Grants & Bounties
How Arrow funds contributor work through grants and bounties.
Arrow pays for real work, and it does it in the open. There are two main funding shapes, and knowing which one fits is most of the battle: a bounty funds a defined task, a grant funds ongoing time.
Bounties: defined tasks
A bounty is a scoped piece of work with a reward attached, published on the bounty board. Fix this, build that, design the other. You claim it, deliver it, and get paid when it's accepted.
Bounties are the natural entry point if you're new: the scope is written down, the reward is known up front, and finishing one builds the trust that leads to bigger work. Start with What are Bounties? and How to Claim.
Grants: ongoing time
A Time Commitment Grant, created by AIP-004, funds a contributor's regular hours rather than a single deliverable. Grants sit on five compensation levels that reflect the skill and responsibility of the role, and compensation is paid in stablecoins and $ARROW tokens.
Grants suit contributors who have already shipped work here and want to commit sustained time: maintaining a subsystem, leading an area, carrying a project forward week over week.
Retroactive grants
There's a third shape we're genuinely excited about: work nobody asked for. Build something that impresses the community and there's a good chance the DAO recognizes it with tokens or compensation after the fact. We believe good work is obvious, and so is sloppy work, so if you make Arrow better in a way people can see and use, that deserves recognition.
Be clear that this comes at the builder's risk. Nothing retroactive is guaranteed: your valuation of the work might not match the community's, and something you consider a strong contribution might land differently with others. If that risk sits fine with you, we'd love to see what you build.
Who decides
The Grants and Bounties Committee (GBC), an elected body created by AIP-002, reviews submissions and releases compensation. Submissions follow the format defined in AIP-005, which asks for the same things any reviewer would: what the work is, what it costs, and how anyone can verify it was done.
Larger funded efforts with a named leader and a budget cap run as projects under the AIP-006 Projects Framework instead; the current lineup is on the Active Projects page.
The quiet rule behind all of it
Funding follows artifacts. A merged PR, a published design, a flight log: things a reviewer can open and check. If the work is good, it ships, and paid work at Arrow is simply that same rule with a budget attached.
Not sure where your idea fits? Ask in Discord and someone will point you at the right shape.