Today, the Eigen Foundation announced the launch of Community Initiatives Grants, which represents 15% of the total initial EIGEN supply that has been earmarked for users, developers, and community contributors through initiatives such as incentive programs and grants. Additionally, this announcement follows the introduction of the Grants Oversight Council, the governing body responsible for verifying Transparency Reports containing the Grant Team’s retrospective on the season’s Community Initiative grant allocations.
Grants Oversight Council
The Eigen Foundation Grants Team, who are aligned with high context to Eigenlayer’s growth needs, execute individual grant awards and are balanced with a clear checkpoint mechanism (a transparency report) overseen by an independent Grants Oversight Council.
Unlike traditional Grant Councils, where the council makes individual grant decisions, the Grants Oversight Council reviews and verifies a Grant Team’s grant awards (via a transparency report) to ensure the responsible allocation of EIGEN dedicated to community initiatives.
Introducing Transparency Reports
Transparency Reports are the primary accountability mechanism for the Grants Oversight Council to ensure the Grant Team is responsibly distributing grants. Transparency reports contain a Grant Team’s retrospective on the season’s grant allocations, which are verified by the Grants Oversight Council.
Each report will have two versions of the same proposal:
(i) A public version for tokenholders/community posted on the forum, which provides enough overview for context and progress and (ii) a private version sent to the Grants Oversight Council which includes more detailed information about specific grant awards. An outline of the content is found in the EigenLayer Grants Oversight Council GitHub repository.
Details of active grant awards are redacted from the public report, but available to the Grants Oversight Council in order to balance accountability with confidentiality around the grant structure. This enables the Grants Team the flexibility to allocate capital efficiently and competitively to the best grantees, while balancing transparency around Community Initiatives.
Community Initiatives Grants Process
The grants 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, 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. If verified, they will publish the public, redacted version of the Transparency Report. At the conclusion of 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 can be found in the governance docs.
Introducing Season 1
The introduction of the Grants Oversight Council is the first step in ensuring the Foundation’s responsible stewardship of Community Initiative grants. The inaugural season kicks off today and runs for six months, until October 29, 2025.
Structure
The Grants Oversight Council is composed of three independent and external members sourced from the greater EigenLayer community; although it may be expanded over time. The initial cohort of members are:
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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.
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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.
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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. This Council membership may rotate based on expertise needed for strategies.
Implementation
The Grants Oversight Council will be allocated an on-chain Hat, to signify their role and authority as a Council member. The Grants Oversight Council does not execute any on-chain actions or custody funds, but council members will publicly communicate council reviews, decisions, and any potential conflicts of interest on forum.eigenlayer.xyz. More details on council operations can be found in the governance docs.
Looking Ahead
The first set of 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. The Foundation Grants Team will be the sole party awarding Community Initiative Grants.
As the Eigen Foundation responsibly stewards Eigenlayer’s Community Initiative Grants, the Grants Oversight Council will serve as a key governance body, ensuring the grants initiatives are aligned with the best interest of the community stakeholders and toward Eigenlayer’s strategies.