# BOLT.FUN 2022 Grant Proposal
We are applying for a $100,000 grant to support our team in the phase #1 development of BOLT🔩FUN’s community and educational platform, growth, and quarterly #ShocktheWeb⚡️ virtual hackathons over the next year. The theme of this proposal is community building and education.

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Mass adoption of bitcoin requires use cases that will come from people with distinct skill sets, perspectives, and team formations. There is also a need for more builders with practical skills with bitcoin in the job market.

BOLT.FUN is a community space for makers to learn about, and experiment with both bitcoin and lightning. Our mission is to support the evolution of bitcoin as the internet’s native currency by fostering an ecosystem with tools, events, and resources that decrease the time it takes for makers to create lightning-enabled web applications. An artifact of focusing on the developer experience is that we make bitcoin development attractive to the next generation of makers curious about coming into the ecosystem.

## Components
- **Community:** For some key phases bolt.fun is already reaching the top of search results (try searching for keysend, or lnurl). There is a lack of tutorials for creating bitcoin applications that cannot be filled by a couple of writers. We want to encourage more original user-generated content that would supplement our hackathons and the wider ecosystem. More specifically, we’re building our community platform using Stories, Bounties, Discussions, and a Hackathon Directory.
- **Product Directory:** Small amounts of money go a long way in bitcoin, but the progress of the projects and growth of the maker is quite opaque. Our directory not only serves as a place to discover lightning applications but also supports the individual or team maker by providing updates in the form of standup reporting.
- **Maker Profiles:** During our first #ShocktheWeb⚡️ hackathon, we observed the difficulty for participants to form teams with one another as they had no context of each other's knowledge base, or what types of problems they are interested in working on. With profiles, makers can show their activity, products + teams, skills, badges, stories, and work availability.
- **Resources:** Providing design, development, and educational resources for makers to build lightning-enabled products. Features include Courses, Guides, UI Kits, + more.
- **Hackathons:** A cornerstone for engagement and education is our quarterly virtual #ShockTheWeb⚡️ hackathons, allowing makers to form teams and get hands-on experience building lightning web applications, with a chance to win bitcoin prizes.

## Milestones
#### **Phase 1: Creating a community base**
| Item | Cost |
| -------- | -------- |
| Spark interest through events + prizes (physical and virtual) | $30,000 |
| Spark interest through content creation | $30,000 |
| Build the foundation for our community into a web platform | $26,000 |
| Research of design patterns and architecture of next-gen bitcoin and lightning applications | $8,000 |
| Publishing research and contributing to the writing of specifications | $6,000 |

<details>
<summary><strong>Phase 2: Growing the community and encouraging continued development of projects</strong></summary>
<ol>
<li>Partner with organisations, and open source projects to create course content and learning incentives</li>
<li>Incentivise makers to continuously develop their skills and projects through regular tournaments, gamification, discussions, and prizes</li>
<li>Systemise, and automate processes around hackathons by creating a playbook for others to host #ShockTheWeb events so it can be “franchised”</li>
<li>Create ambassador programs for local events and outreach</li>
<li>Fund and develop libraries that help makers quickly integrate more advanced bitcoin and lightning functionalities into their products</li>
</details>

## What can you expect?
- Monthly updates as we develop the platform and grow the community
- Reports on the outcomes of the hackathons
- Published findings of novel use cases that arise from our research or community projects
- Shoutouts and lots of love ❤️ on the content platform and events