This post describes a grants programme that has not started. That is unusual for a grants post, and it is deliberate: the programme's own document carries a correction at the top saying that its RPC, explorer and faucet URLs all pointed at a domain that was never registered, and that the programme cannot be announced until what it promises exists. Here is what it promises.
Objective
Bring ten pilot projects onto the EmpoorioChain testnet before the mainnet gate, to validate that the native stack — pallets, SDK, explorer, faucet — supports real use under controlled conditions, and to build the on-chain activity history that progressive decentralization requires.
Categories and quotas
| Category | Slots | Priority pallets |
|---|---|---|
| DeFi | 3 | DEX, lending, MEV protection, intents, state rent |
| NFT / gaming | 2 | NFT suite, gaming, blob storage, zkML |
| AI / Ailoos | 2 | Ailoos engine and rewards, zkML, blob storage |
| Infrastructure / tooling | 2 | SDK, RPC, indexer, account abstraction |
| Identity / privacy | 1 | Identity, compliance, PQC, commit-reveal |
What a grant provides
Not money. Testnet DMS with no economic value; an elevated faucet limit; a private support channel with the core team (reply within 24 h on working days); a slot in the explorer's playground; public mention; and early feedback on pallet and SDK integrations. Testnet DMS resets on major runtime upgrades with 72 hours' notice.
Selection
Use of native pallets, not only EVM (30 %); technical feasibility and clarity (25 %); alignment with the categories (20 %); demonstrable team experience (15 %); traction potential (10 %). A committee of at least three core members; ties broken by the protocol lead. Proposals are pull requests to docs/grants/proposals/ in the chain repository, from a published template, plus an issue titled [GRANT] Project — Category.
KPIs a grantee commits to
- ≥ 100 transactions on the testnet, verifiable in the explorer
- Open-source code
- A ≥ 5-minute functional demo
- A README with reproducible deployment
- At least one native pallet used, not only EVM
No financial penalty for missing them — there are no funds — but no listing or public mention either.
Why it has not opened
The prerequisites, from the document's own correction block:
- A public faucet. None is deployed.
- A stable public explorer. EmpooScan is live at
empooscan.comas a site; its indexer has run without a database, which is the decision blocking a reliable transaction view. - dApp templates (
testnet-dapp-react,testnet-ts-scripts,testnet-rust-backend) verified against the current runtime.
Until those three are true, announcing the programme would be inviting people to a network they cannot get test funds for or see their transactions on. The table of selected projects in the document has ten empty rows, and they stay empty honestly.
Based on TESTNET_GRANTS_PROGRAM.md (correction dated 2026-09-05) and RED.json.