What funding options are left in the Internet Computer ecosystem? I’m asking this out of genuine curiosity.
DFINITY’s developer grants appear to still be paused, and I haven’t seen much VC activity around new ICP-native startups recently. For founders building products on ICP today, what are the realistic funding paths?
Angel investors?
ICP-focused VCs?
Community funds or DAOs?
Revenue-first/self-funded?
Strategic partnerships?
I’d love to hear from founders who have actually raised capital in the past year.
Who is actively funding innovation in the ecosystem today?
I’d support a Kickstarter-esque platform, where stakers (and potentially node providers) can simply donate towards/fund projects they like. It would be more natural, as funds generated from inflationary-minting would go to projects that the community would get involved in if/when successful
As opposed to dfinity taking sole responsibility for what does and doesn’t get funding, resulting in people getting upset regardless of the decisions
I tend to agree. The SNS doesn’t seem like an ideal fit for early-stage funding, and it doesn’t replace grants or venture capital. I’m genuinely curious what funding path founders are expected to take today.
There actually was one early on called Funded. It eventually took over Plug Wallet after Psychedelic left the ecosystem, but it never gained enough traction to survive.
I don’t think it’s DFINITY’s responsibility to choose which startups succeed. But I do think it’s in DFINITY’s interest to foster strong relationships with investors, VCs, and strategic partners so founders have realistic paths to raising capital. A healthy builder ecosystem ultimately benefits the entire network.
I’ve asked numerous times what funding options are actually available in the ecosystem, and the response is usually silence. I’ve also spoken with founders who are actively trying to raise, and many seem to be asking the same questions.
I get asked all the time what funding options exist for builders today, and I’m at the point where I genuinely don’t know how to answer anymore. That’s why I started this discussion. I’m hoping there are funding avenues I’m simply unaware of.
Unfortunately the answer is there are none. Also the revers gas model is no longer attractive, nobody wants to burn cycles just for fun. It has gotten to a point where when we tell ppl that you can host front and backend and complex dapps but you have to pay for it every time someone uses it, they start questioning if it is worth it again just for fun. We managed to transition into a ghost chain that offers cloud hosting and Ai tools to build and host any app you want, but without users there is little to no incentive to do that.
I agree with you, Zack. One reason we moved The Swop toward microtransactions was to create an additional revenue stream for projects building on the protocol.
My concern isn’t just for my own project. It’s for every founder evaluating where to build their company. Technology is only one part of that decision. Founders also consider whether they can raise capital, hire a team, and sustain development.
If funding options continue to be scarce, it’s reasonable to expect more teams to build where those opportunities exist. That isn’t a criticism of ICP’s technology. It’s a reality of building a startup.
Let your users mine ICP for you: https://forum.dfinity.org/t/public-goods-mining-alpha-miner-icdevs-org/71583 We’re using this application to try to get users who want to hold ICP to donate maturity to ICDevs…then we can fund. So far…one taker. We haven’t promoted it much, but in the future we’re hoping it will be a big part of our fundraising and that we can redirect those funds to projects that are committed to building open source utilities.
Man havent you seen founders leaving #icp. Those of us who are still here is because our passion and love for the project and because we have no where else to go. ICP is home so we have to make it great again by investing in our time, skills and resources By bootstrapping. I think doxa has reached a stage of doing a successful sns. We are not even looking for funds from sns we just want to decentralise our project and to create more value we dont want to be like the early sns project that dissapointed almost everyone