Aptos Foundation Grant Program

We welcome a diverse range of applicants: individuals, small teams, enterprises, academic and research groups, and non-profit research organizations.

The following individuals and projects, however, are ineligible for grants due to our governing policies: “restricted persons” as defined by our Terms of Use as well as projects that actively encourage gambling, illicit trade, money laundering, pornography, or illegal activity. Also, note that US entities and citizens are not eligible for certain token-based grants, but are eligible for non-token based funding.

We typically encourage you to finish your current grant project before applying for another.

However, the “Gas Station” and “Security Audit Credits” programs are the exception to this. Eligible projects can apply to both if they meet the specific criteria for each. This allows projects to maximize their support and benefits from the Aptos accelerator program.

Your application will be reviewed within 4 weeks. During application review, we may set up a meeting to learn more about your project.

If your application is approved, an identity verification process will follow. After completing this verification process, you should receive a grant agreement within a week via DocuSign.

You will receive an email from our identity verification vendor within 48 hours after you’ve gotten your acceptance email. The identity verification link expires within 24 hours. If you are a previous grant recipient, an additional identity verification form will need to be completed.

After passing the identity verification process, you should receive your grant agreement within 7-14 days via DocuSign.

If tokens make up part of your grant, they may be subject to a “lock-up” period during which they cannot be sold or transferred for 12 months from the time they vest. The lock-up period for each portion of tokens will start independently when they vest at specific milestones.

If it is not feasible for your project to be fully open-source, we still expect grantees to work towards open-source over time as their projects mature. However, our grants team may ask you to open-source the back-end code and functions related to Aptos, including smart contracts, as it pertains to your Aptos Foundation grant. This ensures that the core functionalities funded by the grant remain transparent and accessible to the Aptos community, fostering a collaborative and trustworthy development environment.

Milestones mark completion of major developments in your project's roadmap as it pertains to the scope of your grant. When drafting milestones, we take into consideration the milestones you proposed during application alongside the grant amount. Your final milestones are laid out in your signed grant agreement.