IMPORTANT - This is a draft direction for Gitcoin 3.1. Digest it, debate it, fork it, make changes. Nothing is official until ratified by @gitcoin governance. The post is for informational purposes only. Do not make any financial decisions based off this post.
[Gitcoin 3.1] TEV value-capture flywheel for GTC
TLDR in 1 sentence
Turn community funding metadata exhaust into systematic alpha generation, creating tokenizable exportable value (TEV) that flows directly to GTC holders.
TLDR in a few paragraphs
Every successful crypto project shows early signals in community funding data before markets recognize their value—Uniswap, Optimism, and countless others first appeared in grants rounds before they were unicorns… This is tokenizable exportable value (TEV) .
Gitcoin 3.0 creates competitive evolutionary pressure on builders to build the dopest crowdfunding and capital allocation technology out there. Access to this tech is dealflow that can be worth a lot. This is tokenizable exportable value (TEV)
Gitcoin 3.1 systematically captures this TEV and exports it through tokenized products, institutional licensing, and managed funds, with all profits flowing to GTC holders.
This transforms GG round community funding from a cost center into the most profitable systematic alpha generation machine in crypto, creating a positive-sum flywheel where successful communities generate more resources to fund the next generation of world-changing projects.
From Sustainability to Systematic Value Creation
What is TEV? Tokenizable Exportable Value (TEV) is the systematic alpha generated from having privileged access to early-stage public goods funding data—essentially predicting the next Uniswap before it becomes Uniswap by analyzing grants performance, network effects, and builder trajectories.
The Vision: Gitcoin 3.1 transforms our Network-First Funding Festival into a systematic TEV generation & capture engine that doesn’t just fund Ethereum —it creates exportable alpha that flows directly to GTC holders.
The Paradigm Shift: From Funding to Alpha Generation
Gitcoin 3.0 established the foundation: a Network-First Funding Festival for Ethereum’s biggest problems through diverse allocation mechanisms. This arena creates competitive evolutionary pressure on builders to build the dopest crowdfunding and capital allocation technology out there. Access to this tech is alpha; its worth a lot. This is TEV.
Gitcoin 3.1 recognizes the real TEV upside opportunity: every GG round generates systematic alpha that’s currently being left on the table. Every breakthrough capital allocation protocol shows early signals in grants data before markets recognize their value. We’re sitting on the world’s largest early-stage capital allocator alpha dataset—it’s time to systematically extract and export that value.
This isn’t about becoming a VC fund. This is about recognizing that funding public goods generates predictive intelligence as a byproduct, and that intelligence is incredibly valuable to the broader market.
The TEV Thesis: Data is the New Oil
Gitcoin processes thousands of projects across dozens of funding mechanisms annually. We see:
- Pre-market signals from allocation performance data
- Network effects patterns from builder-funder interactions
- Domain expertise insights from specialized allocation decisions
- Impact trajectories from longitudinal outcome tracking
Every Uniswap, every Optimism, every breakthrough application shows early signals in our data before traditional markets recognize their value. The alpha is already there—we just need to systematically capture and export it.
Unlike traditional venture capital’s hit-or-miss approach, we have a systematic advantage - better dealflow through volume, velocity, validation across multiple funding mechanisms, and deep vertical expertise.
GTC as the Value Capture Layer
In this view, GTC becomes a gateway to all TEV value:
The entire TEV economy could flows through GTC holders via
- Tokenised TEV
- Tradeable reward token distributed to data contributors, researchers and stakers.
- Liquidity programs keep the dataset fresh and the market deep.
- Gitcoin Alpha Fund
- Rules‑based vehicle that auto‑allocates up to 20 % of each matching pool into the top‑scoring projects (opt‑in by grantees).
- Carry + mgmt fees flow back to the Gitcoin treasury; GTC stakers share upside.
- Institutional Data Desk
- Tiered API + bespoke research bundles sold to Wall St., ecosystem funds and grant makers.
- Open summary stats remain free; premium dashboards gated by GTC or fiat subscription.
This creates a compounding flywheel: More TEV generation → Higher GTC demand → More resources for better GG rounds → Even better TEV generation → Repeat.
GTC holders don’t just govern Gitcoin—they own the systematic alpha generation machine that public goods funding creates.
The Four Pillars of Tokenizable Exportable Value (TEV).
Alpha Monetization: Transform grants data into tradeable financial products, prediction markets, and systematic signals that institutional investors will pay premium prices to access.
Institutional Intelligence: License our systematic TEV methodology to VCs, family offices, corporations, and governments who want exposure to the most promising early-stage public goods projects.
Managed Capital: Deploy TEV intelligence through direct investment vehicles, creating traditional fund structures that generate management fees and carried interest for the GTC ecosystem.
Cross-Ecosystem Expansion: Export the proven TEV methodology to every other project that may have an ecosystem fund, and traditional markets, multiplying the value capture opportunity across all major ecosystems.
The Meta-Game: Positive Sum Value Creation
This isn’t zero-sum extraction. Gitcoin 3.1 creates a positive-sum game where:
- Public goods get better funding through improved signal processing and increased capital flow
- Builders get earlier access to growth capital and strategic partnerships
- Investors get systematic alpha from proven methodologies rather than luck-based speculation
- GTC holders capture sustainable value from the entire ecosystem’s growth
- Gitcoin becomes financially antifragile and independent of grant dependencies
The more successful our grantees become, the more valuable our TEV methodology becomes, the more demand there is for GTC to access that value, the more resources flow back into funding the next generation of world-changing public goods.
From cost center to profit center
Public goods funding has always been seen as a cost center—something that drains resources from productive activities. Gitcoin 3.1 flips this assumption entirely.
We’re proving that funding your ecosystem’s public goods isnt just good business or good karma—it can be the most systematically profitable thing to do when you have the right intelligence infrastructure. We’re turning coordinated behavior into economic advantage.
If successful, Gitcoin 3.1 becomes a template for how more public goods funding should work: systematic, intelligent, self-sustaining, and long term profitable for all participants…
Conclusion
Big crypto projects like Uniswap and Optimism got early funding from Gitcoin before they became worth billions of dollars. If we had been tracking and analyzing this pattern, we could have predicted their success and made money from those predictions. This predictive information has real financial value.
Gitcoin 3.0 makes builders compete to create the best funding tools and platforms. Getting early access to these innovative tools—and seeing which projects use them first—gives us valuable information about what’s coming next in crypto. This knowledge is worth a lot to investors.
Gitcoin 3.1 can systematically collect this valuable information as TEV and sell it in different ways—like data products, investment funds, and research reports—with all the profits going to people who own GTC tokens.
Instead of ecosystem funding rounds being an expense, they become a profit center. The more successful projects we help fund, the better our prediction data becomes. Better data means more revenue, which means more money to fund even better projects. It’s a cycle where success creates more success.
