Hudson Jameson has seen crypto funding from multiple angles: as a grantee, a grants committee member, and VP of Community at Polygon.
At ProtocolBerg in Berlin, he sat down with me to share what he has learned across a decade in the Ethereum, Zcash, and Polygon ecosystems.
What do non-technical projects need to think about when applying for grants? Hudson covers incentive alignment, creative pitching, and the social capital that sustains long-term funding.
But underneath the tactics is a harder question: how do you build reputation and trust when your community values anonymity?
Hudson is honest about the tension between privacy, presence, and the very human risk of being seen.
He moves between past and present: the early days of the Ethereum Cat Herders and the Zcash Grants Committee, including the decision to fund the Rust rewrite of Tor, and where things stand now with Polygon’s AggLayer and ZK interoperability.
Someone who has been in this long enough to be honest about what works, and still genuinely excited about where it’s going.
