Perrin Giving
We fund the arguments we are not the ones to make.
Grants to think tanks and technical projects
Why an arm that only gives money away
If the right to propose something is earned by building it, so is the right to say who else should.
The Foundry can hold a few problems at a time. That is a real limit and pretending otherwise would be the same distance-from-the-work the whole organisation exists to object to. So the second arm gives money away: to think tanks working on cryptocurrency, digital innovation and the rules forming around both, and to the technical projects those rules will land on.
Grants go to people closer to the work than we are. That is the entire selection criterion worth stating - not stage, not size, not whether the recipient is an institution or three people who have already started.
Every grant is published with the reasoning behind it, including what we expected to be wrong about. A grant explained only after it succeeds teaches nobody anything, and a funder who never records a bad call is not one you can check.
What it funds
03Think tanks
Independent research on cryptocurrency, digital innovation, and the regulation taking shape around them. Unrestricted where we can, because a think tank that has to spend a grant on the thing the grant was written about is not independent.
Technical projects
Working systems rather than proposals about them: settlement and custody infrastructure, evaluation tooling, and the unglamorous parts nobody funds because they do not demonstrate well.
The work between them
Standards drafting, replication, and the legal and procurement work that decides whether a working technology is ever allowed to be used. Most of what kills a good system is here, and almost none of it attracts money.
What a grant looks like
- Recipients
- Think tanks, technical projects, and individuals who have already started
- Instrument
- Grant, unrestricted wherever the recipient can take it
- Decision
- Two weeks from first conversation
- Reporting
- One page, twice a year
- Published
- Every grant, with the reasoning and what we expected to be wrong about
Tell us what you have already started and what the money would let you finish. If we are not the right funder we will say so quickly, which is worth more than a maybe.