i recently set out trying to visualize the topology of gitcoin.
my goal with this cartography project was to map out the the flow of capital/tokens / flow of value at gitcoin, and the points of accountability that govern them. the hope is that having a visual helps with understanding of how gitcoin functions as a political economy.
given conways law(a principal that states that the communication structure of organizations influences the systems they design) i felt this might be an important piece of information for those trying to understand/navigate gitcoin.
At devconnect, I set out to update/simplify this diagram.
The below diagram:
simplifies Gitcoin into two protocols (perhaps eventual sideDAOs), both with billion $$$ TAM potential.
for the purposes of mapping out the value flows within gitcoin’s ecosystem, i mapped allo/grants stack as two sides of the same go to market. one is the protocol go-to market, the other is the no-code go-to-market.
moves service providers between the protocols, reflecting their ability to work with either protocol (and perhaps in the future, take work outside of gitcoin). while they will continue to be funded by GTC treasury, this diagram does not reflect that fact bc the diagram is protocol-centric.
adds a blue box denoting the value flows between each unit (and the size of each treasury).
This is great. We appreciate seeing the evolution of your diagrams related to growth & development.
A thought that occurred is how useful a tool like this would be that allows a grants round management team to plug in their own variables to display the evolution of their native ecosystem & how funds are allocated. Resulting in many case studies for other community leaders looking to replicate successful models.
that is an interesting idea. id be interested in sponsoring the creation of such a tool. perhaps it could be linked from or forked from https://reportcards.gitcoin.co/
I would like to join a variety of discussions about the Gitcoin products. Each product / group / workstream should have a decidated public chat for faciliating feedback.
I would also like to see the clikable version of the resource, so that I can navigate between the projects and join the discussions / beta testing of the products
Words of praise
I’ve been a long time user of Gitcoin. I am observing constant progress and evolution. The checkout experience across multiple chains was super smooth, genuinely impressive.
Let’s go 10x, let’s add extra “0” to every single metric, including real-life users… That will require some onboarding into Web3 and undoing FTX reputational damage.
Potentially an to expand beyond Web3 - checkout with payment card as a vote - create a custodial / non-custodial / account abstractions wallet on the backend - that would be pretty neat onboarding into Web3.
An easier way to navigate and contribute to various pieces of the Gitcoin DAO ecosystem. Maybe it already exisits? A master google doc / notion page. Or a bunch of links in the footer on the main gitcoin.co website.
Each piece to have a dedicated public (open) chat on main Discord to facialiate feedback
I wanted to update this post with some of my latest thinking about the GitcoinDAO topology.
Before you read this keep in mind the old trop “All models are wrong* , but *some are useful”. That definitely applies here! Take this with a grain of salt, its just one way of viewing things.
Gitcoin 2.2 will be at its best when it leverages best what each of its component parts is good at.
centralized/companies = good at projecting force in a specific direction, organized/coordinated via hierarchical patterns + using socialware.
networks/daos = good at pushing wisdom to the edges + decentralized exploration of the design space. organized/coordinated via decentralized trustware
With this in mind, I present to you… the company/dao mullet!
[Left]Grants Lab is good at things a company can do.
It can market Gitcoin’s software to partners who want to do grants/capital allocation, and provide services to ease the use of that software.
It can build mature web apps (like Grants Stack) that are stable/reliable
[Right]The DAO is a network, it is good at things a network can do (edge based wisdom, decentralized exploration of the design space)
it can explore the craziest frontier new capital allocation builds (MACI, Stream QF, grant ships, conviction voting) etc and bring them back to Gitcoin to be built on Allo.
[Middle] The beauty of this model comes from the synergy of both sides.
Grants Lab brings the distribution to partners, which leads to $$$ flowing through Allo.
the DAO brings the most frontier innovations to the Allo ecosystem.
I believe that one key to being successful in the future is these two parts of the ecosystem working in lockstep!
To do that, I think that we need to build a reliable, accurate, and exciting conduit of context + $$$ flowing back and forth between Grants lab and Citizens.
Each citizens round should be an opportunity to incrementally build Allo into the Allocation layer of the post-tokenization internet. Functionally, the citizens round makes sure to bind the incentives of the Ethereum community to Gitcoin’s by making sure that the best tooling is built in, on, and around Allo. After several successive citizens rounds that orient towards building this flywheel… Its possible we will see the creation of exponential value which compounds over time.
We appreciate seeing the evolution of your diagrams related to growth & development.
to expand beyond Web3 - checkout with payment card as a vote - create a custodial / non-custodial / account abstractions wallet on the backend - that would be pretty neat onboarding into Web3.
