Chainlink (LINK) introduced a new community grant program focused on making smart contracts “the dominant form of digital agreement”.

Chainlink’s positive feedback loops

Chainlink’s positive feedback loops. Source: Chainlink.

Dominating digital agreements

The grants will be awarded to projects that are “accelerating two positive feedback loops.” Such loops include the increased availability of on-chain data and increased security guarantees for users. The eventual goal is to make smart contracts a dominant form of digital agreements. Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov elaborated on these points in a statement to Cointelegraph:

“We are accelerating the adoption of smart contracts as the dominant form of digital agreement, by enabling them to be used for the many mainstream use cases defined by DeFi, decentralized Insurance and fraud-proof gaming. The goal of the Chainlink Community Grant Program is to accelerate all the key dynamics relating to data, security and accessibility around Chainlink”.

Grant allocation is not disclosed

The categories that Chainlink has identified as key for the potential applications all revolve around the aforementioned themes of more data, more connectivity, and greater security.

The grants will be paid out in cash and/or LINK tokens. However, Chainlink has not disclosed the total amount allocated for the grant program, nor individual payout amounts. Nazarov said they are actively reviewing applications and welcome new ones:

“We are actively reviewing applications and do welcome both high quality development teams and talented technical individuals to contribute to this acceleration of smart contract through a grant.”

While Chainlink’s native LINK token has recently set new all-time highs, its success seems to be attracting more competition. One example is the Decentralised Information Asset (DIA), which seeks to use crowd-sourced data to improve accuracy.