Call for Proposals

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Original proposals are solicited in the field of blockchain science as it is approached from computer science, engineering, public policy, political science, law, and management. Interdisciplinary efforts are particularly encouraged.

IORH will distribute a total of $1.5M in funding for 2023.

Important Dates

• 2nd Call for Proposals announced: April 24, 2023

• Proposal Submissions deadline: June 16, 2023

• Notification: June 30, 2023

Format

To apply for your grant, please fill in the grant proposal template. You must fill in all relevant fields. The descriptions provided should be concise and preferably should fit within the template dimensions.

Submission

Submit your proposal by sending it to io-research-hub@ed.ac.uk by June 16, 2023. Upon receiving your proposal, we will inform you via email that we have received it. When the notification date arrives, we will inform you via email whether your proposal has been accepted or rejected.

Evaluation Criteria

Submissions will be judged on the following criteria.

Scientific merit

1. Novelty. Whether your proposed research pursues a novel idea, a path that has not been previously explored in the literature, application and practice.

2. Feasibility. Whether we deem your proposed research to be feasible within the timeframe provided and realistic given the experience and background of the persons conducting the research.

3. Deliverability. Whether you have set concrete, measurable goals that allow us to assess whether your research agenda has been successfully completed both throughout and at the end of the research timeframe.

4. Impact. Whether your research is important for the field, and whether it will make an important difference and be recognized by the experts in the field. Impact can be practical, applied, or theoretical.

5. Relevance and Timeliness. Whether your research pertains to the broad area of blockchain science and its application, and addresses challenges in this area in a timely manner. Whether or not you are coming from the field of computer science, engineering, public policy, political science, design, digital humanities, law, or management, your proposal must be focused on blockchains.

Congruity to the mission of Input Output

The second category of criteria on which proposals will be assessed is relevance to IOG products and systems. The proposal must describe the impact and relevance of the project in the context of one or more of the areas covered by IOG systems and products, as described here. Beyond proposals that directly focus on IOG products, we also solicit proposals of more foundational scientific nature that would promise impact on the future development of any of the above systems or could lead to introducing additional systems of interest for IOG. For example, one team could investigate issues related to GDPR and self-sovereign identity (which can inform the “Atala” system), or the development of a decentralized application that includes development on the Cardano platform, or study various mechanisms of participatory budgeting and their relevant properties (which can inform the “Project Catalyst” system). 

Proposals that have relevance to real-world problems encountered in emerging markets with a focus on Africa are also particularly welcome. This includes questions of identity, governance and finance (see for e.g., “RealFi”). Examples include: proposals related to reducing the cost of finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, reducing the cost of remittance, or providing other social benefits. Proposals related to Kenya and Nigeria are particularly desired given IOG’s footprint in these countries.

Finally, interdisciplinary applications are particularly encouraged and will be given priority.

Submissions are non-anonymous and committee members will be able to see the names of the proposal submitters.

Openness and Transparency

IORH mandates that all research is published under an open license. This means that papers and all relevant artifacts produced through partial or full funding by the IORH must be published under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 license, and must be uploaded to the open archive arXiv or ePrint or both. You may not submit your paper to conferences or journals that require you to forfeit these open copyright obligations to the IORH.

Any software that is developed in conjunction with the grant must be published as open source software under an MIT license and made available in a public code repository such as GitHub or GitLab.

If you have questions regarding making your paper or code open source, please contact us and we will be happy to provide more information.

Ethics and Etiquette

Proposals must be original and pertain to future work which the researchers plan to perform. The authors must not solicit funding for work already performed or substantially overlaps with work already performed.

While any member of the IORH committee is welcome to apply for a grant, members must abstain from discussions on and voting for their own or their student grants.

Committee

Edinburgh

• Chair: Aggelos Kiayias, Informatics

• Chris Speed, Design Informatics

• Raffaella Calabrese, Business School

• Burkhard Schafer, Law School

• Richard Coyne, Architecture

IOG

• Pooya Farshim

• Philip Lazos