Gitcoin Governance Council First Term Retro

🤖 DAO Governance and Vision
1

Hello Gitcoin community!

Since we have arrived at the end of Term 1 of the Gitcoin Governance Council (the ‘Council’), SEEDGov, together with the rest of the Council members, is pleased to share the Council’s first term retrospective evaluation. The first term was far from being a walk in the park. Gitcoin went through several huge structural changes that made it hard for everyone, including us as Council members, to really grasp what was going on and what our role was during these uncertain times. Nevertheless, uncertain times can be seen as opportunities if approached with the right mindset, and this is an idea shared by the members of the Council, who are looking forward to getting engaged in Gitcoin’s new era.

That being said, let’s start with the retro of the Council’s first term.

TL;DR

  • The Council was launched in March 2025, with its first term ending at the end of Q2.
  • Among the Council’s core objectives were facilitating governance processes, supporting decentralisation efforts, stewarding the DAO Constitution, and enhancing transparency.
  • Term 1 failed to deliver on its core mandates due to delays in token delegation (until the end of May) and insufficient guidance from the Gitcoin Core Team.
  • The Council operated at full capacity for just one month and a week, of the 3.5 months which comprised the first term.
  • The Council performed well on individual tasks, but didn’t make significant progress on the four original mandates.
  • While the Council’s structural impact was less than originally expected, given the constraints above-mentioned, valuable work was accomplished.

Term 1 Evaluation Against Original Mandate

In March 2025, Gitcoin launched the Council to bring “structure, accountability, and decentralisation” to governance and transition “from chaos to clarity.”

The Council was tasked with serving as “trusted governance facilitators, ensuring that proposals are clear, actionable, and aligned with Gitcoin’s long-term vision,” with the explicit commitment to “guide but not control” and remain “accountable to the community, with all actions tracked and transparently reported.”

In this context, we had four mandates:

  1. Facilitating governance processes – ensuring proposal reviews, discussions, and voting;
  2. Supporting decentralisation efforts – increasing community-led governance participation;
  3. Stewarding the DAO Constitution – guiding ratification and implementation; and
  4. Enhancing transparency – publishing quarterly governance updates and retrospectives.

As mentioned in the introduction, Term 1 took place during a significant organisational transition for Gitcoin. This transition included the Allo Capital spinout, the shutdown of Grants Labs, and the announcement of Gitcoin 3.0. This new scene undermined the core team coordination and available efforts on governance priorities. While Gitcoin went through this transition, the Council members weren’t always updated about the consequences of it, leading to knowing the outcomes once they were published. These external factors created additional complexity which was beyond the Council’s direct control.

Term 1 Performance:

Facilitating Governance Processes: B Grade. The Council was unable to fully participate in governance until early June due to delays in token delegation. We successfully managed GG23 community rounds through Grant Ships, achieving 100% participation and demonstrating coordination. However, systematic process improvements were limited because we could not participate in Tally governance until late May, excluding us from other decisions during the first four months.

Supporting Decentralisation Efforts: B Grade. Two votes failed quorum before May (treasury yield generation, Wonderland vesting). The Council achieved 100% participation in GG23 governance through Grant Ships, once again proving our decentralised coordination. Following the token delegation in late May, we further decentralised voting power, reducing the quorum dependency on large token holders, therefore facilitating the passage of the latest treasury proposal.

Stewarding the DAO Constitution: F Grade. Zero progress made. This mandate was hindered by a lack of specific guidance on constitutional priorities and an unclear scope definition from core team coordination. This situation left us without clear direction on which constitutional issues to address and how to make progress on this matter.

Enhancing Transparency: C Grade. While due to the lack of operational structure, no systematic transparency improvements were implemented, and the quarterly update was not published, there was individual forum participation, with some interesting and well-received interventions on the forum. Moreover, this retrospective directly addresses the transparency mandate.

As a general note, besides the delegation delay, we could have had a broader impact if we’d been engaging with proposals from their very beginning, not only to provide our feedback but to further engage the community by taking on a moderating role on the forum. This would also have helped us to be less reactive and quicker with forum post feedback.

Implementation Failures

Four fundamental setup issues prevented the Council from executing its mandate:

  • Token delegation delays prevented voting or participation in Tally governance until late May, excluding the Council from major decisions until that point;
  • Communication framework gaps meant that we learnt about major decisions (such as the Grants Lab shutdown) through forum posts rather than advance consultation, contributing to reactive rather than coordinated decision-making;
  • The leadership structure was undefined, as no designated council coordinator was established to track deliverables and coordinate with the core team, resulting in missed opportunities, such as the development of the constitution;
  • External organisational transitions including Allo Capital spinout and Grants Labs shutdown, created scope confusion and stakeholder uncertainty that impacted governance clarity and community focus.

The constitutional development mandate is a perfect example of these structural challenges, where we received no guidance document outlining specific constitutional issues to address. On top of this, there was ongoing confusion over the Allo Capital scope, which affected both community proposal submission and council evaluation processes. Even recent Allo Capital strategy documents failed to clarify the relationship and respective governance responsibilities.

Governance Impact Assessment

The fundamental question is:

Has the Council improved Gitcoin’s governance effectiveness after 3.5 months of operation and community investment?

And the answer is no.

Despite the Council’s potential when properly enabled, the core governance problems remain unsolved:

  • Proposal-to-decision times haven’t improved;
  • Community participation in governance hasn’t increased measurably;
  • No systematic transparency improvements have been implemented; and
  • The DAO still lacks a constitutional framework.

This means that Gitcoin’s governance remains dependent on ad hoc coordination by a small group of active stewards, precisely the problem the Council was created to solve. The Council successfully distributed voting power and provided governance services, although operational constraints and external organisational transitions limited the scope of structural improvements.

Council Contributions Despite Constraints

While structural improvements were limited, the Council provided valuable services, including:

  • Comprehensive GG23 application review and 100% participation coordination;
  • Grant Ships governance facilitation and stakeholder feedback;
  • Proposal evaluation requiring substantial member time investment; and
  • Cross-ecosystem perspective bringing governance insights from other DAOs.

All in all, the Council enabled some community participation in governance processes, even though broader structural mandates remained unaddressed due to operational constraints.

Conclusion

When it comes to closing this retrospective assessment of the Council’s first term, there are matters that can’t be left out of consideration. The uncertainty that most of those involved in Gitcoin experienced whilst our first term was taking place can’t be glossed over. As mentioned, this transition delayed the implementation of full-capacity of the Council whilst undermining the availability of Gitcoin’s core team to provide the needed guidance to allow us to achieve our core objectives for this first term. Nevertheless, when duty called, we believe that our performance lived up to expectations, just as can be seen through our participation in GG23 and the cross-ecosystem perspective that we bring to Gitcoin’s table.

Looking forward, time is playing its role in giving everyone involved in Gitcoin clarity, as we are all able to connect the dots to have a vision for the future and understand how we can contribute to achieve what we were meant to achieve. With the proper modifications and improvements, based on our and Gitcoin’s core team experience during the Council’s first term, we are confident that, if the Term 2 proposal is approved by the DAO, we are in a perfect position to improve Gitcoin’s governance effectiveness and take Gitcoin DAO from chaos to order.

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