Onchain crowdfunding for Decentralized Science, built on Solana.

PepFund lets researchers anywhere in the world raise capital transparently from a global community of backers. Every contribution is on-chain, every milestone is auditable, and every backer owns a real stake in what gets discovered.

Traditional science funding is slow, opaque, and gatekept. Researchers wait 6–18 months for grant decisions made by committees with no public accountability. Backers have no visibility into how their money is spent. And the people who care most about the outcomes have no way to participate.

PepFund is the fix:

• Researchers create campaigns with milestone-gated funding, issue research tokens to backers, and report progress on-chain
• Backers fund campaigns with USDC, receive campaign tokens proportional to their contribution, and track every dollar transparently
• No intermediary holds funds; all escrow and token logic runs in Solana programs

1. A researcher creates a campaign with a funding goal, milestone roadmap, and campaign token parameters
2. Backers contribute USDC; funds are held in a non-custodial PDA escrow and campaign tokens are issued immediately
3. As milestones are completed, researchers submit on-chain evidence; a community review window opens
4. Funds unlock per milestone, not all at once
5. If a campaign doesn't reach its goal, backers claim full refunds from the escrow at any time

• Blockchain: Solana (low fees, fast finality, built for scale)
• Programs: Rust + Anchor Framework
• Tokens: SPL Token-2022 (transfer hooks, on-chain metadata, permanent delegate)
• Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
• Storage: Arweave for permanent milestone reports and research documents
• Identity: ORCID integration for researcher credential verification

PepFund is currently in beta. Campaigns are curated manually. The program is deployed on Devnet; mainnet launch follows a third-party security audit.

Beta targets:

• 10–20 live campaigns across biology, neuroscience, climate, longevity, and materials science
• Phantom, Backpack, and Solflare wallet support
• Full milestone-gated fund release and backer portfolio views

We welcome contributions from developers, researchers, and the DeSci community.

• Read the concept brief in PEPFUND_CONCEPT.md for full product context
• Check open issues for good first issue tags
• All program changes require tests and pass anchor test before review
• Frontend follows the existing component patterns; open a discussion before adding new dependencies

Open a discussion before starting any large feature work.

• Website: pepfund.xyz
• Docs: docs.pepfund.xyz
• X: @pepfunddotxyz
• Discord: Coming soon

Science belongs to everyone. Funding it should too.