As SCF round 4 winners collect their prizes and go on to make their entries even more wonderful and profitable we begin round 5. There are a few new and adjusted rules I’d like to highlight before releasing your creative and entrepreneurial spirits into the wild.

First in the “Submission Template” section be sure and leave the “before colon:” stuff and only replace the content to the right of the colon. We use the "prefix titles:" as regex triggers for the voting site.

Next, three “Participant Eligibility” updates:

You may only win SCF a maximum of once per year (block of 4 rounds). While you can resubmit ‘losing’ proposals, individuals who submit new proposals after winning 1 SCF challenge within the current year will be disqualified from consideration for the award.
‘Losing’ proposals may only re-enter twice per year, pending there are improvements to the entry.
The SCF is a fund for work completed or proven not for a promise of future work. For applications and content there must be significant work and effort put into proving the viability and commitment to your project and for events you should have a history demonstrating your ability and qualification to carry out your intentions.

Rules 1 and 2 are pretty significant changes so those new rules will go into effect now but will not be enforced until round 6.

That’s it for updates! On to the rest of the details!

Round Schedule

May 25th – Submissions open
June 22nd – Submissions close, Discussion opens
July 20th – Nominations open
July 27th – Nominations close, 1 week pause
Aug 3rd – Final vote begins
Aug 10th – Final vote finishes, round ends, 1 week pause

The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) gives the broader Stellar community the opportunity to vote on which long term projects they believe deserve SDF seed funding. 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 covering 13 weeks.

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 phase lasts 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

Image: 1200x630 image preview of your project or brand
Title: The name of your project. (Please adhere to the Stellar brand policy)
Summary: A simple sentence summarizing the why 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
Description: The description should answer questions like “what does your project enable users to do?” “Why is your project valuable for Stellar?” and “How 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, event, etc.”  

Voting

Voting will take place in two rounds. A nomination round and an award round.
Voting takes place on 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.  
You may only win SCF a maximum of once per year (block of 4 rounds). While you can resubmit ‘losing’ proposals, individuals who submit new proposals after winning 1 SCF challenge within the current year will be disqualified from consideration for the award.  

Winning entries will not be eligible for future rounds.

‘Losing’ proposals may re-enter twice per year, pending there are improvements to the entry. 
Current Ecosystem Infrastructure Grant recipients are not eligible to participate in SCF.

The SCF is a fund for work completed or proven not for a promise of future work. For applications and content there must be significant work and effort put into proving the viability and commitment to your project and for events you should have a history demonstrating your ability and qualification to carry out your intentions.  

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 strangers, or attempt to "game" the system in any way. People should vote for entries 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

keybase.io/team/stellar.communityfund