Gitcoin: Funding What Matters

Public Good Projects Discussion
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-Project Name: Gitcoin

-Project Description and why it’s classified as a Public Good:
Since 2017, Gitcoin has been building tools that enable communities to build, fund, and protect what matters to them. Evolving from a platform that connected developers to projects into an ecosystem supporting open source projects, our purpose now is empowering communities to fund their shared needs.

As Gitcoin continues to evolve and expand its product offerings, it remains dedicated to empowering communities to fund what matters, driving positive change in the world, and shaping a better future together. This purpose guides our work as both an impact and protocol DAO, building and funding tools that facilitate collective intelligence and address coordination failures.

Steadfast dedication to this mission and vision has made our Gitcoin Grants Program the largest quadratic funding event in web3, having allocated over $56M to early-stage builders championing projects across DeFi, climate, open source, and beyond. In this way, Gitcoin is a public good, with every contributor and builder focused on a future where thousands of funding rounds run concurrently, distributing capital optimally and governed by the communities they serve.

Gitcoin by the numbers:
$28.2B Grantee Market Cap (all-time high)
270k Unique supporters
$3M+ fraud prevented
3,715 projects funded

-What have you built:
Grants Stack – Gitcoin Grants Stack is a protocol-enabled solution enabling any community to create, manage, and grow a grant program easily. From deployment and application management to funds allocation, Grants Stack takes the hassle out of running a grants program.

Allo Protocol – Allo Protocol is a set of smart contracts that enable the democratic allocation and distribution of capital. Gitcoin developed the protocol to power the Grants Stack, but is useful beyond grants and quadratic funding.

Gitcoin Passport - Passport is a flexible, easy-to-use developer toolkit for protecting projects against bots and bad actors. It helps users build robust online reputations and enables project leaders to create trustworthy digital experiences that keep out bots and Sybil attackers.

-What’s next if you receive funding:
Funding from Octant Epoch 2 will fund future OSS rounds during GG20 and deploy community QF/RPGF rounds with Octant/ Gitcoin aligned ecosystem partners.

-Funding needed: We would like to request $200K GG20 OSS QF Round + $200K for QF/RPGF Rounds with Octant/ Gitcoin aligned ecosystem partners. This funding would be used to help to fund Grants for open-source projects primarily focused on developing on top of or advancing the broader Ethereum and/or Web3 industry.

-To Date Project Funding Sources: We have received funding from Optimism RPGF, Ethereum Foundation, Vitalik Buterin, and fundraising through various NFT collections in addition to the support of different donors over time who have also contributed to the gitcoin.eth matching pool.

-Links & Resources:

https://twitter.com/gitcoin

https://twitter.com/grantsstack

https://twitter.com/gitcoinpassport

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Also sharing here a quick update on the funds from Epoch Zero:

Earlier in the year, following the return of Kevin Owocki, we refocused on progressive modularization as a strategy. This is important for us as an org because each round can operate independently, promoting ease of maintenance and upgrades.

This refocus brought us back to our roots in GG19 with three program rounds: Open Source Infrastructure (OSS), ETH Infra, and Web3 Community. Of the 258 ETH received from the Octant Epoch Zero round, a significant portion of those funds were used towards matching for the GG19 Web3 OSS round:

  • Matching Pool: $200,000.00
  • Matching Cap: 7.420%
  • Crowdfund: $297,252

Reflecting on the OSS round, Sejal Rekhan explained on the Gitcoin Governance Forum how we opened our eligibility criteria to allow for more variety in the grantee pool. This better reflected our value for credible neutrality and our recentering on progressive modularization. Despite being an overall smaller round than GG18, we attained our goal of raising $600k directly from the community.

The contributions from Octant with Epoch Zero helped to enable continued progress and significant improvements and innovations. Notable features include a Passport Sliding Scale, Matching Estimates, Explorer Landing Page redesign, Collections for donors to delegate funding decisions, Report Cards for round operators, and Passport UI Improvements. Epoch Zero’s results in July exemplify that public goods funding fuels decentralized governance encourages community support, and fosters innovation. The results we have seen from GG19 are proof that those investments bear fruit.

In total, across GG19, $1,094,662 was distributed across 471 projects through three program rounds. The breakdown for the other two rounds (ETH Infra and Web3 Community) is as follows:

Ethereum Infrastructure:

  • Matching Pool: $200,000.00
  • Matching Cap: 10%
  • Crowdfund: $58,723

Web3 Community & Education:

  • Matching Pool: $200,000.00
  • Matching Cap: 7.420%
  • Crowdfund: $138,687

As we move forward from here, we want to explore how to continue the partnership with Octant and its’ wider ecosystem of partners. We plan to send a temp check on our ideas for Epoch and look forward to feedback and the next steps. We are aligned with many of the partners in that ecosystem, and our privilege would be to support those projects with web3 grant funding allocated through Quadratic Funding.

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Thank you for such a detailed write up!

& thank you for touching on this point, as the improvements and progress for the Gitcoin products are definitely noticeable from my POV on the outside.

This as well, and we are also looking forward to it!!

Quick question @Sov, over the past 2 rounds if I remember correctly, the funds from Octant were split 50/50 into operations and rounds that you run. For the matching pool, does that split up evenly, or is there any weight applied there?

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Thanks @james appreciate the kind words and all the work you do. Adding a quick response here for clarity.

For the above we chose to keep the funds allocated to the OSS Round as we felt that best aligned with the values and focus of Octant and spirit of our partnership.

With that being said, we would be interested in exploring opportunities for focused community rounds with Octant and your wider ecosystem of partners using through Quadratic Funding or other mechanisms and would be open to using current funds that have been awarded and potential future funding streams (like we have requested for Epoch 2). Maybe we can connect to this end and discuss what some opportunities for those kind of activities might look like in 2024.

Thanks again!

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Thanks for the update! The latest Gitcoin grants round, GG19, was the smoothest yet. I can see how far the process has come from a grantee perspective and I’m appreciative for all the work the team is doing to make that possible.

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