Section 1: Problem & Impact
What specific Ethereum problem are you addressing?
Ethereum has invested deeply in collective infrastructure — but often overlooks the inner architecture of collaboration.
Gitcoin grants fund public goods teams doing vital work. But after the grant hits a multisig, how the funds are shared within those teams often lacks structure, visibility, or intentionality. While Gitcoin tracks project-level transparency through tools like karma.gap or Dune dashboards, the human layer — the dynamics of peer contribution, trust, and shared accountability — remains largely unmeasured.
In many teams, there’s no shared method for recognizing individual efforts or redistributing value accordingly. This isn’t because teams are unethical — it’s because we lack lightweight, culturally-aligned tools that help teams have these conversations safely and consistently.
The result? People quietly leave. Contributors stop showing up. Tensions go unspoken. And projects that look fine on-chain may be eroding off-chain.
Why is this urgent and significant right now?
Ethereum is entering a new phase of pluralism and multi-mechanism funding, aiming to evolve beyond one-size-fits-all grants. But while distribution mechanisms multiply, the “last mile” of internal allocation is still under-addressed.
DAOs, mutual aid groups, and open-source projects often operate with blurred roles and shifting commitments. But when funding arrives, they fall back on informal or founder-led decisions about “who gets what.” It’s not ill intent — it’s a lack of structure. And it leaves contributors feeling uncertain, undervalued, or disconnected.
We need shared, culturally sensitive tools that support internal alignment, reflection, and fair peer-based recognition — before tensions arise.
What evidence supports the importance of this problem?
In our research with Ethereum contributors, we found that when internal distribution feels unfair, most don’t speak up — they just stop engaging. As one contributor put it:
“You don’t want to be the one who asks, ‘Why did I only get 10%?’ So you just… drift away.”
— Collabberry Interview, 2024
We’ve seen this in dozens of projects: a mismatch between internal contribution and external distribution that is felt, but rarely named. This is a coordination challenge — and one that impacts trust, retention, and energy across the Ethereum ecosystem.
Meaning Check: How do you know this matters deeply to users?
10+ teams already use Collabberry monthly to align internal value distribution. They’re not chasing metrics — they’re trying to build environments where contribution is seen, and trust is sustained. When value flows reflect lived experience, people stay. They show up fully. They co-create with care.
We’ve learned that the health of a team’s inner dynamics is often the biggest variable in long-term project success. When trust is strong and value is shared fairly, people stay. They show up fully. They co-create with energy and care.
This is where meaning lives — not in dashboards, but in the invisible (so far) agreements between people who build together.
Section 2: Sensemaking Analysis
What sensemaking tools did you use?
We used a blend of relational sensemaking, team reflection loops, and ecosystem research.
Collabberry itself is a monthly sensemaking tool: teams rate each other’s contributions, generate TeamPoints, and co-create shared agreements. These structured peer exchanges surface tensions and create alignment — lightweight, yet meaningful.
Beyond usage data, we drew from cultural research — especially “Compensation in Early-Stage Teams” by @migrenaa, which explores how fluid roles, power dynamics, and social risk often prevent fair conversations around value. It reflects what we hear in Gitcoin-funded teams: the need for trust-based tools to support equity before tensions escalate or contributors drift away.
We also referenced Gitcoin’s internal reflections, especially this community synthesis, which highlights how post-grant distribution can lead to disengagement, silence, and structural ambiguity. The pattern is clear — and it’s common.
What sources did you use for this analysis?
- Feedback from 10+ CollabBerry-active teams
- Contributor interviews + reflection cycles
- “Compensation in Early-Stage Teams”
- Gitcoin ecosystem sources:
We also cross-referenced:
Coordinape
-
→ Peer allocation is powerful, but often lacks context and agreement structure.
Kernel
-
Kernel Curriculum | Not a Startup Accelerator
→ Centered on trust, care, and inner development over extractive hustle.
Metagov
-
→ Advocates for modular, culture-aware governance — validating CollabBerry’s composable trust layer.
How did you aggregate your data/findings?
We synthesized across usage data, interviews, reflections, Gitcoin research, and chatGPT as anggregation tool. Together, these point to one truth: without peer-aligned tools, even values-driven teams face misalignment and quiet burnout. CollabBerry🤝Gitcoin is our offering to close that gap.
Section 3: Gitcoin’s Unique Role & Fundraising
How can Gitcoin uniquely help solve this problem?
Gitcoin is more than a funding platform — it is a cultural steward for the public goods ecosystem. As it embraces multi-mechanism pluralism, it has an opportunity to support not only how funding is distributed to projects, but how it flows within them — among the humans doing the work.
Collabberry offers a lightweight, peer-aligned mechanism that teams can adopt after receiving funds. It helps contributors recognize each other’s impact, create simple agreements, and distribute grants in a way that feels earned, not assumed. While Gitcoin already tracks project-level transparency through tools like karma.garden and Dune, what happens inside a team — who’s seen, supported, and sustained — remains largely invisible.
This is where Gitcoin’s unique role comes in: as a meta-coordination hub, it can validate internal fairness as part of what makes a public good legitimate — and offer teams the means to practice it.
Why does a network solve this better than any single org?
Because it’s a cultural challenge, not a technical one. Individual teams might not prioritize fairness without guidance. But if Gitcoin makes space for tools like Collabberry, internal alignment becomes an ecosystem norm — soft accountability, powered by trust. Gitcoin is uniquely positioned to:
- Encourage teams to reflect on their internal distribution and contribution practices
- Offer Collabberry as an optional but trusted post-funding mechanism
- Set a new norm: internal clarity and trust-building are part of what it means to be a credible public goods project
This kind of ecosystem-wide soft accountability — opt-in, human-centered, but structurally supported — is something only a meta-coordination hub like Gitcoin can enable.
Fundraising Reality Check
We are not proposing a dedicated domain for Collabberry at this time. Our core need is Gitcoin’s endorsement, visibility, and signal-boost — to help more projects recognize internal fairness as essential infrastructure for regenerative work.
Although, if Gitcoin or any partner sponsor see value in this proposal we’d be open to evaluate a Collabberry focused domain, although we’d prefer to partner with other aligned domains, if any.
Section 4: Success Measurement & Reflection
What specific outcomes will show success within 6 months?
Within the next 6 months, we aim to achieve:
- 5–10% of Gitcoin-funded teams using Collabberry to guide internal post-grant value distribution
- Launch of two features*:
- Benefactor Feature to connect and automate flow from external grants to peer-assessed allocations
- Token Distribution automation to execute payouts via SAFE multisigs
- Two published case studies capturing how teams used Collabberry to navigate fairness, tension, and internal trust among Gitcoin community and funded projects.
- Inclusion in at least one GG24 domain as an optional round alignment tool
These are clear, actionable targets that show not just tool usage — but team-level shifts in how value is recognized and shared.
*The launch of these features depends on we getting the money and the extra dev support we need from it. So curious if the community can spot out any opportunity
How will we measure genuine impact beyond activity metrics?
We’ll look for signals that trust is actually growing, such as:
- Contributors expressing more clarity and satisfaction about how value was distributed
- Teams voluntarily continuing to use Collabberry beyond their Gitcoin grant period
- Public reflections of how funds were allocated — even when imperfect
- Other ecosystem actors beginning to explore internal fairness as public goods infrastructure
Satisfaction Test: What will make the Ethereum community genuinely glad we funded this?
If even a few teams can say:
“We handled a hard conversation better because of this,”
then this work has value. And if Gitcoin helps teams not just get funded — but stay in trust while building — it will have shaped a more resilient, relational future for public goods.
Section 5: Domain Information
Are you proposing a domain for GG24? If so, please elaborate.
We are not proposing a standalone domain for GG24 at this time. Collabberry is a complementary mechanism that can be adopted across existing domains — especially those where contributor coordination and shared accountability are key (e.g. DAOs, mutual aid collectives, open-source teams).
That said, if interest (and/or +50k sponsorship) emerges for a domain centered on internal fairness or team-level legitimacy, we would gladly support that vision — either as stewards, collaborators, and tool providers — especially if funding is available to support teams that adopt Collabberry practices.
Our current goal is to serve the GG24 ecosystem by offering a ready-to-use, opt-in mechanism that reinforces trust, clarity, and contributor recognition inside already-funded teams.
Who will be the domain experts?
If Collabberry is used within a domain or as a mechanism across domains, our team will serve as stewards:
- Migrena Milena – Collabberry Founder, Engineering & Smart Contract Infrastructure
- Gustavo Segovia – Collabberry Lead, Strategic Vision, Community & Partnerships
- Daniel Ospina - RnDAO instigator and Venture Studio Representative
- Advisory support from partners in the Allo.Capital and Metagov ecosystems is plausible.
Which mechanism(s) will you be pitching to run the domain on?
We are offering Collabberry as a voluntary mechanism teams can adopt post-grant. Features include:
- Agreements: Shared expectations around value
- TeamPoints: Monthly peer-contribution feedback
- Benefactor Mapping (TBD): Connect grants to internal allocations
- Token Distribution Automation (TBD): Payouts via SAFE multisigs, based on peer-aligned data
The mechanism is light-touch, opt-in, and doesn’t require changes to Gitcoin’s core round infrastructure.
TBD features are planned already, depending on confirmation on dev and financial support they might be ready for GG24.
Do you foresee the domain including multiple sub-rounds?
N/A