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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, we are BAAAAAAACK!!! Stellar Community Fund season 2 round 1. It’s a brand new year and we are finally ready to kick the SCF back into high gear. The first thing you’ll notice is this pretty new face. 
Hi! 
You may actually have seen me on the other side of the SCF last year but I’ve since been acquired by the SDF and will now be taking over the SCF from Zac to allow him to focus on the bigger picture marketing and communications work he loves so much.
From here on out Kolten and I will be your touch points for the SCF. There’s a whole new slew of guidelines and structural improvements and we plan to place a much larger focus on this fund as time goes on. From the SBC to the SCF, Stellar’s developer and community funds have been instrumental in my life and I’m here to see this thing grow and thrive into the vision I’ve had for it for years. I’m so excited to finally get this ball rolling again and I can’t wait to see what you build!
Round schedule:
Feb 24th – Submissions open
March 23rd – Submissions close, Discussion opens
April 20th – Nominations open
May 4th – Nominations close, 1 week pause
May 11th – Final vote begins
May 18th – Final vote closes, round ends, 1 week pause
The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) gives the broader Stellar community the opportunity to vote on which projects they believe deserve XLM awards. Any project built on Stellar can apply and participate!
Every 3 months, 8 participants have the chance to split a pool of 3 Million Lumens.
Timeline
Each SCF round consists of 4 phases.
The submission phase:
During this phase, participants submit their proposals to GalacticTalk.org. Late submissions will not be eligible for the current round. The submission phase lasts 4 weeks.
The discussion phase:
The discussion phase is the participation and learning phase. Discussion and community participation is highly encouraged. It is fundamentally the most important part of the Stellar Community Fund. Not only does it give participants valuable feedback, it allows them to position themselves as advocates for their proposal and overall growth of the ecosystem.
This round is strictly dedicated to the sharing and discussion of project proposals within the community. Community members should take this time to ask participants questions about their proposals, submit suggestions, and engage with any active elements.
The discussion phase lasts 4 weeks.
The nomination phase:
This is the first round of voting. Stellar community members will vote for their favorite project proposals. Each voter must select 3 entries but can vote on up to 8 different entries. The top 8 nominees move to the final vote phase.
Nomination takes place over 2 weeks. There will be a one week pause after the nomination phase before the final vote begins.
The final vote:
In this phase, the top 8 proposals enter a final vote which guides the lumen distribution. Voters choose their 3 favorite proposals from the top 8.
Lumens are distributed based on the final percentage of the votes. For example, if a winning project receives 20% of the vote, they will receive 20% of the awarded lumens (600,000XLM of the 3M XLM pool).
The final vote will last 1 week and there will be a one week gap before each new round begins.
Proposal Submission
All proposals should be submitted as a new thread to GalacticTalk.org under the SCF | proposals category. Proposals should be classified by category. Are you building an application, writing a resource, or planning an event? Choose appropriately. Below are category descriptions.
Applications, Tools, Infrastructure:
This is the ‘developer’ category. If your project is built on Stellar—or is a tool that supports developing on Stellar—your proposal belongs here. All submissions to this category must have a functional / live element. For example: if you are creating a library, you must have reviewable code; if you are building an application, people must be able to demo it.
Resources & Content:
This is the category for people who want to flex their creative muscles. Do you have a great series of tutorials, a podcast, or website that can help educate people about Stellar? If so, your proposal fits within this category.
This category requires drafts or rough cuts of your proposed content. People must be able to read and review your submitted samples.
Events & Programs:
This is the category for broader Stellar outreach. Are you planning on hosting a workshop or community-driven program? If so, this is the category for you. This category requires that you share a plan for execution. Depending on the scope of this effort you will need to provide items such as proposed venues, curriculum, timelines, guests, costs, etc.
Submission Template
Please copy this template below and replace the text after the colons with your content. This is critically important as it allows us to regex off the template to display prettier and more detailed project previews on the voting site and in promotional material. Break this template and we may disqualify your proposal.
Image header: 1200x630 image preview of your project or project brand (keep margins in mind).
Project title: The name of your project. Please adhere to the Stellar brand policy.
Summary: A simple sentence summary of your project.
Category: Choose one the three categories (Applications, tools, infrastructure | Resources & Content | Events & Programs)
Goals: What your project plans to accomplish broken down by objectives.
Timeline: How and when you will accomplish your goals.
Description: The description should answer questions like “what does your project enable users to do?” “Why is your project valuable for Stellar?” and “Wow does your project use Stellar?” It should also cover what platforms the project supports (ex; Windows, Chrome, etc.) and relevant documentation. This section should be very detailed.
Links: Links to your application, code repository, supporting materials, and/or home site. If you are submitting a proposal for content pieces (like walkthroughs), please provide links to the content pieces.
Tags: Tag your project. Examples can be “sdk, javascript, party, game, book”
Voting
Voting will take place in two rounds. A nomination round and award round.
Voting takes place on https://stellarcommunity.fund
Submission Eligibility
Applicable law and our internal policies restrict us from providing lumen awards for certain categories of projects. If your project is in one of our prohibited categories, it will not be eligible for an award. If you are unsure whether your project falls inside these one or more of these categories, please contact us and verify!
Regardless of the community’s voting outcome, a submission will be ineligible to receive an award if it:
- violates any applicable laws, regulations, orders, judgments, decrees, guidance, or other legal authority;
- involves, facilitates, supports, or promotes unlawful activities, including, but not limited to: fraud, drug trafficking, purchases on dark web markets, theft, illegal arms trafficking, human trafficking, abduction, extortion, embezzlement, corruption of public officials, acts of terrorism or terrorist financing, and intellectual property violations;
- involves, facilitates, or promotes gambling;
- is offensive, deceptive, harmful, or libelous;
- is or contains sexually obscene content;
- is discriminatory or abusive toward any individual or group;
- contains, transmit, or instills malware or phishing pages or devices; or
- infringes or violates any proprietary right of any party, including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of privacy, right of publicity, or other rights.
Participant Eligibility
SDF intends to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the distribution of lumen awards. All winners will be required to submit KYC documentation and fill out an applicable tax form. Failure to submit appropriate documentation or failure to pass our KYC checks will result in your rewards being forfeit. These tax forms will be used for accounting and tax reporting purposes so please be aware of your country’s applicable laws regarding tax-filing. Lumens will be reported at closing price on the day they are sent to you.
You must be at 18 years of age to participate in SCF, unless your country's minimum age for receiving a cryptocurrency award is older, in which case you must meet the minimum age applicable in your jurisdiction.
Winning entries will not be eligible for future rounds.
You may only win SCF a maximum of twice per year (block of 4 rounds). While you can resubmit ‘losing’ proposals, individuals who submit new proposals after winning 2 SCF challenges within the current year will be disqualified from consideration for the award.
Current Ecosystem Infrastructure Grant recipients are not eligible to participate in SCF.
Participants who create fake accounts to bypass the above rules will be disqualified. This is regardless of whether or not they win a round. Participants who leverage sockpuppet accounts to submit proposals, friends to submit proposals, or any similar ‘act of bad faith’ will be disqualified. SDF has the right to withhold awards from people who have abused these eligibility requirements.
Unfortunately, if you’re a national or resident of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, or the region of Crimea, we are unable to send you any lumens. Additionally, we may also be unable to send lumens to winners in countries where local law makes it unlawful for residents to hold or receive cryptocurrencies. Please note, we currently cannot send lumens to residents of the US states of Alabama, New York, Georgia, Connecticut, New Mexico, Hawaii, Vermont, and Washington.
All participants will retain the intellectual property associated with their submission.
Engaging in vote manipulation will cause your proposal to be disqualified. This includes botspam, fake/sock puppet accounts, and brigading.
Manipulation and Disqualification
What we're looking for is organic, genuine interest and discussion around your project. Foster and encourage that. Be kind and supportive to your fellow competitors. Don’t ask for votes. Instead, ask others to simply take a look for themselves.
Feel free to share a direct link to your GalacticTalk post with your friends or users, but don’t mass-message people, or attempt to "game" the system in any way. People should upvote things they genuinely like or find interesting, not because they were peer pressured or incentivized to do so.
While this is a community fund, the SDF retains the right to disqualify entries and timeout participants without warning or explanation in order to maintain a fair and profitable experience for everyone. If we find you’re acting in bad faith, we may bar you from participating in future rounds as well.
If you suspect foul play and would like SDF to investigate, or if you have suggestions for future rounds of the community fund, please fill out this form. Do not use the SCF Keybase team to critique the program or call out participants.
Stellar Community Fund Keybase Team:
https://keybase.io/team/stellar.communityfund
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