Every night, each metric below is fetched from the team's own infrastructure by a pipeline they do not control, and the reading is appended to a public record. Where an executed agreement sets a threshold, the reading is judged against it from the day that agreement was signed; everything else is measured and shown unjudged.
| Tier | Functions | Projects funded | Coverage · 30d |
|---|---|---|---|
| Only provider. Network halts without it. No substitute exists. | 5 | 1 | 100.0% |
| Network-critical, but alternatives exist. We need at least one. | 24 | 13 | 99.1% |
| Load-bearing. Multiple dependents. Silent failure cascades. | 2 | 1 | 98.9% |
Most of what Filecoin runs on is maintained by small teams, and much of it has no second implementation. When one of those goes unfunded, nothing breaks on the day it happens — the repo just goes quiet, the maintainer moves on, and the network carries a dependency nobody is watching. Kernel exists to make that failure mode visible and to pay for it not to happen.
The program starts from a map, not a wishlist. Every capability the network needs is written down as a function, independent of which repo currently provides it. Each function is placed in a tier according to how replaceable it is, and each tier carries a different funding posture — some are non-negotiable, some are funded for redundancy, some are funded only for maintenance.
Funding follows an annual term with audits rather than milestones, because keeping something working is a continuous obligation and not a deliverable. Teams are assessed against agreed metrics for resilience and operational continuity: is the function still healthy, still maintained, still measurable.
This page is the audit trail: every metric on it names a reading cadence and a public source anyone can call. Where an executed agreement states a threshold, the reading is judged against it from the day that agreement was signed; where it does not, the reading is shown and left unjudged.
Kernel grants run on an annual term. Audits fall mid-term and at close, and each one checks the agreed resilience metrics rather than a feature list.
Next round opening
Applications close in November, awards are published in December, and the new term begins in January. Existing grantees re-apply on the same cycle.
FY26 term begins (complete)
Mid-term audit cleared (complete)
Health reporting live (in progress)
Close-out audit · FY27 intake opens (upcoming)
Applications close (upcoming)
Awards published (upcoming)
FY27 term begins (upcoming)
A function's tier is decided by substitutability, not by how much anyone likes it. That single judgement then drives how much scrutiny it gets, whether redundancy is required, and how negotiable the budget is.
5 functions
Only provider. Network halts without it. No substitute exists.
Ledger, resource, and programmability — what the blockchain and the physical-storage-backed ledger need in order to keep running at all.
24 functions
Network-critical, but alternatives exist. We need at least one.
Core offerings — disk space from miners, storage primitives in smart contracts — that let participants engage with the irreplaceable components.
2 functions
Load-bearing. Multiple dependents. Silent failure cascades.
Supports and improves access to the critical components, and speeds up development of revenue-generating work.
The same commitments, read two ways. By project asks what each funded team is on the hook for; by function asks what the network needs and whether anyone is watching it. The percentage is reading coverage — the share of the periods a metric's own cadence expects that carry a value over the last 30 days, counted from the day unattended collection started rather than from before anyone was watching, and with the nights the monitor itself did not run excluded outright. Open any row for the metrics behind it — what is collected, when, and every reading taken.
Aggregate health matters less than coverage: most metrics still carry no agreed bar, so a pass rate over the scored minority would describe a different program. A function with no maintainer and no metric is invisible to this page, which is exactly what makes it dangerous.
Every reading on this page is derived from the commitments in the Kernel registry.
Metrics for individual projects and repos live in the explorerKernel uses a few words in a specific way. Getting them straight is most of understanding the program.
