Zealynx Audit Grants — Season 2

Season 2 funds smart contract security audits for early-stage Web3 protocols. Applications opened on 20 September 2026 and close on 4 October 2026. Winners are announced on 11 October 2026.

What a grant actually is

A grant is a percentage subsidy on a real Zealynx engagement at our standard, published rate of $6,000 per auditor per week. There are no cash grants and no middlemen. Recipients get the same founder-led, senior-only audit our paying clients receive, and every report is published in full when the engagement completes. The total pool for Season 2 is over $100,000.

The three tiers

• Core Grant — 100% subsidy. One protocol has its audit fully covered and pays nothing.
• Growth Grants — 50% subsidy. Two protocols receive half of their audit covered.
• Builder Grants — 25% subsidy. Multiple awards across the rest of the round.

The exact number and distribution is at Zealynx's discretion. A strong field can earn more than the published tiers — in Season 1 every Builder Grant was upgraded from 25% to 50% after the applications were read.

How applications are scored

Every application is scored out of 100 points against a rubric published before applications open, and nothing about it changes mid-round.

• Protocol Merit — 45 points. Technical maturity, likelihood of success, go-to-market, and team credibility. Scored by us during review: repositories are cloned, test suites are run, line counts are verified against what was claimed, and deployments are checked on-chain.
• Product Engagement — 40 points. Earnable before we read a line of your code: run Krait on your repository, complete the eMBA modules, and submit a Shadow Audit.
• Independent Builder — 15 points. Self-declared: solo founder or no priced round, and a team choosing its own auditor.

Bugs in your codebase are not scored against you. The grant exists to find them.

What happened in Season 1

Eight protocols applied, across six chains and four continents, with zero paid distribution and no VC-funded teams among them. Every single applicant received a grant: one audit fully funded, and every other applicant covered at 50% or more. There were no rejections, and every applicant received an individual decision with reasons.

"Carlos identified a serious Critical issue almost immediately, which was very impressive, and found several other substantive problems that materially improved the security of the protocol. The review directly influenced the final architecture, and the protocol would not have been suitable for deployment without it."

— Robbie, Founder, Yieldcoin (Season 1 grant recipient)

"Findings were backed by runnable PoCs, remediation was verified by re-running those tests, and when a fix was too narrow he pushed us toward the correct invariant instead of signing off early."

— David, Founder, Holdam (Season 1 Core Grant recipient)

What you need before you apply

• A frozen commit and an honest line count — know exactly what you are asking us to audit.
• Tests that mean something: adversarial cases, invariant suites, fuzz harnesses.
• A security need you can state in two sentences.
• A private repository is fine. A mutual NDA is issued instantly from your dashboard, pre-signed by Zealynx, and executed online in about a minute.

A complete application takes roughly thirty minutes once your scope is ready, and drafts save automatically. A draft is not an application — it must be submitted before 4 October 2026 at 23:59 UTC to be scored.

Every report is published

This is written into the program terms and it is not negotiable: every grant audit is published in full when it completes. An audit nobody can read protects nobody. Published findings make recipients credible to their users and keep our work accountable in public.