On December 4 & 5, the leadership team at Gitcoin met to conduct 2025 planning sessions, setting goals and strategy for the following year. You can find recaps below and the deck linked.
Deck: Share_Gitcoin 2025 Planning - Google Slides
Highlights:
- Gitcoin aims to distribute $30M in funding in 2025, up from ~$11M in 2024, requiring significant growth
- Product strategy focuses on verifiable impact, AI integrations, and new funding mechanisms
- Go-to-market strategy emphasizes top accounts, brand leadership, and exploring partnerships
- Team is cautiously optimistic but recognizes ambitious targets will require focused execution
- Gitcoin is pivoting to a multi-mechanism approach beyond just quadratic funding, with plans to innovate on capital allocation mechanisms
- There’s a renewed focus on builder engagement, retention and supporting projects at different stages
- The organization is restructuring into Grants Lab (enterprise-focused) and ALLO Lab (innovation-focused) to better serve different needs
- Gitcoin Grants (GG) program is evolving to include retro funding, futarchy, and other mechanisms beyond quadratic funding
Topics
2024 Review
- Achieved ~$11M in GMV vs $15M goal, with growth accelerating in H2
- Closed 15 partner deals worth $7.2M in committed value
- Shifted from primarily Gitcoin Grants to more partner/client rounds
- Quadratic funding was 75% of GMV, but only 11% of current pipeline
2025 Goals
- $30M in total funding distributed ($25M from Grants Lab)
- 50% of Grants Lab costs covered by revenue in 2025, aiming for 100% in 2026
- Maintain flat expenses while growing revenue significantly
- Focus on shipping quickly and demonstrating impact to partners
Organizational Structure
- Grants Lab focused on partner/client growth
- Gitcoin Grants program as showcase for mechanisms
- DAO focused on community and progressive decentralization
Financial Overview
- $25.3M current treasury, $17.8M post-2025 budget allocation
- Grants Lab aiming for 50% self-funding in 2025, near 100% by 2026
- Expenses remaining relatively flat, with revenue growth as key focus
Product Strategy
- Key focus areas: verifiable impact, AI integrations, new funding mechanisms
- Verifiable impact seen as major opportunity to establish thought leadership
- AI tools aimed at improving grant manager efficiency and experience
- Exploring new mechanisms like direct grants with verifiable impact integration
- Enterprise strategy to balance custom builds with scalable features
Go-to-Market Strategy
- Focus on top targets through account-based marketing and relationship building
- Strengthen brand leadership via thought leadership content and PR
- Explore partnerships to scale GMV without significant resource increases
- Land and expand approach, using services as lever for growth
- Ambitious pipeline targets requiring significant increase in opportunity generation
ALLO Strategy
- Shifting from protocol-first to product-first and category-first approach
- Creating “ALLO Lab” as a new business unit focused on innovation and category creation
- Goals include faster time-to-market, lower cost builds, and creating a network of builders
DAO and Governance
- Improving governance efficiency, transparency and participation
- Implementing a new steward council with high-caliber members who have skin in the game
- Focusing on global builder strategy and positioning Gitcoin as a leader
Gitcoin Grants (GG) Program Evolution
- Moving to 3 rounds per year with OSS focus every round
- Implementing multi-mechanism approach: QF for early stage, retro funding for mature projects
- Experimenting with futarchy and other mechanisms
- Increasing matching pool and working on donor/builder retention
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Thanks for the update! It’s always good sign to see such a strong focus on both the customers and the product. Really appreciate the effort being put in.
I do have a question and a couple of thoughts to share:
- Which market segments and pressing problems will Gitcoin be addressing this year?
I might have missed it if it was shared earlier, but I don’t recall seeing anything recent on this. It would be great to understand the priorities and areas of focus.
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While exploring AI and innovation is exciting, I feel that opportunity for thought leadership alone shouldn’t be the main driver for venturing into such areas.
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About the multi-mechanism future:
Could you share a bit more about the reasoning behind this direction? Have you identified any specific use cases or market needs where combining mechanisms unlocks significant value? At first glance, the idea is exciting, but without clear customer segments or validated use cases, there’s a risk of investing resources into something that may not align with real-world needs. On the flip side, there’s also the potential to miss out on opportunities in this space.
Looking forward to hearing more thoughts on this! Thanks again for the hard work and transparency in keeping us all in the loop. 
Thanks for your thoughts @tomislavmamic . Answers below!
1- Gitcoin will be continuing to pursue large EVM-based grant programs at L2s/protocols this year and focusing on deploying grants to drive ecosystem growth
2- Agreed. There is a ton of overhead in managing grant programs and not a lot of specialized tools to help grants managers. Our focus will be on driving time savings with these tools, like Checker.
3- We believe that grants are best deployed using the right tools for the job vs a one-size-fits all approach. Over the last two years, we’ve seen a rise in retrofunding, futarchy, and now deepfunding, in addition to direct grants and QF. While we won’t focus on building every mechanism out there, we believe that we need to build the ones that will be most popular and effective for our customers.
Just finished going through all the slides, very exhaustive for what has happened in 2024 and whats coming ahead!
I’m especially bullish on the demarcation between grant and allo labs, which respectively focus on enterprise sales & rapid $30k pilot sprints of new mechanisms.
On the recent green pill podcast vitalik mentioned we have room for around 3-5 more mechanisms to fund ethereum public goods (the others being QF, Protocol Guild & RetroPGF, each vulnerable to influencer games, closing off to newcomers & currying favor with badgeholders).
Would it be right to think of Allo as a cost center that is on the forefront discovering the new mechanisms waiting to be built, while labs is a revenue center that is getting business from enterprise clients?
I also appreciated the statistic that 6.5% overhead on grants worked on was earned by labs. Do you think this is a healthy amount or something that can be increased without turning away clients? In the greenpill podcast with juan benet i remember him mentioning that overhead for new mechanisms can go as high as 40%, while we need to do an overall better job of supporting mechanism designers not just the mechanisms
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thanks for your time and thoughts @thedevanshmehta ! Glad to hear your bullishness.
I think we’re still figuring out the right positioning vis a vis Allo and Grant Labs. I do think you’re right that Allo is much more frontier-focused and Grants Labs is focused on enterprise clients.
Based on our experiences over the last year and the testing we’ve done in rolling out pricing, I don’t think there’s a ton of room to grow our take rate. For some programs we charge up to 10%, but this is often the total amount that grants programs budget for operational costs.
I definitely agree with Juan Benet that we need to figure out sustainable ways of funding new mechanisms! Allo Labs is focused on bringing down the cost to get these launched.
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