Growing the Public Gardens: Gitcoin Community Round Results
Growing Gardens Communities through Quadratic Funding
TL;DR
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Successfully concluded a community round focused on growing Gardens ecosystem projects
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$30,000 total matching pool jointly sponsored by Gitcoin and 1Hive
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Round operated on Arbitrum network on Gitcoin
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Used Connection-Oriented Cluster-Matching (COCM) for Sybil resistance
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Notable projects like Token Engineering Commons, Public Nouns, and several chapters in the Greenpill network received strong community support.
Round Overview
The “Growing the Public Gardens” community round represents a collaborative effort between Gitcoin and 1Hive to support and expand the Gardens ecosystem. This initiative demonstrates our commitment to fostering decentralized community funding through Gardens, empowering projects that contribute to the growth and sustainability of public goods.
Key Metrics
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Total Matching Pool: $30,000 USDC
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$20,000 contributed by Gitcoin
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$10,000 contributed by 1Hive
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Total Donations: $4,210.57
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Platform: Arbitrum Network
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Matching Algorithm: 100% COCM (Connection-Oriented Cluster-Matching)
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Passport Integration: 100% of addresses scored using Passport
COCM Implementation
The round utilized pure COCM matching (100%) rather than traditional QF or blended approaches. This choice was made because:
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Round size (<$50k) made it optimal for pure COCM
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Provided better weighting for established community members
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Full Passport integration on Arbitrum provided robust Sybil resistance
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Removed front-end authentication requirements of Passport while maintaining scoring benefits
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Improved matching for projects with strong community connections
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Protected against potential manipulation through isolated wallet clusters
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Reduced friction for donors while preserving security
Notable Projects
The top 5 projects by matching funds received were:
- 1Hive Gardens
- Token Engineering Commons
- $EARTH
- Treegens
- GreenPill Brasil
Here’s the full list of projects with matching funding amounts earned in the round:
The projects earning the most matching funds demonstrated strong community connections as evidenced by their positioning in the COCM visualization’s “meaty core” - showing genuine community support rather than isolated donation patterns.
Analysis & Insights
You can view the round results in Gitcoin’s QF Calculator. The COCM visualization revealed a healthy distribution pattern:
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A dense central network of interconnected donors and projects
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Strong community overlap between successful projects
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Limited peripheral or isolated donation patterns
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Some projects (including Passport, ironically) saw reduced matching due to disconnected donor patterns
Looking Forward
This round establishes a foundation for future Gardens ecosystem funding initiatives. The success of the COCM implementation and Passport integration provides valuable insights for future rounds:
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Confirms the effectiveness of running rounds on Passport-supported networks
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Demonstrates the value of pure COCM for community-focused rounds
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Shows the strength of the Gardens community in supporting ecosystem projects
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Serves as a Proof of Concept for integrating QF and Conviction Voting via Gardens.
In future rounds we can gauge the traction of the Gardens communities for this round’s beneficiaries and incorporate success benchmarks in project eligibility for future QF funding. This will help give projects clear growth targets and performance benchmarks they can use to measure the success of their communities on Gardens and continuously improve.
Next Steps
The round operators will proceed with:
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Funding the round contract from both sponsor safes
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Finalizing results using the Grants Stack dashboard
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Processing payouts to grantees through the safe
The Gardens Core Team will proceed with:
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Developing resources like How to Grow using Gardens further to help with healthy adoption of the Gardens platform.
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Providing ongoing support for beneficiaries on Gardens - helping projects source decisions and allocate resources with Conviction Voting so they can grow their communities as effectively as possible.
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Incorporating feedback from communities on the Gardens platform so we can continually improve and serve their needs better.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to:
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Gitcoin and 1Hive for their matching pool contributions
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Gardens Core Team for building and releasing the best conviction voting app to date.
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Gardens communities for rallying their communities and actively participating
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Let’s Grow DAO for their tireless promotion of GG22 and this Round in their 24/7 Space
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Round operators who brought their extensive experience to ensure a smooth execution
Conclusion
The “Growing the Public Gardens” round successfully demonstrated the power of quadratic funding in supporting decentralized community initiatives. Through careful technical implementation and strong community participation, we’ve taken another step forward in growing the Gardens ecosystem.
Our next step is to support beneficiaries in using Gardens to maximize the ROI of the investment of their matching funding in their communities. This will take a combination of hands-on guidance, incorporating user feedback, and trial and error of the first experiments that are now possible with Gardens new modular conviction voting stack.
If successful, we plan to offer this round again in GG23 and going forward to further improve the link between QF + QV, increase GMV for Allo Protocol, and most importantly, grow the decentralized communities and ecosystems that depend on this technology to thrive.