Milestone-based grants: how to set milestones that pass

Updated Oct 31, 20267 min readBy the web3grant editors

Milestone-based grants pay in tranches as you deliver agreed pieces of work, and 55 of the 99 programs in web3grant's directory (56%) pay this way. A milestone that passes review names one deliverable, its acceptance criteria, the evidence you will submit, a due date and the amount it releases. A vague milestone is hard for a reviewer to accept, so its payment waits.

Key takeaways

As of October 31, 2026, 55 of the 99 programs in web3grant's directory pay in milestone tranches; the other 44 pay once or use another arrangement.
Among the programs compared below, first payments run from 5% at 1inch's Aqua incubator to 50% in Shutter DAO's first round. The Stellar Community Fund pays 10% on acceptance.
Compound asks for three to five milestones, mostly tied to measurable outcomes; Filecoin Open Grants ask for 2 to 4.
TheDAO Security Fund requires at least a third of each budget to sit on adoption milestones that show outside parties use the result.
Deadlines bind: Stellar Community Fund tranches must each be submitted within 90 days.

How do milestone-based grants work?

In a milestone-based grant, the program approves the whole budget but releases it in parts: sometimes a first payment on signing, then one payment each time you deliver a milestone and a reviewer accepts the evidence. The approved amount is a ceiling you earn, not a sum you receive.

The split varies a lot between programs, and it shapes your cash flow:

Program	First payment	The rest
Stellar Community Fund	10% on acceptance	20%, 30%, 40% as MVP, testnet and mainnet tranches are verified
Horizen Builder Ecosystem Fund	10% at approval	20% for proving the core privacy feature; the rest around an audit and mainnet usage
Aqua Revenue Stream Incubator	5%	10%, 35%, then 50% once live on mainnet and integrated into 1inch
RootstockCollective Grants	20% to 30%	Later tranches on proof of delivery, with monthly reports
CKB Community Fund DAO	Up to 20%, at most $10,000	Each milestone checked by Stewards, then a 3-day optimistic vote
Prezenti Grants	20% on signing	80% after verified milestones, within four months
Shutter DAO Impact Pilot	50% up front	50% after review and a second DAO vote

Two caveats as of October 2026. Prezenti's site says both that Season 3 is open until December 29 and that it has concluded, so check with Prezenti before applying. Shutter DAO's Round 1 has closed, and Round 2 is due to launch on November 16, 2026.

What makes a milestone pass review?

A milestone passes when a reviewer can check it without asking you anything. That takes five parts:

Deliverable: one thing that exists at the end, such as a release, a deployed contract, a report or an integration.
Acceptance criteria: the conditions that make it done, stated so that someone else could test them.
Evidence: what you will submit: a tagged release, a contract address, a URL, a test report, a dashboard.
Due date: an absolute date or a week number from the start.
Amount: the payment it releases, matching the budget lines it covers.

Programs ask for these parts in their own words. The Canton Development Fund's proposal template asks for milestones with acceptance criteria and a funding breakdown, and Canton Coin is released only after each milestone is accepted. DoubleZero's grant agreements set deliverables, success criteria and timelines, and Analog's offers list milestones with completion criteria.

Weak (illustrative): "Milestone 2: Improve performance. $12,000."
Strong (illustrative): "Milestone 2, week 10, $12,000: mainnet API release. Accepted when the public endpoint serves 50 requests a second at under 500 ms (95th percentile), shown in a published load-test report, with the release tagged in the repository."

How many milestones should a grant have?

Most published structures land between two and five milestones. The Compound Grants Program asks for three to five, mostly tied to measurable outcomes, though its main Dapps domain has been paused since April 2026 and its future is under review. Filecoin Open Grants ask for 2 to 4, although their reviews look stalled since April 2026. The Stacks Endowment pays Builder grants over four milestones and smaller Getting Started grants in two tranches; its Q4 2026 cycle has not been announced.

Split the money by the cost of the work in each milestone, not evenly by default. Put adoption late and give it real weight if the program asks for outcomes. TheDAO Security Fund requires at least a third of each budget on adoption milestones, and Cardano's Catalyst Pilot paid 40% to build and tied the rest to the network fees users generate (Catalyst's next round has not been announced).

Should milestones measure outputs or outcomes?

Use both: output milestones for what you build and outcome milestones for what happens when people use it. An output is in your control ("v1.0 released"); an outcome depends partly on others ("two wallets ship the SDK", "1,000 weekly users").

Programs increasingly pay for outcomes. Compound wants milestones mostly tied to measurable outcomes, Prezenti's Season 3 asks for results the community can check onchain, such as daily transactions and TVL, and Mina's builder grants release funds against development milestones and user adoption (Mina's program is funded for one year from June 2025, with later grants meant to come from a treasury still being set up).

Choose outcomes you can influence, name the public source that will prove them, and set targets you would bet your own money on. See grant impact metrics for examples.

Illustrative milestone table

A fictional team asks for $40,000 over 16 weeks to build an open-source block explorer with a plugin SDK.

#	Deliverable	Acceptance criteria and evidence	Due	Amount
0	Signed agreement	Agreement and KYC complete	Week 0	$4,000
1	Indexer and public API on testnet	Last 30 days of blocks served; repo public under MIT; CI passing	Week 4	$8,000
2	Mainnet release with explorer UI	Live URL; load-test report at 50 requests a second	Week 10	$12,000
3	Docs and plugin SDK	Docs site; two example plugins; one outside pull request merged	Week 13	$8,000
4	Adoption	Two ecosystem projects link to it; public analytics page	Week 16	$8,000

The first payment is 10% and the adoption milestone 20%. Each row maps to budget lines, as in the Web3 grant budget guide.

What happens if you miss a milestone?

If you miss a milestone, the payment waits until a reviewer accepts the work, and a hard deadline can end the grant. Payment rules are explicit: TheDAO Security Fund has an independent reviewer check each milestone and pays within 14 days of acceptance, and Reactive Network releases REACT within five working days after a milestone is approved.

Some programs set deadlines in the rules. Stellar Community Fund tranches must each be submitted within 90 days, Prezenti grantees have four months to deliver, and Catalyst Pilot teams had to go live within three months. A missed milestone can also count later: Project Catalyst requires existing grantees to be in good standing to apply again.

When you see a slip coming, tell the program before the due date, explain the cause, and propose a new date or a smaller scope for the same milestone. Your agreement sets what happens next, so read it before you sign; see Web3 grant agreements.

Reporting is where milestones are won. Zcash Community Grants release each payment after a forum update, CoW DAO grantees request a review on the forum when each milestone is done and are paid at the end of the month, and RootstockCollective asks for monthly reports. The grant milestone report guide shows what to include.

Programs that pay on milestones and accept applications now

These programs in web3grant's directory pay in milestone tranches and accept applications as of October 31, 2026. The Stellar Community Fund's current round, SCF #46, closes November 8, 2026; the others are always open.

The Stellar Build Award handbook is a useful reference for tranche design even if you apply elsewhere. For the steps around milestones, see how to apply for Web3 grants and how to write a Web3 grant proposal.

FAQ

Do milestone-based grants pay anything up front?

Many milestone-based grants pay a first tranche on signing, but the share varies. The Stellar Community Fund pays 10% on acceptance, RootstockCollective 20% to 30%, and 1inch's Aqua incubator 5%. Nervos's CKB Community Fund DAO caps its startup payment at 20% of the budget and $10,000. Others pay nothing until the first milestone is accepted, so plan to fund early work yourself.

What happens if a grant milestone is rejected?

When a grant milestone is rejected, the payment for it is held until you fix the gaps and the reviewer accepts the evidence. The Canton Development Fund releases Canton Coin only after each milestone is accepted, and TheDAO Security Fund pays within 14 days of acceptance by an independent reviewer. Ask for the specific acceptance criteria you missed, fix those, and resubmit with new evidence.

Can you change grant milestones after approval?

Grant milestones can often be changed after approval, but only with the program's agreement and before the due date passes. Explain what changed, propose the new deliverable or date, and keep the total amount the same unless the scope changes. Your grant agreement sets the process, so read it before signing; web3grant does not hold copies of program agreements.

How long should a grant milestone be?

A grant milestone should be short enough that a reviewer sees progress before your money runs out. Stellar Community Fund tranches must each be submitted within 90 days, and Starknet Seed Grants plan for three months in total. Most published structures use two to five milestones, which for a three- to six-month grant means one milestone every few weeks.

Programs in this guide

Where each one stands today, soonest deadline first.

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