Team1 awards first Accelerator Grant, $30,000 to card platform YourGrails

In Brief:

• Avalanche Team1 approved a $30,000 Accelerator Grant for YourGrails, the first award issued under the tier.
• YourGrails sells PSA, BGS and CGC graded cards inside digital packs, with the physical card held in a custodial vault and a Card Token representing ownership on Avalanche.
• The award is the first real test of an Accelerator process decided by committee vote, paid out of Team1’s own budget rather than Avalanche Foundation grants.

Avalanche Team1 approved a $30,000 grant for YourGrails, the first award under the Accelerator tier since its Builder Grants program opened July 1.

“The committee has approved $30,000 for @YourGrails, a tokenized trading card platform bringing real, graded cards onchain to Avalanche,” Team1 said in a post on X. “An amazing project the community can engage with, built by native builders who show up every day.”

What YourGrails sells

Users buy a sealed pack with USDC, rip it, and get a real graded card. From there they can list it, stake it in a battle, ship it home or sell it back at 90% of value instantly. The sell-back window runs seven days.

The cards themselves are graded by PSA, CGC or BGS and sit in a climate controlled facility, insured during storage and shipment subject to custodian terms. A Card Token stands in for the physical asset, so ownership changes hands without the card moving.

Redemption closes the loop. The holder burns the Card Token on Avalanche, and the card is pulled from the vault, inspected, packaged and shipped. That’s what keeps a single collectible from existing as both a live digital claim and a redeemed physical object at the same time.

Pack Battles add the competitive layer. Two users open packs of equal value, the higher total card value wins a bonus pack, and both keep their original pulls.

Beta traction

YourGrails is still in closed beta. Team1’s blog put pack volume during that period at more than $500,000 across 7,000-plus packs opened.

Avalanche flagged the project weeks before the grant landed. “YourGrails is a tokenized trading card platform that allows users to rip packs and battle other players, while being provably fair,” the network said in a post on X. “Days into their closed beta, YourGrails is already highlighting what’s possible for onchain experiences on Avalanche.”

The stack leans on Avalanche’s EVM environment, native USDC and Circle CCTP integration for settlement and cross-chain access.

How the Accelerator tier works

Accelerator Grants go up to $30,000 and carry a tighter screen than Team1’s Mini Grants, which cap at $10,000 and are open to anyone. Applicants submit a whitepaper or litepaper, a prototype and market analysis. Team1 evaluates internally, interviews the projects it likes, then moves finalists forward.

A committee of Avalanche team members and community representatives proposes and votes on who gets funded.

Winners get initial funding plus development credits. Milestones are set collaboratively and further money is released as each one clears, with reaching MVP as the stated target. After MVP, teams get funding for marketing and user acquisition. Selected teams also get a shot at interviewing for Codebase, Avalanche’s official accelerator.

The money behind it

Team1 is the Avalanche ecosystem’s global community arm and claims 500 members across 50 countries. It received a $1.15 million grant from the Avalanche Foundation in December 2024 for community support and expanding operations.

The Builder Grants are administered independently by Team1 and are separate from Avalanche Foundation grants. The Foundation backed the launch publicly, pointing to Mini Grants recipients across gaming, infrastructure, community tools and developer tooling.

Both tiers are global, ongoing and open to anything building on Avalanche. Applications run through grants.team1.network and the Avalanche Builder Hub.

Team1 attached a caveat to the program when it opened: “High volume of applications and participation does not guarantee funding.”