Stellar Community Fund (SCF): How Stellar Grants Work

What is the Stellar Community Fund?

The Stellar Community Fund is a grant program run by the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) to fund people building on Stellar and its Soroban smart-contract platform. It distributes awards in XLM through open, funded submission rounds, and it leans on community input and voting — not just an internal committee — to help decide which projects get supported.

Think of SCF as the ecosystem's on-ramp for capital. If you have an idea for an app, a piece of infrastructure, or a DeFi protocol on Stellar, SCF is the most direct way to get funded to build it. The Foundation seeds the fund, but the review process draws heavily on the community: verified members read submissions, ask questions, and vote, so allocation reflects what the ecosystem actually wants to see built.

That community angle is what distinguishes SCF from a traditional top-down grant. Over its history the program has funneled tens of millions of XLM to hundreds of submissions and supported hundreds of early-stage teams through its bootcamp-style programs. The exact structure has evolved across successive versions of SCF, but the core idea has stayed constant: fund useful work on Stellar, and let the community help steer where the money goes.

How SCF funding works

SCF runs on a rhythm of submission rounds. Builders signal interest, eligible projects are invited into an open round, the community discusses and votes on submissions, and awards are paid out in XLM — often across milestones for larger grants. The process is deliberately transparent so the ecosystem can see what's being funded and why.

Submission rounds

SCF operates in rounds rather than accepting continuous ad-hoc grants. You first submit an interest form describing what you're building; those inquiries are reviewed on a rolling basis. If your project meets the requirements, you're invited to submit to an open round and given that round's deadline. Rounds give every applicant the same window and the same audience, which keeps the process fair and legible.

Community review & voting

Once a round is live, verified community members engage with submissions — reading the proposal, asking questions, and ultimately voting. Stellar has experimented with structured governance for this, including a neural-quorum-style voting model designed to weight community input thoughtfully rather than as a raw popularity contest. The vote isn't the only input, but it's a genuine signal that shapes final funding decisions. Referrals from trusted ecosystem actors — alumni, ambassadors, accelerators — can also strengthen a submission's trust profile.

Award tracks

SCF isn't one monolithic grant; it's a set of tracks aimed at different stages. Earlier-stage programs — such as the Kickstart bootcamp — help teams turn an idea into a working proof of concept, while the main Build track funds validated projects pushing toward a mainnet launch. There are also lighter-weight micro-funding routes for very early, focused work. Choosing the right track for your stage is half the battle.

Payout in XLM

Awards are denominated and paid in XLM. Because the fund thinks in dollar terms but pays in lumens, the USD value is referenced against a market settlement price at the time of payment. For larger Build awards, funds are typically released across milestones or tranches rather than all upfront — you deliver a chunk of work, hit the milestone, and unlock the next portion. That structure keeps incentives aligned on shipping.

What SCF funds

SCF funds a broad range of work on Stellar and Soroban: core infrastructure, consumer and business applications, developer tooling and SDKs, and DeFi protocols. The common thread is that the project adds durable value to the ecosystem — something other builders or users can rely on — rather than a one-off marketing play or a token launch.

In practice, submissions tend to fall into a few buckets. Knowing which one you're in helps you frame the proposal against the right expectations:

• Infrastructure — nodes, indexers, bridges, oracles, and the plumbing that other apps depend on. High-leverage, because one good piece of infra unlocks many downstream projects.
• Applications — wallets, payment apps, remittance tools, and consumer products that bring real users onto Stellar.
• Developer tooling — SDKs, libraries, testing frameworks, and documentation that lower the barrier to building on Soroban smart contracts.
• DeFi on Soroban — AMMs, lending markets, yield protocols, and the composable money-legos that make an on-chain economy work. This is where much of the recent ecosystem energy has gone.

What SCF generally isn't for: pure token sales, speculative launches with no product, or projects that could just as easily live on another chain with no Stellar-specific benefit. The strongest submissions make a clear case for why Stellar — cheap fees, fast settlement, native assets, and a built-in DEX are all reasons a project belongs here.

How to apply to SCF

Applying to SCF is a staged process: express interest, get validated, submit to an open round, engage the community, and — if awarded — deliver against milestones. You don't jump straight to a big cheque; you move through gates that build trust with the ecosystem before funds are released. Here's the typical path.

1.  Signal interest  →  Submit the interest form on the SCF site
                        describing what you're building and which track fits.
2.  Get validated    →  Rolling review checks basic eligibility and fit.
                        Referrals from ecosystem actors can speed this up.
3.  Enter a round    →  Eligible projects are invited into an open,
                        funded round and given the submission deadline.
4.  Submit fully     →  Publish your proposal: problem, solution, team,
                        milestones, budget, and why Stellar/Soroban.
5.  Community phase  →  Verified members review, ask questions, and vote.
                        Answer questions promptly; show traction.
6.  Award & deliver  →  If funded, receive XLM across milestones as you
                        ship — each tranche unlocks on delivered work.

A few practical notes. Start early — the interest step is low-commitment, and getting into the review pipeline before a round opens gives you time to sharpen the proposal. Be specific about milestones and budget; vague asks are hard for the community to evaluate. And treat the community phase as a real conversation, not a formality: responsive teams that engage openly consistently read better than ones that post a proposal and go quiet.

What makes a strong SCF application

Strong SCF applications share a pattern: real traction, a crisp problem statement, open-source code, and concrete milestones. Weak ones tend to be vague, closed, and long on promises but short on evidence. Because the community votes, clarity and credibility matter as much as ambition — reviewers reward teams that make it easy to say yes.

The table below contrasts the two ends of the spectrum across the criteria reviewers weigh most heavily:

None of this is a guarantee — SCF is competitive and rounds are oversubscribed — but stacking these signals dramatically improves your odds. The through-line is trust: the more a reviewer can verify for themselves, the less they have to take on faith.

SCF and the wider Stellar DeFi ecosystem

SCF doesn't fund projects in a vacuum — it feeds a growing DeFi ecosystem on Stellar. Grants seed the AMMs, tokens, and yield strategies that then compose with one another. Understanding that landscape helps you see where a new project fits and why "why Stellar" is such a common question in every SCF round.

If you're mapping the terrain, three pieces are worth reading alongside this one. Our Stellar DeFi guide lays out the whole stack — assets, the built-in DEX, AMMs, and the Soroban contract layer — in plain English. Aquarius, the AMM explained covers the liquidity and incentive layer that a lot of Stellar DeFi activity revolves around, including its rewards and voting mechanics. And what is the AQUA token explains the governance and reward asset that ties much of that system together.

The reason this matters for SCF is composability. A well-funded infrastructure or DeFi grant rarely stands alone — it plugs into existing markets, tokens, and voting systems, and it becomes a building block for the next wave of projects. That's the flywheel SCF is trying to spin: fund useful primitives, watch them combine, and grow the whole ecosystem in the process.

Where WhaleHub fits

WhaleHub is a yield-optimization protocol built on Stellar — a "Convex for Stellar." It participates in the Stellar and Soroban ecosystem that SCF exists to grow, building the kind of DeFi infrastructure the fund is designed to support. WhaleHub focuses on making Stellar yield simpler and more efficient for everyday users.

Here's the shape of what WhaleHub does. You stake AQUA and receive BLUB as a liquid receipt for your position. Behind the scenes, the protocol aggregates ICE voting power across stakers to direct Aquarius rewards efficiently, then auto-compounds those rewards so you don't have to manage claims and re-stakes by hand. It's the same "pool your weight, optimise the yield" idea that made vote-aggregation protocols popular elsewhere — adapted to Stellar's AQUA and Aquarius system.

One accuracy note worth being explicit about: BLUB's value floats with the underlying position and market — it is not a stablecoin, not pegged, and not redeemable at a fixed rate. And to be clear about SCF specifically, WhaleHub builds on Stellar and engages with the community and SCF ecosystem like other builders in the space; nothing here should be read as a claim to any particular award or grant amount. The point is simpler: SCF grows the ecosystem WhaleHub lives in, and a healthier Stellar DeFi stack is good for everyone building on it.

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SCF's big idea is easy to hold onto: the Stellar Development Foundation funds builders in XLM, through open rounds, with the community helping decide. If you remember the flow — signal interest, get validated, enter a round, engage, deliver against milestones — and you lead with traction and clarity, you understand how Stellar grants actually work.