mentioned Cosmicrafts, I have never heard about them.
Cosmicrafts is a project by a dev in Guadalajara Mexico I believe. It is a client server type of spaceship game. I was replying to Omar @ohsalmeron who stated he was either building for them or behind the project. They had a recent failed SNS launch.
Congrats that you won an ICP Hackathon. Doesn’t seem congruent or good etiquette for anyone to tell you that you are not a good developer after you won a hackathon after all. Makes no sense and esp. if they didn’t see your code.
I cannot imagine that the majority at DFINITY would agree with the way you were handled. That is not exactly an encouraging way to deal with anyone.
It’s good that you documented your case here on the forum. I hope someone @Leadership would take the time to reach out to you about this. If not, I hope they learn what not to do allowing you to just leave.
Anyways, I’m sorry about your poor experience. There needs to be a better way to nurture the devs here on ICP and not drive them away. Even a small grant and some encouragement would not have been a big deal esp. taking into consideration all of your efforts and your achievements. Your recent pitch deck wasn’t bad either.
How long have you been developing for @STAKEDOG? It takes years to become a ‘good’ developer. It takes minutes to go from knowing nothing about software development to writing your first application. ‘Developer’ isn’t a regulated or protected title, anyone can call themselves one, and hackathons are also not regulated and can be hosted by anyone for any reason.
Nothing against you or anyone else, but I’m getting a bit fed up of seeing this thread being used by people who are bitter that they didn’t get a handout. If you love building (all ‘good’ developers do, that’s how they got good), then just develop - you don’t need permission. If you get a handout, good for you, but don’t expect one and don’t feel entitle to one.
Grants are meant for projects that has maximum benefit for ecosystem. If project cant sustain itself after grant money ends, than no point giving grant. Grant money is not for making living, i think there people get confused.
If i would be person in charge of grants, i look if project has future, what happens after grant money theoretically ends, if there will be users for it, how sustainable it will be. Grants are meant for insiders anyways
Whoa hold up there, it was ICP community that shrank. Lorimer web 3 gaming was heavily pushed pushed by dfinity since just after launch , by the time games started being developed and first realises out the narative had changed as had many of the staff who were initially supportive, allmost all the support was removed in favour of other goals. In that time the whole ICP ecosystem shrank, NFT apps stopped working properly, wallets were broken, no one really got a chance to see if their games where “good enough”
I don’t subscribe to this type of reasoning. I have plans to work on a Web3 game soon, once I’ve finished the numerous other projects I’m working on in my spare time (for fun, pro-bono). I have no intention of seeking handout funds to develop on the IC. Most open source software is developed without funding. That hasn’t stopped the open source movement becoming absolutely huge.
It’s not reasoning its the facts of what actually happened.
You just presented a straw man in return. Where were handouts mentioned?
I do all my own promo for my own projects.
But when you are encouraged to build something on a certain platform and support is taken away and the platform stop working properly do you think that helps or hinders a projects chances of success?
I think Lorimer doesn’t know about the NFT ecosystem and what happened before 2023, so there is a lot of context missing here.
Jon I have received Motoko NFTs airdrop back then in 2021, my experience so far in navigating ICP’s DFINITY supported NFT marketplace by Toniq and ICPMN, has been horrible. Many collections have vanished indicating abandoning the projects and maintenance of smart contracts. Seems like they have pivoted to building even more centralized protocols like Bioniq or Odin, with help and grants from Foundation.
was a very low quality platform to begin with to be honest
We signed up to get Caffeine access code, but so far no one posted anything about built stuff. So we can assume it opens for alpha testers after Jul 15? Lets say after testers done some playing with app, it opens up for public on 15 Aug?
This app can’t come fast enough. Seriously just wanting them to release it for everyone but if even the alpha testers haven’t accessed it yet, I’m really tempted to use something else like ICP Studio but they’re holding releases as well.
All this hype and the competition is sailing by on Web2 platforms like Firebase, Loveable, Replit, etc. I even started using Gemini just to pass the time. Hurry up omg.
Launching is 1 thing, but gaining traction is other.
Before launch, everything has to be ready for maximum effect. Subnets up and running, paid marketing ready to go (min 5 youtuber + 5 bloggers), referral system has to be ready (ref links, person deploys canister, influencer receives 0.10 ICP?), every day random wallets get airdrops of ICP/BTC (similar like Oisy gave Sprinkles airdrops, rules set by Dfinity). Amount that Dfinity should airdrop could be like 1 mil ICP within 3-6 months.
If Dfinity messes up Caffeine launch, than we will fall into “Dark Ages” where we might never feel sun on our skin ever again.
Caffeine: Just a few days to go until you can experience in SF!
People seems to be not happy, countdown ended and now even on launch day people cant get in.
Anyone remember when was first announcement Launching Soon from Dominic? 7 months ago?
One more interesting thing, Caffeine so called launch, before it, BTC pumped. It feels like it will dump before/during Caffeine day, sabotage? Or Trump playing with market again, first pumped BTC up, set up short positions, on Monday they nuke market with Russia news?
I think we need some clarity on what is actually going to happen on 15th and if Caffeine is being launched or not. We risk a dump if BTC happens to dive around that time and peoples Caffeine expectations are not met
Expect the alpha testing to open most likely. The fact that I have not received an alpha invite code and I was one of the very first to apply on WCS25 on June 3rd after DOM announced it means that it is not even released into alpha yet. Therefore, it will not release to the public until after alpha testing phase most likely which means another month or two at least so Caffeine Beta public launch, my guess, will not be until August or September at the very end of Q3. My educated guess because the last livestream with Kyle Langham and others, they would not announce any release date at all and looked nervous to me. It was what was not said which was the real message. Realistically AI models take a very long time to train and DFINITY just doesn’t have a large enough staff esp. in the AI division to have this ready sooner. It’s obvious. But still July 15th should be a great event and if the alpha codes start getting rolled out at least some hype will build before the actual public release since many will get to help alpha test it along with whoever is doing the hard work already.
I think Caffeine — the self-writing internet concept — is a huge step forward for the Internet Computer
Excited to see how it matures and what builders do with it
Can’t wait to get my hands on it
I don’t think so. I just think that DOM gets excited about the tech because he loves it and it is very easy to make incorrect estimates regarding release dates when it comes to software. This happens all the time. Microsoft products esp. the OS, GTA VI, and many other projects. This is not uncommon whatsoever. If DFINITY wanted to just screw investors over, they would have ceased to continue development on the blockchain all together and have just cashed out everything and disappeared. This is A LOT OF WORK. A labor of love. Absolutely ridiculous statement to say that DFINITY is using investors as exit liquidity when they are extremely frugal and have barely spent much of their allocation and what they spend on is mostly on development and the tech itself to keep iterating and improving on the vision and the chain!
Caffeine is a big step forward. I would not minimize it nor everything else that DFINITY has invested hard work into like VetKeys and Utopia among other things.
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