[Discussion & Feedback Request] GG18 Round Eligibility

[alexalombardo]

Thanks for this, excited for GG18!

I must say that each season, I struggle to fully understand the naming and criteria of these rounds.

I’d love to know a bit more about the thought process behind these rounds - sort of like how VC’s have investment theses.

I know these are rounds we’ve done in the past, but as our program evolves I’d love to better understand how we are thinking about how these rounds - and the names we give them - will help us achieve our goals for Gitcoin, our products, and the wider ecosystem.

I’d also love to better understand what data we’re looking at when making these calls.

Community, for example, seems quite broad - we all have communities, in fact, the word has been somewhat abused in the space. So what do we really mean by this? In that same vein, education is also something many orgs embed into their practices without it being their main goal/objective. It’s just a must for the space. Education is often just a byproduct of whatever the organization is actually trying to achieve. And orgs solely focused on education are often less successful at onboarding because newcomers dont necessarily set out wanting to learn web3, but they discover it through an organization that speaks to their passions. My concern is that some of these names feel like catchalls but actually end up not resonating with groups doing some incredible work to move the space forward, onboard users, and create vibrant communities. Would this be the home for art, music, culture related groups? If Schelling Point were to apply, would this be its home?

Furthermore, these criteria feel very unspecific, leaving much room for subjective interpretation, which opens us up to scrutiny from rejected projects. Maybe we’re intentionally vague, but then perhaps we need some kind of disclaimer (do we have this?)

Additionally, the broadness of the categories makes it confusing for grantees to know where to put their applications (as @PaigeDAO points out), and also make filtering challenging for donors looking for projects in a specific area. It means they might ignore a category that actually has projects they might be interested in.

And lastly, curious how we are thinking about the matching partners we want to attract and how we position these rounds/set the criteria.

I’d love to know more about how the PGF team is thinking about this and what insights/benchmarks are guiding our decisions.

[claudioac]

Looking forward to support GG18 through the Meta Pool DAO and help projects from emerging markets.

We are committed to help individuals, organizations and other DAOs that are taking part of GG18.

Sometimes gas fees are what is stopping individuals from contributing or participating. We want our liquid staking platform to be a source of support for anyone that is struggling with payment of gas fees.

This is our first attempt to onboard more projects from Latin America, Africa and N/S East Asia as well, we will be sharing more information on this

Excited for what is coming ahead!

[carlosjmelgar]

@jengajojo Can you please message me with some of those groups you mentioned, will take a closer look. Thanks for flagging.

@jengajojo

As an active builder in the Community & Education space, i suggest we ask the applicants for specific metrics in order to judge if the content being created is actually having an impact. These could be in the form of

• videos or pictures such as @carlosjmelgar 's web3beach initiative
• views, subs and open rate for content,
• specific onboarding outcomes such as user testimonials which converted newbies into local ambassadors, practical problem solvers or became full-time web3 are the best sources of evaluation.

This is a great suggestion. Other rounds are easier to evaluate using onchain metrics. We should make an effort to compile data from educational efforts to quantify their impact. I also agree with the “how to’s”, we should be looking for educational use cases that have real impact.

Web3 community and education are very closely related in my pov. Splitting them up might also make them smaller and require they me removed from core round status.

@PaigeDAO - This is a great point you bring up, thanks. If it’s not Open Source is it still apublic good, and we also have to ask if it will ever become open source in the future. Not sure what the answer is here but it’s worth discussing more.

Thanks for feedback here @alexalombardo . Seems the only name you would consider changing is Web3 Community and Education. This terminology is pretty standard in the industry grants . I’m curious to hear your suggestions for new names and reasoning for them. I can’t think of many alternatives but would be cool to explore something that encompasses the goals of increasing adoption, which requires educating new users on the tech and principles of blockchain.

Optimism recently used “End User Experience and Adoption” and eligibility criteria is pretty straight forward (maybe vague?) “Work that provided impact to end users in the Optimism Collective, or helped bring new end users into the Collective”.

@alexalombardo

Community, for example, seems quite broad - we all have communities, in fact, the word has been somewhat abused in the space. So what do we really mean by this?

Big fan of projects working to create adoption through art, music, culture. I agree that many people don’t want to enter the space and be bombed with cryptography, decentralization, and consensus right away. Merging the tech with personal interests and growing into these topics is the a great way to create meaningful adoption. I think Schelling Point is a perfect fit for this category.

@alexalombardo

Would this be the home for art, music, culture related groups? If Schelling Point were to apply, would this be its home?

@claudioac So excited to have you and the Meta Pool DAO onboard! Thanks for your interest in supporting emerging economies.

[PaigeDAO]

Thank you @carlosjmelgar for picking up on all these good points made by our great community.

I’d like to confine my comments to my question about OSS & Eth Infra (though am intrigued by the Community & Education discussion thread, too!).

My additional thoughts are these:

We have a compelling example of how an open source tech project can be easily privatized by acquisition from a savvy player (OpenAI). So a tech build project getting its genesis funding as an open source project does not guarantee it will remain that way.

In fact, I am prone to see it this way: That if the core/ genesis build team of a project, esp software or Eth Infra, are given the means to build a (temporary) moat around their work, they will be more incentivized later, at the post Beta stage, to flip it open source.

Why?

Because when devs, creators, builders are given the means to profit from their hard work and efforts at the beginning, we are more likely to HAVE the means to turn the project open source once it passes a certain stage.

It’s the basic tenet of ‘put the oxygen mask on yourself first.’

Since I am wont to imagine IRL equivalents to exemplify scenarios, here is one for this instance. What if you are planting a vegetable garden. You have your small plot of land and you till the soil, you nurture it, you fertilize it and then lovingly, you and your family plant the wonderful vegetables you know will help nourish yourselves and your kids. However, for some odd reason, this little plot of garden has been mandated to be ‘open source’. Even though it’s your hard work, your money, your inspiration, your creativity that has gone into developing it. As such, right at harvest time, a swarm of laggard extractors come along and pick off all the good vegetables, the ripe tomatoes, the fresh cucumbers, the wonderful squash and spring onions. And leave you with nothing but the seeds.

What do you tell your kids at the dinner table then?
Sorry, kids. Because it’s an ‘open source’ garden, we get to do all the work but aren’t allowed to enjoy the harvest?

IMO (humble) I believe we need to re-think this. I also believe, as mentioned above, that Open AI is a good illustration of what ‘open source’ can become. I feel we need to remember that humans require compensation, remuneration, and incentivization. Otherwise, in certain cases, we are vulnerable to the highest bidder.

MEME that I am certain you are all more than familiar with. (The tiny brick at the bottom - in case you are wondering - is the Gitcoin Grantee from Eth Infra who is not allowed to build a moat around their work at least up until post BETA).

[DarylEdwards]

GM and thanks for communicating eligibility requirements so clearly!

I’m hoping to get some additional clarity for the various networked communities that had individual, sovereign nodes within their communities rejected or approved in the Beta round, depending on the community

We believe this was as a result of application of this rule:

@koday

A single grantee OR organization cannot apply to one or more core rounds with more than one grant.

Since the logos of the different groups are similar, without more information, we understand how it could have been perceived that a single project was applying multiple times. That said, this is a new form of organization, and each local project decides autonomously whether to affiliate itself with the larger meme, which makes it easier for them to attract interest and therefore multiply their impact.

That said, Eth communities are known to be separate but loosely affiliated groups with separate finances, and the same is true for both Green Pill Chapters and ReFi Local nodes. In the Beta round, Eth communities were permitted to participate in main rounds, whereas Green Pill Chapters and ReFi DAO Local Nodes were not.

Here you can see the list of addresses that participated in the ReFi DAO local nodes round, most of which are multisigs, controlled by leadership teams in the location of the corresponding local node. You’ll notice that each multisig has different signers
0xd4AC6c14B4C96F7e66049210F56cb07468028d4e
0x526C9C964440EBc308Ac95f3Df68feB5673A4714
0x728b09639453F3047E36D063C64C91b3871aFD92
0xD0352D08AA93C9bc9C79d2B3a53846DCd7c9cb92
0xbeB6eC09cA65397684c8AFA9683e5Ce8ee9021F3
0xc2F578304931B42D6Ac9adb6523450C7eB36B03E
0x8aa890c35C41cC8FbfE76a5f73bC00a1B7366829
0x9bc53dE4FB5f3a15F731294c8461b9403eB7f70a
0x037Eb04AD9DDFf984F44Ce5941D14b8Ea3781459
0xC117d2f70BE4A766e7F3e055547E7C5403D447BC
0x3fB0D1e89693b8709de60d835452a4712d1c9B04
0xFA9b7D81a8fCeBE6e0cE2938963DB2cCd3cD178f
0x4707a2eed70e95184b74e24f396433640bcd7d54
0xF2D56514164C24D732a66B50d4068335ce86Cf7d

In summary, I’m looking to open the discussion and create some clarity and opportunity for support of the amazing work that is being done in both the Green Pill chapters and ReFi Local Nodes all around the world.

Are there adjustments that need to be made? Additional information included in the applications? What can we share with all of these communities that will help them get approved?

Many thanks!

[thedevanshmehta]

Thanks for writing this up @koday !

I wanted to raise some concerns regarding selection/deletion of core round categories. The beta round had a snapshot vote to choose core rounds, but it seems like no such process was followed for the upcoming one? Was the decision to remove zk made ad hoc by team members or was there some due process that was followed ? On a related note, @Joel_m analysis shows that DeSci is worthy of its own round given the high participation rates, so what would the process be to have it as a core round?

Re: the discussion by @jengajojo , @alexalombardo & @carlosjmelgar to revisit the nomenclature for web3 community & education, i know that there is some interest from Vitalik and others in a decentralized journalism round. This name might actually make the metrics for evaluation more clear: even if you are running a Schelling Point like community event or beach clean up, attendees need to produce * some * digital content from it like a tweetstorm or mirror article, on the basis of which on-chain accountability is maintained & evaluation can be performed

[KarlaGod]

I think these eligibility criterias are appropriate.

[0xshawnali]

I attest to what DarylEdwards is saying. ReFi Cape Town is fully sovereign in terms of administering our finances and strategy. We decide autonomously what we do regarding vision and mission.

[humpty]

Thanks for the post @koday. Is there recommendation on which network to choose when setting up the project on builder .gitcoin .co? I see there are four options including OP and PGN.

[carlosjmelgar]

You can use any of the chains to create the project, but will need to choose the correct chain when applying to the round. This depends what chain the round is deployed on.

[humpty]

Great! So we should know by tomorrow when GR 18 applications are opened on what chain to apply, correct?

[muguika]

Hello there! just a big +1 to Daryl comments… I’m one of the co-founders in ReFi Costa Rica, we are fully autonomous, we managed our fund from the past Gitcoin campaign as a team, independent from the ReFi DAO team and other nodes. We are a community, we support each other as much as we can, but each node has a different context, focus, decision making structure and finances. We are doing a fantastic and much needed work on the ground, sharing ideas about ReFi, web3, onboarding new users, supporting emerging projects, educating… it was a bummer that we were not allowed to join the Web3 Community & Education Round last time. We are open to explain better this context in the next round, or provide other proof as required!

[watacchi]

Hi guys!
We are excited to participate GG18.
Happy to see Web3 community & education in the category!!

[TempeTechie]

Hi, not sure where to post this, but there are problems with Twitter & GitHub verifications via the Gitcoin Builder website.

I had problems with both verifications over the past couple of days. About 30 min ago I tried to verify my project’s Twitter and GitHub again, but still no luck. I did notice that something was changed in Twitter verification since yesterday, but it still does not work.

How can I get in touch with devs to share the steps and error messages?

It’s an important issue, because without a verified GitHub projects cannot apply to GG18…

[meglister]

Hi @TempeTechie – thank you for posting! I’m so sorry that you’re experiencing issues applying to the round. There is a change on Twitter’s (I mean X!) end associated with their rebranding that we are updating now. We are also actively working on a fix for Github – it is our top development priority at the moment, and I’ll respond here when it’s fixed.

For any product issues in the future, you should contact our support team by opening the Intercom chat widget on any page of Grants Stack!

[TempeTechie]

Thanks Meg, I found the issue on Gitcoin’s GitHub (/gitcoinco/grants-stack/issues/2100), I’ll follow the progress there.

[meglister]

Hey @TempeTechie , the github issue is now fixed! Please feel free to reach out via Intercom with any other issues!

[playertwelve]

@koday

There will still be a general requirement that projects cannot have raised “significant external funding via venture capital, token launches, or NFT sales”, however, the threshold could vary from round to round, and previous grant money will not be treated the same as these sources of funding.

Hi there! Could someone provide some idea about what this ‘significant funding’ could mean? I understand that the previous number was USD 500K. But this wording is slightly vague - would this mean $1M, $5M of funding, or anything less/more?

[magic]

Need help on GG18 application
Currently getting ready to apply for GG18, but stuck here at github verification.

The project is not officially launched yet. The plan is to go live on the test network in mid-August, and officially launch the main network and open source code at the end of August. There are a few questions here:
1, if I participate in the GG18 application and verify my github account, will the community see the code after verification? We don’t think it’s appropriate to open the code to the community at this stage;
2, in order to apply for GG18, we support the code to be open to Gitcoin only and review our code, of course if 1 issue and will not be open to the community, there is no such problem.
3、If it has to be open to the community after verification, can it not be verified. Just set gitcoin in github so that it can also be reviewed.

It is not reasonable to open the source code if the project is not yet online. Hopefully this will solve my problem here.

Thank you
Looking forward to reply

[TempeTechie]

Thanks, I was able to successfully verify GitHub and apply to the grant. Everything works as it should now