TL;DR: What if we could build a mechanism where Gitcoin donors directly steer “deep funding” towards repositories/projects they care about?
Deep Funding
Deep Funding - a visual guide in 3 easy steps
The existing design for deep funding assumes that it’s possible to create a quality model (or ensemble of models) that sufficiently answers the question: “What is valuable?”
- Even if multiple models are in place this feels like approach of central planner.
- This approach doesn’t appeal to me as a donor. I want to direct my money to projects I care about, not rely on a third party’s determination. I am much more liberal when it comes to money that comes from Gitcoin round sponsors.
- Deep funding also emphasizes good models as a key part of the mechanism. I’d rather have donors drive the mechanism, adjusting rules toward the desired outcome: funding dependencies.
I am going to take part in “model contest” and maybe it would produce good models that I like to use, but really interesting question for me is - can we build better deep funding using wisdom of crowds, instead of AI/ML?
Main Idea is to propose “Adaptive” flavour of deep funding:
- Initialize deep funding by starting with weights in a neutral position.
- Allow these weights to be adjusted through Gitcoin donations.
- Stream sponsor money to projects according to the current weights.
You can imagine this process as donors paying to teach a neural network to steer sponsor funds toward the outcomes they value.
If some donor prefers to use “AI agent” to decide where his funds should go - they could do that in this system.
This is still popularity contest, but thanks to “trickle-down” effect it does better job funding dependencies than current approach where each project in a round is independent.
Example Initial Position:
- “Every dependency gets a fixed share of the matching pool per hour.”
Simple Round:
A round with four projects:
- “Gitcoin,”
- “Gitcoin-Citizens,”
- “Chainlink,”
- “Chainlink-Marines.”
Each starts earning $3/hour. Donating to the “Gitcoin” project would also benefit “Gitcoin-Citizens” (as part of its dependency tree) - but not as much as if we donated to “Gitcoin-Citizens” directly.
Total rate of funding coming from sponsors is some fixed number (e.g. 12$/h).
Key Differences from Gitcoin Today:
- Dependencies:
Projects must declare dependencies (e.g., “Bankless” → “Bankless-London”) or infer them (e.g., software dependency trees). - Trickle-Down:
Matching needs to account for the “trickle-down” effect when calculating final distributions. - Trickle-Up:
If dependencies get donations “upstream” project should benefit as well. - Streaming Matching:
The matching pool could either stream in real-time or calculate at the end of a round.
Considerations:
- Exact algorithms for weight updates/trickle-up/down are required.
- “Initial distribution” could be more complex - something metrics based. It doesn’t need to be perfect, because donors should quickly correct it.
- Projects may excessively split into smaller units to capture more initial funding (happens already).
I am still trying to iron out how such “deep funding through crowdfunding” mechanism could work so would be happy for any feedback or alternative ideas!