It has been two months since we announced Village Wonders, and the moment you all have been waiting for has finally arrived. We are excited to reveal the projects in the inaugural cohort to receive support that ranges from investment and mentorship to demos with VCs and ecosystem connections.

But first, we would like to express our gratitude to all the projects for their submissions and their patience despite unexpected delays. We were and are still amazed by the response and quality of applications received across all web3 categories. Over 500+ applications were reviewed before making the final decision.

There were multiple rounds of screening by community and Polygon core teams to reduce information asymmetry and ensure a fair selection process. Key factors such as team experience, ideas, growth potential, achievements, competitive landscape, and project stage were considered for final decision-making. It was certainly not easy!

Since this is the first cohort, we are still in an explorative journey with a small cohort and will continue iterating on the process to bring the highest value to our community to do it better and bigger in the subsequent ones. For teams not part of this cohort, know that this is only the beginning, and you can always re-apply for the upcoming cohorts.

Time to shift back our attention!

Bringing you alphas and the highly anticipated first cohort of Polygon Village Wonders:

• Artlabs: Providing 3D & AR at scale for Commerce and Metaverse

• Deefy: Renting, lending, and BNPL infrastructure for NFTs Getting instant liquidity & 100% utility

• Hackmakers DAO: Community-driven SaaS platform to accelerate and reward innovation

• Impact Arcade: Virtual gaming arcade featuring casual games that generate real-world impact, such as planting trees, cleaning up ocean plastic, protecting rainforests, and beyond!

• MetaGameHub DAO: Hub for open Metaverse experiences and aggregation by converging Metaverse agnostic infrastructure with complementary dApps and LAND Valuation tools

• Matter Protocol: Matter Protocol is an oracle for social sentiment data, and Matter Trade (MatterTrade.com), the first app that leverages data from Matter Protocol, helps investors find trades that matter.

• Parallell: New travel-style metaverse that gamifies digital twins of the real world and fantasy planets

• RightsfuAlly: Decentralized platform that simplifies the management of film/video intellectual property rights (IPR) and enables their allocations seamlessly on blockchain

• Synphonic: Transforming the musician-to-fan relationship by enabling musicians to engage with and monetize their superfans in new ways

• Threely: Like Google in web2, Threely is the gateway to accessible and fluent web3 made for all

There are two additional projects still under consideration that we will announce by the end of October. The three-month cohort will kick off on September 21st. During the cohort, each project will receive:

• Mentorship and office hours with Polygon core teams, leadership, and industry experts.

• $40,000 investment from the Wonders program and up to $70,000 in vouchers from Tier-1 partners for development, audit, marketing, etc.

• Demo Day with top VCs, Polygon Ventures, and other investors.

• Recognition, ecosystem connections, marketing, and community-building support.

Again, this is just the first of the many cohorts to come. As Wonders expands and scales, be on the lookout for subsequent cohorts. In the meantime, Polygon Village is here to support the growth of projects. Apply for Grants and Vouchers, or join the Polygon Village Twitter, Telegram & Discord for community support.