Co-Authored by @sejalrekhan and @M0nkeyFl0wer. Thanks to @jon-spark-eco and everyone else on the Grants Program Team who contributed their feedback and thoughts to this reflection document.
These reflections share some common threads with the assessment of the OSS round. Take a look at that post for more general reflections on the Program Rounds overall. This document will highlight takeaways that are unique to the Web3 Community and Education Round.
Participation Levels
Participation was down overall in GG19 but the Web3 Community and Education round actually grew compared to GG18, the only round where this was the case. That was likely the case because of a very active and engaged community that hosted twitter spaces and events throughout the round and effectively organized and coordinated between each other.
Eligibility and Review
We adopted an inclusive approach, allowing almost any project to participate unless it was identified as a scam. This may have made it more difficult for donors to navigate between all the choices and also spread out the limited matching funds even wider than usual. We intend to continue to explore effective ways for the community to have a say in our round eligibility rules as well as the process of selecting projects for inclusion in grant rounds.
Identifying and verifying projects in the Community round continues to be challenging due to the number of submissions and the fact that most of these projects only have a basic website or social media accounts. In contrast, with Open Source Software (OSS) projects, the process is more straightforward because these projects have a Github repository. The accessibility of GitHub code allows for easier assessment of a project’s legitimacy, offering a clear and direct way to validate the authenticity and quality of the work involved.
Conclusions
The web3 Community and Education round continues to be the most fun you can have changing the world for the better. It attracts a wide range of projects and people from around the world and results in new networks being formed and network effects that have potentially huge implications. There is always room for improvement and we are excited to deepen our work with the community to make these rounds as awesome as possible.
