Introducing the Grants Oversight Council

Today, the Eigen Foundation introduces the Grants Oversight Council, the governing body responsible for verifying Transparency Reports containing the Foundation Grant Team’s retrospective on the season’s Community Initiative grant allocations. This marks the launch of the second council in EigenGov’s network, following the Protocol Council’s launch in December.

Community Initiatives Grants

Community Initiatives represents 15% of the total initial EIGEN supply, which was allocated at launch to users, developers, and community contributors through initiatives such as incentive programs and grants. The introduction of the Grants Oversight Council ensures that the Eigen Foundation and its Grants Team continue to exercise responsible stewardship of Community Initiatives.

→ Learn more about our Community Initiatives

Grants Oversight Council

Successful grant programs empower high-context teams who can address a project’s evolving growth needs, enabling them to execute effective grants while encouraging accountability through a clear checkpoint mechanism.

Unlike traditional Grants Councils, where the council typically makes individual grant decisions, at EigenGov, the Foundation’s Grants Team allocates Community Initiative Grants. The Grants Oversight Council then reviews and verifies the Grants Team’s Transparency Report, which contains details on individual grant awards.

Introducing Transparency Reports

Transparency Reports serve as the primary accountability mechanism for the Grants Oversight Council to ensure that the Grants Team distributes Community Initiative Grants responsibly. Transparency Reports contain the Grants Team’s retrospective on the season’s grant allocations, which the Grants Oversight Council verifies.

Community Initiatives Grant Process

The Grants Team will allocate grants in seasons, each six months long. The full grant process for Season 1 is as follows:

The season kicks off with the Foundation introducing the vision for Community Initiative grants over the course of the season, which includes top-level directional goals (Initiatives) and spending cap (Budget). After the Grants Team outlines their plans to deploy a portion of the Initiative Budget, they then execute and distribute the Budget at their discretion. At the end of a season, the Grants Team submits a complete version of the Transparency Report to the Grants Oversight Council (Council). The Council reviews the full Transparency Report for its accuracy, completeness, alignment with Initiatives and Budgets, and consistency with the Foundation’s objectives. Once verified, the Council will publish the public, redacted version of the Transparency Report. After the Grants Oversight Council’s review, EigenGov will conduct a season reflection to assess and improve the process for the next season.

More details on the Community Initiatives grant process is outlined in the governance docs.

Council Members

For its inaugural season, the Grants Oversight Council is composed of three independent external members sourced from the broader EigenLayer community, although its membership may be expanded over time. The initial cohort of external members is:

Bernard Schmid

Bernard Schmid is the co-founder of Areta, a leading digital assets investment banking firm. Areta focuses on M&A, capital markets, and onchain activities, and has facilitated over $200 million in transaction volume. Within its onchain team, Areta has designed and led several capital allocation and grant programs for leading DeFi ecosystems such as Uniswap and Safe.

Brittany Laughlin

Brittany Laughlin led Stacks Foundation as Executive Director ('20-'24) and Board Chairman ('24-today), transforming it into a top 30 blockchain project with $10M in grants and 250,000+ community members. She launched Stacks Governance, Community Working Groups, and the Grants Program. Focused on crypto and community, she's the host of Chainmakers Podcast, taught DeFi at Cornell Law School, and invested in top Crypto companies like Coinbase, IPFS, and Stronghold as an investor at USV and Lattice Ventures.

Yuan Han Li, Blockchain Capital

Yuan Han Li is a Partner at Blockchain Capital, where he has been a key contributor to the firm’s investment and thesis development efforts since joining in 2021. He works closely with the firm’s portfolio companies and DAOs across the crypto ecosystem.

Blockchain Capital, founded in 2013 as the first venture fund dedicated entirely to blockchain technology, provides entrepreneurs with the capital, domain expertise, and strategic support needed to build world-class companies. The firm has been involved in the EigenLayer ecosystem since 2022 and led the Series A financing for Eigen Labs.

More details on the Grants Oversight Council can be found in its charter. Under this first charter, appointments to this Council confer a one-year term unless modified by the Board. Council membership may rotate based on expertise needed for various strategies.

Kicking off Season 1

Today marks the kick-off of the inaugural season, which will run for six months. The first Community Initiatives can be found in the announcement, and a grant portal for teams interested in applying for grants will be live in the upcoming weeks. For more information on the first season, keep updated on forum.eigenlayer.xyz.