It’s budget season! Get the TLDR of the TLDR in the workstream section below
If you would like to receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
Hot Topics:
-
In Future of the Grants Program, Annika presents how “we envision separating the product, program, and services components of Gitcoin Grants into distinct efforts.” The open source protocol is “a software stack to run & manage your entire grants program by yourself.” The Gitcoin Grants Program you know and love today is “likely to be a super-user of the protocol” that will continue to fund public goods. The protocol will allow for much more though as it will offer services to “effectively advise funders on how they might deploy capital and help them in deploying that capital through our protocol.”
-
Based on feedback, Owocki asks “Does the DAO need a decentralization essential intent?” The DAO could ratify such an essential intent to further it from “its roots as a company” and establish clear guardrails.
-
Looking at the next 12-18 months, Kyle asks “What does Gitcoin look like if we are successful in achieving our Essential Intents?” Today, GTC is primarily used as a governance token to vote on workstream budgets and ratify Grants rounds. In the future, the DAO could build out “more formal proposal process (i.e, number proposals, clear format for different types of proposal - protocol improvement, governance process change, operating norms, etc.)” Further, the Grants program is planned to vastly improve over the next 18 months and it is critical to ensure governance results reflect the community’s sentiment by making governance engaging and rewarding.
-
Owocki makes a post characterizing the Sybil Resistance problem as undermining “the legitimacy of blockchain-based democratic pluralistic processes.” A solution to this problem would be “the bedrock of Gitcoin Grant’s legitimacy.” Sybil Resistance needs to preserve privacy, exist on a spectrum, and continue evolving with Gitcoin Grants.
-
Closing the Gap between FDD and Gitcoin Passport Sybil Defenses by Joe Cook lays out the dual strategies Gitcoin uses to minimize the influence of Sybils. The Sybil Account Detection (SAD) model uses a “human-in-the-loop machine-learning pipeline” to identify and eject accounts. Gitcoin Passport is proactive and lets users “provide evidence that the user is a real human” such as through Twitter, Google, BrightID, or ENS verification. Both these systems are imperfect and deliver differing results but together they form a composable stack that can be used in creative ways.
-
Owocki announces that season two of The GreenPill Podcast will focus on Digital Identity and Sybil Resistance! The first episode from the new season features Bryan Ford, who leads the Decentralized/Distributed Systems (DEDIS) lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).
Gitcoin Governance Overview:
Snapshot polls GTC Holders and Tally performs on-chain actions. Proposals that have on-chain steps, such as budget requests, move on to Tally after being ratified on Snapshot.
Active Proposals:
Proposal Discussions:
- PGF Budget Request
- Moonshot Collective Budget Request
- FDD Budget Request
- MMM Budget Request
- DAO Ops Budget Request
Latest Completed Proposals:
Workstream Discussion: Season 15 Budgets 
Public Goods Funding
- Budget Request: $664,550
- + 60 Day Reserves: $443,033
- - Treasury Balance: $900,000*
- Treasury Request: $207,583*
- This budget covers 12 full-time contributors and 5 part-time contributors.
- One of our goals for this season is to set up “the grants program for a transition into a protocol world.” As Grants 2.0 is developed by GPC, we’ll help define the protocol, how funds should flow, and how to determine if a program is within scope.
- We’ll also keep running our quarterly grants round and improve our policy and process for determining grant eligibility. The grassroots efforts we run will continue to highlight grantees and funders in weekly spaces. Lastly, we’ll aim to increase the amount of sustainable funding for Gitcoin grantees by growing net new S15 matching funds and partners by 25%.
- Visualize the budget
Moonshot Collective
- Budget Request: $415,121
- + 60 Day Reserves: $180,000
- - Treasury Balance: $346,901*
- Treasury Request: $248,220*
- This covers 8 full-time contributors and 1 part-time contributor. We’ll be running lean with two teams of 1 PM and 2 devs each. We’ll also have 1 dev and 1 designer helping GPC with core protocol work.
- One of our teams will focus on building on our partnership with Optimism by developing two modules for their use of the Grants 2.0 protocol: one for quadratic voting, and one for MACI (minimal anti-collusion interface). Combined, these modules will allow Optimism to quadratically weigh private on-chain votes.
- Our other team will be working on identity staking – creating a new avenue for GTC utility, and building on top of the Passport protocol. In doing so, we’ll create a tight feedback loop with GPC and help prepare the protocol to be built on by communities outside of Gitcoin.
- Visualize the Budget
Fraud Detection & Defense
- Budget Request: $349,500
- + 60 Day Reserves: $233,000
- - Treasury Balance: $350,000*
- Treasury Request: $362,500*
- This covers 8 core contributors and 5 trusted contributors.
- We will continue to ensure matching funds are allocated as optimally as possible by operationally executing the fraud detection & defense needs of the grants rounds. Our goals for Grants Eligbility are to have an average time to review less than 48 hrs and an average time to appeal resolution less than 96 hours. We also want to understand the impact of Sybil accounts, mitigate contributor fraud, and estimate fraud tax.
- We are starting an initiative to empower the community by sharing raw, anonymized data and enabling the crowdsourcing of data insights.
- In addition, we will be assisting the Gitcoin Product Collective with operational insights, quantitative analysis, and algorithmic/mechanism design research.
- Visualize the Budget
Merch, Memes & Marketing
- Budget Request: $417,543
- + 60 Day Reserves: $278,362
- - Treasury Balance: $522,970*
- Treasury Request: $172,935*
- This budget is for 4 full-time contributors and 12 part-time contributors
- In season 15, our focus will be on three key areas: Protocols, Grants Programs, and Community.
- For Protocols, we will be focusing on discovering and refining product-market fit by conducting customer research, creating content, and working closely with our partners.
- For Grants programs, we will grow awareness, comprehension, and participation in grants rounds by upgrading our marketing strategy, developing runbooks, and creating templates to share with partners.
- For Community, we will deepen engagement, improve brand affinity and empower members to champion our vision. We will grow our social media channels and engagement while hosting more events (both IRL and virtual) to expand our community.
- Visualize the Budget
DAO Operations
- Budget Request: $293,146
- + 60 Day Reserves: $195,431
- - Treasury Balance: $750,000*
- Treasury Request: $0*
- This budget covers 4 full-time contributors and 11 part-time contributors.
- After season 15 budgeting, we anticipate having $270k USD in surplus to be sent back to the DAO treasury.
- We have two overarching priorities: rebuilding trust with workstreams by delivering immediately helpful results and building a habit of accountability that focuses on delivery.
- For community and governance, we will focus on increasing DAO Citizens engagement, creating a clear onboarding process, improving governance documentation, and engaging at least 80% of stewards to vote on all formal proposals.
- On the People Ops side, we want all core and trusted contributors to receive a quarterly peer review, provide workstreams with compensation recommendations, and assist contributors transitioning from holdings.
- On our support team, we will try to resolve support tickets within 20 hours on average, and make sure the current state of the Grants program is reflected on our Knowledge Base within 10 business days of changes.
- Visualize the Budget
Gitcoin Product Collective
- Our first seasonal budget request for $983,429 covers 13 full-time contributors and consultants. It was executed on-chain August 3rd as we transitioned from Holdings into the DAO.
- Visualize the GPC Budget
- Other Updates:
- Round Manager: We deployed our contracts on Optimism and implemented high-fidelity designs. Our latest demo shows our end-to-end application from creating a round to approving an application.
- Passport: Our latest blog post explains why identity protocols are so important in web3 and how we’re building the infrastructure for a decentralized, verifiable, identity.
- Grants Hub: We finalized our S15 roadmap, mobile designs for project verification, a v1 User Research Report, and are looking to be production ready the week of Sept 5th to 9th. We’re also building out support for connecting multiple wallets, switching networks, and applying to a round. Our latest demo shows off our progress!
* Number may be affected by changing GTC price
Upcoming community events
-
Drop in on our weekly DAO Vibes on Wednesdays at 4:00 PM UTC on Discord! We have been seeing great attendance and engagement and we would love for you to join us.
-
Join our weekly Public Goods Library on Discord! Tune in every Wednesday at 3:00 PM UTC! This week’s topic: "Towards Permissionless, Community-Driven Funding” hosted by Julia from MMM. Send a DM to @_madison_adams to be added!
New to GitcoinDAO?
Help us improve the Gitcoin Digest by interacting with this pol.is! Add your own statements and vote on what others have put forward. Remember to check back regularly to vote on new statements. Thank you! 