In the end, I think only a small subset of the market demanded a fully decentralized protocol and wanted QF. IMO what happeend is we got outcompeted by structures that had less high cost of R&D and were post-QF. IMO protocol guild is plenty decentralized/capture resistent. And they ate our lunch (just look at their latest funding numbers). But it turns out that only a small percentage of customers actually cared about that.
There were signs of increased competition years ago ( Web3 Crowdfunding Tool Competitive Landscape ) but we didnt respond fast enough. I also think that in hindsight, spending $300k - $1m/mo on product and operational costs (against almost $0/mo revenue) was completely insane. It was a mistake not to diversify the treasury when GTC was $15. I am also disappointed to see that some IP that we put millions$$$ into was stolen from gitcoin in the 2.0 era, a costly principal agent misalignment that set us back years in terms of achieving financial sustainability.
If you have further comments on what we can learn from the 2.0 era, would love to get more comments on
@divine-comedian i wonder if giveth would be interested in taking this. most of the costs of keeping GS online were borne in the form of gettting the indexer online (which you’ve already done!)