We’re excited to announce the Grid Grant Program, a $100,000 initiative to back the next generation of standout founders building on Grid, our stablecoin API for accounts, payments, cards, and yield. Selected teams will receive up to $10,000 USDC.

Grid is the latest evolution of Squads, one of the most trusted smart contracts on Solana, safeguarding more than $15 billion for over 400 teams. Among them are Jupiter, Drift, Helium, Kamino, and Helius, products with millions of users and revenue. These teams have defined what onchain finance can be.

At Squads, we believe our users deserve the best. This is why we built Grid, to give founders access to the strongest infrastructure, a powerful and high value network, and industry leading expertise. Now we are opening that same infrastructure, expertise, and network to a select group of founders ready to shape what comes next. Grid is built for those who want the best, founders who believe they are creating the future, not just an MVP.

What is Grid?

Grid is our developer platform for launching stablecoin powered products. It provides a single API for accounts, payments, cards, and yield. 

 Grid enables founders to build:

• Stablecoin accounts that are proven-in-production, policy-ready, natively gas abstracted and fault-tolerant.

• Payments across stablecoins + ACH, wire and SEPA rails.

• Card infrastructure for programmable spend controls without pre-funding requirements.

• Yield integrations spanning RWA and high-yield DeFi strategies.

Who We're Looking For

At Squads, we value taste, integrity, long-term thinking, and a bias for action. We’re looking for teams who share these principles, and grant recipients will be chosen with these values in mind.

• Taste means knowing the difference between good and great. It's the extra polish that makes the complex feel simple and the kind of craft that makes users forget they're interacting with blockchain infrastructure.

• Integrity means building products you'd trust with your own assets. It means being transparent about trade-offs, honest about limitations, and committed to your users even when it's inconvenient.

• Long-term thinking means challenging the status quo instead of creating another cookie-cutter copy of the latest popular product. It means building towards something that matters in five years, not just five months.

• Bias for action means shipping early and often. While others plan, you're already iterating on v2. Real feedback comes from real users, not conference rooms.

Grid Grant Program Details

What you’ll receive:

• Up to $10,000 USDC in grant funding

• Marketing support from our team

• Early access to new features

Products we're excited about:

• Payment infrastructure leveraging Grid's stablecoin rails

• Card programs with novel spend controls and user experiences

• Treasury management and yield optimization tools for enterprises

• Cross-border payment applications solving high demand money movement across specific verticals

• Payroll and expense management platforms built for the onchain economy

• Merchant payment solutions using permissionless escrows to remove middlemen

• Apps that simplify or supercharge DeFi

• Agentic Finance

How to Apply

The Grid Grant Program will run until the full $100,000 has been awarded, with multiple submission periods along the way. Grants are awarded at our discretion, and we may choose to not select any applicants during a given period if no teams align with our values or meet our standards.

Applications are evaluated continuously throughout each submission window.

Get started: click here to apply

Applications open from: September 30th - October 30th, 2025

Terms & Conditions

Selection Criteria 

• At Squads we value taste, high integrity, long-term thinking and a bias for action. Grant recipients will be selected amongst teams who share our values.

• Decisions regarding grant selection are final and at the sole discretion of Squads Labs.

• We especially encourage teams who have not raised over $1M in prior funding to apply to the grants. While not being a disqualification, well-funded teams will be held to a higher standard.

Eligibility & Application

• Teams must apply here within the specified submission deadline for each period.

• Products submitted must use Grid to be applicable.

• Recipients cannot be existing Squads Labs team members or have received prior Grid grants.

• Recipients that fail to demonstrate progress may be ineligible for future Squads Labs programs or support.

Grant Terms & Obligations

• Each selected team receives up to $10,000 USDC.

• Grant disbursement may be structured in milestones based on project complexity and timeline.

• Grant funds must be used exclusively for development, deployment and growth of projects built on Grid.

• Recipients agree to provide quarterly updates on project progress and fund utilization.

• The Grid Grant Program will run until the full $100,000 has been awarded, with multiple submission periods along the way. 

Additional Support

• Marketing, capital raising and other support is provided at the discretion of Squads Labs.

• Squads Labs reserves the right to showcase grant recipients and their projects in marketing materials.

Program Structure

• Multiple submission periods will be opened throughout the program duration.

• Grant disbursement is entirely at the discretion of Squads Labs and no applicants may be selected during any given submission period.

Legal & Compliance

• All projects must comply with applicable laws and regulations in their operating jurisdictions.

• Teams must have full ownership over the IP of their project to be eligible.

• Teams retain full ownership of their intellectual property developed during the program.

• This grant does not constitute an investment and Squads Labs receives no equity or tokens in return.

• Grants are non-transferable and cannot be exchanged for other forms of compensation.