Gitcoin 3.0: The Road to GG24

🌱 Gitcoin Grants
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Gitcoin 3.0: The Road to GG24

We announced a large shift within our strategy and vision of Gitcoin, specifically the grants program (which will be our core focus moving forward). Below I aim to outline the roadmap of how we’ll pave the way to GG24. Gitcoin Grants has a renewed focus on “Funding What Matters.” Where Ethereum funds its foundations and future.

Thank you to @owocki, @deltajuliet and @Sov for your valuable input into this post.

We no longer maintain our own software, which opens an exciting opportunity for the community to step in and build. For GG24, we’re partnering with Allo Capital to develop the foundation infrastructure (QF/Retro), and we’re actively looking to the community to take ownership of building the outer layers of that infrastructure (GTC utility tooling, COCM, etc). In future rounds, we plan to transition further toward a fully community-driven ecosystem. If you have infrastructure/software you would like us to consider, please fill in this form.

TL;DR

  • Gitcoin 3.0 is focused on Ethereum’s biggest problems. We are evolving with Dedicated Domain Allocation (DDA) - matching specific funding mechanisms to distinct problem areas
  • Sensemaking grounds funding in real needs, ensuring DDA drives impact—not just activity.
  • GTC holders will vote on domains for GG24 based on sensemaking analysis and ecosystem validation
  • Each domain gets tailored funding approaches designed by practitioners who understand both the challenges and opportunities
  • A phased approach from sensemaking through to retrospective analysis ensures capital flows where it can create maximum impact for Ethereum’s future

Evolution

Historical Context: Gitcoin began as a pioneer in Quadratic Funding (QF), dedicated to Ethereum Digital Public Goods and Culture. Our success in scaling QF laid critical groundwork for broader impact from GG1-GG23.

Moving forward, we will continue the work that started with GG23 in expanding the aperture from QF to multi-mechanism. To effectively do so, Gitcoin will lead with sensemaking, which will in turn inform Dedicated Domain Allocation - as a router to move capital between.

Why sensemaking matters: Sensemaking is the backbone of Gitcoin 3.0—it ensures that capital is not just distributed, but deployed where it can meaningfully fund Ethereums foundations and future. Rather than defaulting to familiar mechanisms like QF, we start by deeply analyzing the ecosystem’s most urgent challenges, validating them through visibility, viability, and community signal. This upfront rigor makes sure the domains we fund are grounded in real needs, and that each receives a mechanism tailored to its context. Without sensemaking, DDA risks becoming performative; with it, we align funding strategy to actual impact.

What is DDA: Dedicated Domain Allocation routes capital to where it can have maximum impact. Instead of running a series of QF rounds for everything, we identify Ethereum’s biggest challenges, engage domain experts to design appropriate funding approaches, and deploy mechanisms tailored to each problem area.

The concept emerged from Ethereum Foundation research in April 2022 and was popularized through the work of Questbook (most notably with Compound and Arbitrum). We hope to scale it even further with the help of the wider Ethereum Community.

Why DDA matters: Quadratic Funding works for what it was designed for—we’ve proven that through 23 successful rounds. However, Ethereum’s challenges require more than one funding mechanism. It requires a practical pluralism of mechanisms. Some problems need patient capital for research, others need quick deployment incentives, and others benefit from retroactive funding for proven impact. Some problems require a wide network of participants, some require a small band of technocrats to engage.

Our approach includes four key components:

  1. Sensemaking: Rigorous analysis of challenges and opportunities across the Ethereum ecosystem, validated through fundraising potential and community endorsement
  2. Domain Definition: Clear boundaries and measurable outcomes for each focus area (5-6), ensuring resources are concentrated where they can generate the most impact
  3. Expert Engagement: Deep collaboration with proven domain practitioners who understand specific challenges and can design funding approaches
  4. Tailored Capital Allocation: Deploying the right mechanism for each domain—from QF to retroactive funding to direct grants to venture-style investments

Gitcoin Grants 2024 (GG24) will implement a structured, five-phase approach to revitalize our impact in the Ethereum ecosystem:

  1. Sensemaking: Identifying high-impact problem areas through rigorous analysis and validating them through fundraising potential and visibility tests
    Sensemaking Szn for GG24 will kick off the week of June 9 through a finalized framework posted to the forum, including clear criteria and expected outcomes. This Sensemaking Szn will run for 4-6 weeks.
  2. Establishing Domains: Creating specific focus areas through a transparent, community-driven process
  3. Campaign Design: Developing targeted funding outcomes tailored to each domain
  4. Campaign Execution: Implementing the designed campaigns effectively
  5. Retrospective Analysis: Learning from outcomes to improve future rounds

This framework balances structured methodology with practical market validation, ensuring we focus our efforts where we can make the greatest impact while securing the necessary resources and visibility.

Gitcoin Grants 2025: The Roadmap to GG24

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Phasing

Phase 1: Sensemaking (June-July 2025) Identify Ethereum’s highest-impact challenges through analysis and ecosystem validation. We’ll surface problems with community input and participation where targeted funding can drive meaningful change and secure community endorsement from key ecosystem leaders.

Sensemaking Szn for GG24 will kick off the week of June 9 through a finalized framework posted to the forum, including clear criteria and expected outcomes. This Sensemaking Szn will run for 4-6 weeks.

Phase 2: Domain Selection (Late July 2025) The community chooses priorities. GTC holders vote on 5-6 domains to receive focused resources, with funding allocated proportionally based on community conviction. Think prediction markets for ecosystem priorities.

Phase 3: Round Design (August-September 2025) Domain experts design tailored funding approaches. Each selected domain gets the mechanism that best fits its challenges—QF for community-driven projects, retroactive funding for proven impact, direct grants for research, or hybrid approaches.

Phase 4: Coordinated Execution (October 2025) GG24 launches with synchronized campaigns across all domains. It offers a unified experience for applicants and donors, with real-time support and monitoring throughout the round.

Phase 5: Impact Analysis (November 2025) Measure what worked. Transparent reporting of outcomes, capital efficiency metrics, and community retrospectives that inform our approach for GG25 and beyond.

Call to Action

This represents continued evolution across our history, from pioneering and scaling the concept of novel funding mechanisms to systematic optimization across multiple funding approaches.

That said, success depends on the community (all of you) throughout the process.

How to get involved:

  • Join the sensemaking season starting in June to help identify priority domains
  • Participate in domain selection voting as a GTC holder
  • Apply to serve as a round manager for domains that match your expertise
  • Provide feedback on this roadmap through the comments below

The ecosystem challenges we’re addressing require collective intelligence. Your knowledge, connections, and insights influence where capital flows and what gets built.

What domains do you think deserve priority funding? Which funding mechanisms should we experiment with? What ecosystem challenges require urgent attention?

We would love to hear from you. Please drop your thoughts below!

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I really love this renewed vision which IMO it is just doubling down on WHAT MATTERS; Community Engagement, Wisdom of Crowds, Sense of Belonging and so on. People come for the money but stays for the community and Gitcoin 3.0 is all about empowering communities, so this alone created a win-win flywheel for every stakeholder.

I’m really bullish into the “between rounds” activities, as this will be key for maximum value creation and engagement “during & after the rounds”, also by going beyond QF, we can really fund nuances & edge cases at scale; there are no silver bullets, we gotta experiment!

Shifting into specific domains derived from deep sense-making with the community will enable the GG Program to become an “Outcomes-based” Grants Program, which will make it easier to assess its Impact.

  • Cross-Chain Governance Tooling & Research
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Gitcoin has its work cut out for it given the scope of this change over the next several months! The platform feels like it’s going through puberty… in its awkward middle school years… shapeshifting as it figures out its final form.

That said, the emphasis here on a process that can bring us multi-mechanism, “practically pluralist” public goods funding is a fantastic direction and I love it.

Some requests for GG24 based on experience with previous rounds and with other web3 grant programs:

  • Stronger focus on Capital Formation. To date, community-sourced funding in Gitcoin rounds has been focused entirely on donations, which limits their potential economic impact. It’d be a huge unlock if multi-mechanism Gitcoin meant driving innovation in community fundraising just as much as capital allocation, with different ways for projects to raise funds from their happiest users/members in ways that aren’t strictly altruistic.

  • GTC’s “utility” is that it’s a governance token. Holding GTC gives you a say in the future of Gitcoin, and its journey to sustainably scale the best public goods possible for the Ethereum ecosystem, and then for the world. Let’s make sure this is driving any new processes set up involving $GTC, and not just crafting degen tactics to make the price of the token go up that usually boil down to “get people who aren’t well-connected with Gitcoin’s vision to buy tokens.” Very happy to see Gitcoin 3.0 prioritizing this here :point_down:

  • Whenever possible, resist the urge to solve funding problems from the top down. We all have a bad habit where we default to solving program challenges by instituting top-down governance. More eligibility criteria, more committees reviewing proposals, longer applications with more questions, more and more hoops projects have to jump through to get funded. These are super discouraging for projects to navigate, tend to filter for the wrong applicant skillsets, and most important, they don’t take advantage of the grassroots, pluralistic growth possibilities unlocked by crypto. Basically, there’s no good reason to believe a web3 grants program governed from the top down would ever outperform the most effective offchain grants programs. So let’s strive to build programs where the right projects simply get the right funding (and I say this as a community round operator in GG23 that had WAY too many hoops for projects to jump through…)

As Project Lead for the Gardens Platform and Round Operator for the GG23 Gitcoin Grants Garden, I’d love to offer our help in GG24 where we can be useful. Especially for continuous community sensemaking governed by $GTC (see our Pain Points of Ethereum signaling pool in GG23), and in any capital allocation domains that might benefit from Conviction Voting. I’ll submit the Supplier Intake Form for us.

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Thank you @MathildaDV for sharing the roadmap to Gitcoin 3.0 - GG24
I believe it will be greatly appreciated by the entire community — donors and grantees alike. Many of us are deeply interested in the journey toward GG24 as it is pivotal for Gitcoin future.

Positioning Gitcoin 3.0 as an allocator rather than just a platform is, in my view, a bold and forward-looking move. I also appreciate the structured roadmap — the five-phase process brings clarity and helps outline the path ahead over the coming months.

That being said, I have to admit — this brings up quite a few questions.

About sensemaking

  • How will the sensemaking process be validated?

  • What data or inputs will we available to help us trust the selected domains?

  • Are you planning any dashboard or report that shows the outcomes of the sensemaking process?

  • Can you please share an example-driven explanation of what sensemaking looks like in practice?

About domain experts

  • Could you please provide more details on how domain experts will be selected, whether they will be compensated, and how their accountability will be ensured?

  • Will the identities of these individuals be made public?

About Gitcoin Guilds?

  • Where do you see Gitcoin Guilds fitting into this roadmap?

I’d love to hear thoughts from @owocki and @kylejensen on the role of Gitcoin Guilds in the journey toward GG24 too.

About Gitcoin Council Members?

Where do you see Gitcoin Council members in this roadmap?

Happy to hear input from @deltajuliet @owocki @sov @kylejensen too

Some of these align with the Cypherpunk Goals from the Ethereum Foundation:

  • Open Source — which supports keeping at least one of the 5–6 rounds in GG24 as a continuation of the 3 OSS rounds from previous GG events, ensuring ongoing support for current open-source projects that might otherwise go unfunded.

  • Security

  • Financial Self-Sovereignty

  • Privacy

  • Active Deployment of Cryptographic Tools to Protect Civil Liberties

  • Scale L1

  • Scale L2

  • Improve UX

  • Protocol improvements

  • Protocol-level research

  • Open dashboards. datasets, and studies

  • Who can join the sensemaking season, and how can they join?

  • How to participate in the domain selection voting?

  • What is the process for applying to serve as a round manager after the domains are selected, and how are candidates chosen?

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@owocki and I will be posting tomorrow on sensemaking! I’ll be posting a fully fleshed out Sensemaking Szn Framework that will answer all your questions here and where I would highly encourage you to also join the conversation.

These are all valid questions. When domains are pitched and ratified, experts will be confirmed. The exact structure of this will be baked out while we do sensemaking.

Guilds form the core part of our community engagement, so I see all engagements going through the Guilds. A Round Operator guild will kick off this month as well which IMO is high priority. All other guilds will have the opportunity to host workshops/design sessions etc and become a lot more involved on a tactical level in accordance to this roadmap.

The council will drive decision-making alongside other GTC holders throughout this new structure, as GTC voting will remain the core of our governance for GG24!

All your questions are valid, esp around who can fit in where. It’s made me think that we can do a better job at outlining exactly what this looks like to the community.

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Awesome, really appreciate the quick replies! Super excited for the Sensemaking Szn Framework :green_heart:

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kudos to the multi-mechanism approach! The industry does need diversity in allocation mechanisms and Gitcoin is delivering!!

While I see the ecosystem providing a rich ways and alternatives to allocate capital from sponsors/pools to project/teams, I’m wondering if there’s a manifested need in the Gitcoin community to go one step further and provide mechanisms for allocating capital from project/teams to contributors.

Coordinape provided a solution in this realm, although we have find it to be difficult to use and unconsidered towards people expertises and skills. At Collabberry we have deployed a new solution that aims to solve these issues with principles rooted in simplicity and fairness.

I’m wondering if this extra-mile allocation is something the Gitcoin community is interested in integrating with the first line of distribution. So looking for the community feedback in this thread, still, I gave applied already to the Supplier Intake Form.

For getting an extra context, our team have prepared this article that expands on this vision on building for the entire chain of capital allocation:

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on top of the already mentioned:

  • Ethereum Localism
  • Capital Allocation Protocols
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Before jumping into our comment, thanks Matilda for drafting this comprehensive GG24 roadmap.

Our first impression of this roadmap is quite positive. We found it well-structured, with well-thought-out gradual phases that build upon each other to reach the final goal, which is none other than a successful GG24. Moreover, this roadmap materialises the “Gitcoin Grants 2025 and Beyond: Funding What Matters Most in the Ethereum Ecosystem” proposal, continuing to fund what matters most in Ethereum.

Another thing that we found interesting is how this roadmap combines the trend of professionalising DAOs, including experts and specialists, without excluding the community from the decisions that will shape the next Gitcoin Grant. Undeniably, the community is what makes Gitcoin special and this roadmap involves them when their voices matter the most, while letting professionals sort out the implementation of decisions taken by GTC holders.

Therefore, the progression from sensemaking and community vote, to expert implementation makes sense to us, and it would be really interesting to participate in Phase 5. However, Phase 4 is where we have the most questions, as we don’t find clear examples of how the coordinated execution across multiple domains would actually work in practice. We’re curious about:

  • Who would be involved in conducting phase 4?
  • How are we going to ensure simultaneous campaigns don’t compete for the same donors or attention?
  • How are we going to keep communication standardised across multiple campaigns if they are carried out by different teams?

Most of our questions were already raised by Ivanmolto and responded to by Mathilda. Based on those responses, we’ll wait until we have more details of the roadmap phases to provide feedback and understand how we can get involved beyond driving the decision-making with GTC holders!

When it comes to this question:

What domains do you think deserve priority funding?

We believe that Ethereum’s building efforts and focus should be on abstraction. By abstraction we mean relieving users of complicated tasks, solving them with user-friendly interfaces which end up being intuitive and easy-to-use everyday tools. Therefore, this category can encompass lots of different subcategories like:

  • Security: Abstract security matters from users’ hands with interfaces that handle that for them, such as account abstraction.
  • UX: Create UXs that abstract complexity from users, giving them easy-to-use tools related to DeFi, bridging, and similar activities.

Other topics to consider are:

  • Scalability.
  • ZK implementations to improve/create security and privacy tools.

Lastly, to ensure we’re aligned with Ethereum’s needs, we shouldn’t lose sight of its roadmap. Therefore, our suggested domains align with it. Just as a reminder, the next key areas in Ethereum’s roadmap can be summarised as follows:

  • The Surge → Tackling scalability issues.
  • The Scourge → Keeping the ecosystem decentralised.
  • The Verge → Tackling verification issues.
  • The Purge & Splurge → UX improvements to support broader adoption.

All in all, we’re super excited about the Gitcoin revamp and happy to keep working towards improving the Ethereum ecosystem whilst keeping our close ties with the community.

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