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:
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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.
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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
- 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.