[GCP - 017] UPDATED - Proposal for Fiat Donations in Grants Stack

📝 Citizen Grants
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Keep in mind this resource: Grants Stack GraphQL indexer - possible to fetch the data on viaPrize to have all rounds, all projects, purely as a backup, in case 1-class Grant Stack integration not accomplished in time.

If you are not working everyday with these data structures, it takes some effort to figure out the correct query (but I did it anyway, see this GitHub issue), that’s why help / support / dev time from Gitcoin core contributors is practical, one way or another.

I would love to support BUT the bounty seems excessive.

Where is the money coming from? :unicorn: You cannot guarantee the $GTC token performance. In fact I’d rather bounty in $GTC and mutual exchange of the viaPrize tokens. Ideally viaPrize can becoime a new crypto onramp payment system financial system lego block and becomes public good :sunglasses: In terms of new financial systems: just imagine a coffee shop and by buying there you become a shareholder of the place, genuine WIN WIN WIN.

The $100m is totally aligned with the vision: How might we scale Gitcoin's Impact from $50mm GMV to $500m GMV? 📈

RELATED: https://transak.com/ (buying crypto reasonably easy, something to keep in mind)

Maybe use this https://www.privy.io/ maybe use some open-source alternative. I do not like the vibe of managing custodial wallets, that’s a honeypot for hackers. Need to think about about OPSEC and INFOSEC (security in general) from the start.

Also in terms of governance: don’t mix 4 questions in into one.

  • create 4 separate votes
  • create a single vote with all 16 combinations
  • maybe some convenient Snapshot feature to ask 4 questions separately

Currently the vote is clear NO to me, needs rewording :innocent:

EDIT / UPDATE / RELATED:

The cashback in $DON… That’s also kind of logical. Inspired by the UK regulation - when donating, cannot receive anything in exchange. Donation token = hacker mindset, finding loopholes, treating regulation as a guideline. Technicaly speaking there is nothing wrong with it. Maybe in 5 years the courts will decide otherwise, but in the meawhile I see this as a genuine pathway to adoption. It is the role of visionaries / entrepreneurs / builders to push the limits of what is possible. It is morally ethical and acceptable in my book, even though the UK charity regulator may not like it.

Initially suggested in legacy twitter thread on May 20. We can design Web3 onboarding experience :seedling:

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this is an interesting proposal, and i believe Gitcoin could def benefit from fiat donations — would love to see the integration happening, given that tech & ops details are aligned. good luck!

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Ok update talking with Meg that we need to look more into the legal side of this. She said she’d connect me with some lawyers to chat with

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@meglister update, called Bridge.xyz (stablecoin service being bought by Stripe) and they have money transmitter license
It’d cost $2,000 /mth and 0.40% transaction fees
So we have a solution we are testing though it’ll cost us

And we also would use non-custodial wallets if there’s concerns about the MTL so that’d also cost Privy.io fees

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nice – would also love to learn more about how we can verify unique wallets/users!

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Currently using “paypal verified users” as sybil protection, that’s explained more fully in this post We Donated to Gitcoin Projects with Credit Card! - Review of PayPal Fiat Payments in GG21
Looking for other options (with slightly cheaper fees and perhaps more options than PayPal): Just had a call yesterday with people from Visa who explained next steps to work with Stripe (this has been a looooong process) to get API to verify someone’s legal name with credit card checkouts and bank transfers

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Also we can use Circle wallets as Circle has MTLs and that’s available on Arbitrum, not on Celo or OP. So far I’ve called 4 lawyers including the MTL expert Gitcoin recommended and I’m setting up calls with another several groups who might have MTLs and an API

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@katalunia is the bridge multichain feature on grants stack live?
Would love to try it

Just realized perhaps we can use circle programmable wallets on arbitrum and use bridge feature for rounds on celo and op.

Also i called brale who offered us a better deal than bridge and they have MTLs

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hey Noah, yes the bridge feature is live and you can use it by donating to any GG22 project. Let us know when you have another proposal ready! Telegram chats are probably the best way to coordinate.

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Update:
Chatted with @sejalrekhan and @James of fire eyes hearing advice on how to structure pricing.
Suggestions were to make an upfront one time set-up fee.
And also to have a performance bonus paid out in GTC and for it to have a cap.

So 3 parts are:
-One time set up cost
-Ongoing tx fee
-Performance bonus

Performance bonus could be something like x amount of GTC per 1 dollar processed through us up to x amount within the first 1-3 years

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Results from GG 22: 48.08% of GMV volume flowed through fiat in the rounds that worked with us to include that option We are founding a new company to add fiat payments straight to your smart contract: normie.tech
Specific stats: $55669.75 in total donations to the 4 rounds we supported
$26763.78 came through our fiat integration

500 users able to fund public goods on-chain with 0 friction of onboarding to crypto

Meeting with Gitcoin team in Bangkok our team will be staying at the Allo house, will discuss proposal and update! :slight_smile:

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I was a grantee in the Land Regenerators Round, which experimented with disabling Gitcoin Passport and allowed the same match impact for crypto and Paypal’s donations above $5, and will share my perceptions about it.

  1. Crypto donations are transparent and can use social graphs to flag collusion, while Paypal donations can’t. I have been in rounds where a project was flagged because it distributed crypto funds to wallets that then donated back to the project. In Paypal Rounds this is not possible to flag.
  2. Paypal is a northern company unknown in the global south so its use obviously benefits grantees from Europe, USA, Australia and other Paypal markets. It makes obsolete the saying “I came for the money and stayed for the tech/community”, doesn’t incentivize learning about web3 tools, financial autonomy or public goods and brings in legacy finance intermediaries culture.
  3. Not clear to me whats the point of using web3 infrastructure if the round doesn’t consider web3 reputation and security. Seems to me like if crowd wisdom was replaced by individual agency in convincing tech able donors. It could be done in a web2 way just using the QF formula, Paypal could fund a matching pool and do it within their network, the Paypal Rounds.

I praise the experimental aspect of a Land Regenerators round, so worth analyising the results to prevent unwanted outcomes in the future. We participated in joy and are very grateful for the dedication of operators, grantees and donors. Will use our funds carefully over the next six months. They represent ~0.8% of a matching pool of 200k distributed among 30 grantees.
In our end, thanks to the support we had in past rounds we built a small treasure and will continue stewarding food forests irl and onboarding people to web3 public goods, and will start managing the funds in a multisig with local team newbies. Resilience in practice.

I understand and respect if this is the intention of @metahands the Land Regenerators Round, but truly hope that @jon-spark-eco, Coreen, the CCN and Gitcoin consider these aspects in community before accepting fiat in future rounds.

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Hey Diogo! Great feedback.

  1. Super intriguing point. I’m curious @umarkhaneth thoughts on this
  2. Great point. Though PayPal is available in most all countries, by far most existing users are western countries. I’m wondering if we can get bank account transfers through Stripe and Visa card payments instead (we’re trying to get API access that lets us check people’s legal names for sybil defense.) Do you think that would have the same issue or be an improvement?
  3. My thought process towards this is that web3 users can still choose to rely on more privacy preserving on-chain sybil defense while also allowing anyone to participate. I love the ideal of democratization in web3, but if we build platforms that my mom can’t use then what are we democratizing?
    Definitely agree that these points should be considered :slight_smile:
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i think the biggest problem with PayPal isn’t related to the flow between ViaPrize, Grants Stack, Sybil Defense and the “user”, what Diogo explains is something that could be “exploited” big time if the Red Team figures out a way to join the Round as a Grantee but also Attack the Round via PayPal & Fiat donations unless some other security measures are implemented after the donation is made via FIAT.

If no verification is made on the payment because it came from a “verified PayPal address”, then this is a choke point for Red Team to exploit due to how cheap it is to get Verified PayPal Accounts out there.

If you get this API to verify people legal names, this doesn’t mean this is not an attack unless you KYC every transaction beyond the “verified” status coming from PayPal.

Bank Account transfers via Stripe won’t clear instantly and kinda defies the purpose; for the Cards via Stripe scenario, I would say this one is way more secure as long as 3D Security is enabled via SMS to verify cardholder actually is making the transaction, if Visa/Mastercard 3D security is done via Email or Pin Codes then it has a higher degree of a malicious transaction.

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Hi Noah, thanks for the reply.

  1. Also looking forward to hear other toughts, @wasabi Wassabi was on the spot in his comment
  2. Here is a table showing the inequality involved in using these northern intermediaries:
    image
    image576×1280 76.8 KB
    . India and Brazil really underperform. CC to @thedevanshmehta
    Source PayPal use by country 2024 | Statista
  3. The best way to onboard newbies imo is through purpose and usecase. If in your example your mother didn’t learn how to have autocustody and participate in the rounds it’s because there are not enough incentives for her to go through the trouble of learning. This is why every Gitcoin grantee is incentivized to concentrate their efforts in onboarding community. Gitcoin community is aligned with this democratic Purpose. We have to cultivate this commons soil, spread the news and more users will join. Fair funding allocation already creates a lot of network effects, believe me. We’ve been onboarding unliterate rural brazilians because they believe in our purpose, and if we can learn than I’m sure anyone can. Remember, banks and large companies are not democratic, unbanked people can’t use them. Your mother however can use web3 platforms because they are indeed democratic, but maybe she just haven’t seen the Purpose yet.
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So I think this is a question about the strength of the sybil resistance.
You’re wondering if it is easier to make many verified PayPal accounts than it is to make many wallets that have enough on-chain history to get matching?
We’ve tested it out and talked with the Gitcoin team and found it to be Sybil resistant. I’d encourage you to try it as well and see how well it works then share the results

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Thank you for sharing the stats! >40% in all those countries is actually a lot more than I was expecting.
Definitely agree that work you do onboarding people to web3 who don’t have access to tradfi and bank accounts is AWESOME and exactly the sort of work that crypto ecosystem should be doing that provides value by letting everyone access these systems.
I also think adding in fiat doesn’t affect any of that, it just adds an additional payment method that’s easier so that way more people participate in these blockchain systems, the ecosystem grows, there’s more alloGMV and easier partnerships for Gitcoin as they appeal to wider groups, etc.

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I’m not wondering, I know it is easier to “Make, Buy or Hack” PayPal verified accounts than to make wallets with enough on-chain history that doesn’t look like a Bot to pass the COCM & Passport Model Based Defense.

This is why if your Sybil Defense is “PayPal said this is a verified user” then you have a problem as the introduction of PayPal and other FIAT Methods it is just introducing new attack vectors for; custodian of Fiat, Round Operator, Matching Pool, Grants Stack and Gitcoin as a whole, because those attacks will be “Allow listed” and its weight would count for matching.

Again, if your sybil resistance relies on the data that is coming from paypal then this may be flawed due to how easy is to do “shady stuff” on PayPal.

If you decide to implement other forms of verification that the donation actually came the real customer then yes it becomes way more resistant, PayPal alone won’t cut it unless you introduce “friction” that makes the process safer.

I am not a round operator yet, but if i venture into trying to bring FIAT to my QF Round, i won’t rely solely on what PayPal said as by default PayPal transactions aren’t final and you could get a chargeback even 180 days down the line.

Easy way to improve the actual flow? Do extras verifications on each transaction no matter the amount; you could leverage a Blockchain-native KYC Provider and this could be a Trojan Horse to “Onboard” that person into Web3.

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@noahchonlee My perception is that you basically made it so easy that you brought in every mother, aunt, brothers. sisters, cousins, entire families and friends… but overwhelmingly from the North… am I wrong?

as a personal opinion you would be a lot more democratic for the world if you could take regional QFs to Paypal for folks in these Paypal markets , and regular no Paypal rounds for the global community.

It would be nice if for compensation all the Paypals operators joined a Global South Round

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Ah my apologies. What tests did you already do and what were the results that led to this conclusion?