Gitcoin Grants: Proposed Updates

[robioreefeco]

@Sov

We propose electing a slate of badgeholders to decide which communities/rounds are eligible for funding. We propose electing badgeholders active in the grants community but not core contributors to Gitcoin. If this proposal passes, we will follow up with an election process for badgeholders, an outline of eligibility criteria, and the application process for Community Rounds.

Wow this sounds interesting

Lovely approach to metagovernance of rounds thanks; more grants = more growth for everyone

[lanzdingz]

This is an interesting idea and way to move web3 community and education into the hands of communities themselves. The idea could work if people can raise 25K outside of Gitcoin for matching funds. I could be wrong, but aside from Zuzalu (which got a significant amount from a specific donor) or chain-specific rounds (Arbitrum/Polygon), I don’t believe any community round has come close to being 25k in size. The SheFi round supported by Octant was about 14k USD and was the largest community-funded round I believe. There is the Climate round, but that also used to be a core round that has now spun off into being community-led, but still ran its last round as a large-scale and more accessible round. *also not counting dev-specific rounds either - talking mostly about rounds that web3 education/community projects would fit into.

Is the idea to have larger protocols and chains (like Arbitrum, Base, Lens etc) run these community rounds? Or would the idea be a group like GreenPill x RefiDAO get together and go out to search for 25k in funding, then come back to gitcoin to see if they will match it? I understand it could be a combo, I’m just curious who the ‘who’ is you envision will be running these rounds.

The 25k bar to entry before matching begins feels a bit high (at least to start seeing at this is in 2 months) for the community of current grantees to meaningfully be able to take over and run these rounds for the larger community - without it being chain agnostic.

Maybe there is slow progress to the 25k min after 1-2 rounds to build momentum and let the community of past grantees get a handle on how it might want to support each other moving forward in this.

I support the idea in theory and experimenting is part of what we’re all here to do - just curious about how this will maybe affect those ‘medium and small’ tail projects/communities that don’t have the bandwidth or network to raise the 25k to be eligible for matching, but have been using Gitcoin rounds as a way to keep building because of the consistency in them.

[vpabundance]

With how seamless it was using grants stack for the Octant + SheFi round, I’m really excited about this proposal, it definitely creates a lot of opportunity to highlight the tech in the form of success stories, and I feel like it can continue to create a lot of win win outcomes for everyone participating.

[DreadKnight]

@owocki
It will continue even better. People will have time to rest and be excited about the future round event and when the time comes, they’ll give it even more, otherwise smaller more often events can be rather tedious. It’s like when you’re excited about 1-2 annual rock festivals instead of the monthly local smaller gigs.
Also, now people can make their own rounds and since there will be only 2 major official Gitcoin rounds, they’ll have more time in between if they wish to do their own thing, so that part is perfect.

@lanzdingz
I agree with you. Instantly had the very same concerns about the entry bar being too high and the impact on the smaller communities/projects.

@thedevanshmehta
Very valid concerns. I do think that Gitcoin and Giveths overlapped a bit too much, so if they somehow become complementary, that’s still a big win in my book, because they won’t be competing directly for the same audience, as that kinda made Giveth seem in the shadow of Gitcoin overall and if not for the awesomeness of the project and perseverance of the devs, if felt like one of those projects that might just call it quits eventually if not getting some sort of edge (those reward points are an interesting concept though but not sure if enough). I clearly don’t want Giveth to go away and will focus more on it myself, even though I’m a developer myself of an open source game project.

[Sweetman]

I like the

• focus on open source software. I can focus on metrics related to downloads and onchain creations.
• bigger rounds less frequently. gives us time to build instead of constantly applying for funds.
• I appreciate getting the email telling me to review this proposal

[Sov]

Thanks for the comments, very much appreciated. I wanted to add some responses in line to your comments.

@lanzdingz

I don’t believe any community round has come close to being 25k in size. The SheFi round supported by Octant was about 14k USD and was the largest community-funded round I believe.

We have had the minimum Community Round size at $25K for a few seasons now (as linked below) and as recently as GG19 saw Community Rounds of this size that included Token Engineering Commons, Open Civics, Greater China Community, and 1inch LATAM.

Shaping the new Gitcoin Grants Program With Community Engagement

As the Gitcoin Grants Program evolves to be more community owned and operated, we’d like to share our thinking on next steps and request your feedback. We will be testing a new approach for community engagement for the Gitcoin Program launch to help us determine what rounds Gitcoin manages internally and what externally operated rounds are featured during the next quarterly Grants Program which will be taking place in the upcoming Season mid April. TLDR: We will be requ…

@lanzdingz

Is the idea to have larger protocols and chains (like Arbitrum, Base, Lens etc) run these community rounds? Or would the idea be a group like GreenPill x RefiDAO get together and go out to search for 25k in funding, then come back to gitcoin to see if they will match it? I understand it could be a combo, I’m just curious who the ‘who’ is you envision will be running these rounds.

I believe with the help of this community and new focus from our Ecosystem Collective we can come up with creative ways to connect funding partners with groups who are looking at creative ways to fund what matters to them (we have a few discussions to this end happening that you will see in the days ahead as new rounds are launched!)

@lanzdingz

I support the idea in theory and experimenting is part of what we’re all here to do - just curious about how this will maybe affect those ‘medium and small’ tail projects/communities that don’t have the bandwidth or network to raise the 25k to be eligible for matching, but have been using Gitcoin rounds as a way to keep building because of the consistency in them.

We appreciate the vote of confidence. We realize this is a shift from how we have traditionally run Gitcoin Grants but believe that it is the right move and will allow for further growth at the edges over time.

[ekonavi_dev]

hey, awesome.

i’m fairly new to gitcoin mechanics and i don’t speak from a thorough understanding of all the gitcoin round details

however, theoretically applying sound principles of iteration and testing to validate / invalidate a new idea … I would recommend not doing anything too drastic if there is current, steady growth

instead, take these new ideas and test them in a sandbox first, define what the expectations are based on the changes made and define what metrics will be used to evaluate them

if the results are positive outcomes, scale them, if not, iterate on the idea and test again

[umarkhaneth]

Looking forward to aligning the Citizens rounds with some of the upcoming GGs! I hope this post makes it easier for citizens to plan the work they do in advance of the round.

@meglister

Hey @thedevanshmehta thanks for your perspective! Responded on twitter and figured I’d do so here in a few more characters…

First of all, I still see equal creation of funding opportunities for web3 community and education projects. The community round structure is intended to create those. In fact, you could run for a governorship position and advocate to set the criteria for funding to only web3 community and education based projects!

Wanted to +1 this. In particular, it would be amazing to see @thedevanshmehta running a round.

Personally I think the recent community round results have shown the eligibility criteria are too broad and leave room to fund almost anything, including communities dedicated to airdrop farming. Running not one community round but several which are each more focused and helmed by someone with subject matter expertise to draft tight eligibility criteria could lead to better outcomes.

Gitcoiners often feel in a tight spot as we try to remain credibly neutral and not take too strong a stance on what deserves funding and what doesn’t but instead let the community decide through their donations.

As a result, over time the Community and Education rounds were expanded from their initial focus on Media and Independent Journalism (back in Round 4 Bankless/RSA/David Hoffman raised funds and were validated here). I think there is now space/funding for people to create bottoms-up rounds that are specific, opinionated, and higher-quality without costing any of Gitcoin’s credible neutrality

[wasabi]

Donor fatigue is real, the shift on cadence have its pros and cons, but IMO the pros outweighs the cons.

I do like the fact Gitcoin is shifting toward a more measurable impact within the verticals that provides the highest upsides as OSS & ETH Infra… basically everything else depends on these two.

Gitcoin is shifting from trying to fund everything to fund what matters to the long-term growth of Gitcoin and enabling communities to do the same with the Grants Stack.

I also agree with @Sov & @umarkhaneth about the Web3 Community Round; I think as builders focus on a specific chain and built their home base providing value to that ecosystem, they will have the opportunity to unlock even more funding; this already happened with RetroPGF 3.

@umarkhaneth

Wanted to +1 this. In particular, it would be amazing to see @thedevanshmehta running a round.

+1 on this one, he could do a great job running a round.

[thedevanshmehta]

Thanks for all replies, really appreciate the back and forth!

@umarkhaneth

@meglister

First of all, I still see equal creation of funding opportunities for web3 community and education projects. The community round structure is intended to create those. In fact, you could run for a governorship position and advocate to set the criteria for funding to only web3 community and education based projects!

Wanted to +1 this. In particular, it would be amazing to see @thedevanshmehta running a round.

If i correctly understand the community round structure, they are “matching on matching” funds. So i expect the types of groups that would use it are well mobilized specific communities like DeSci, Arbitrum Citizens, Zuzalu, TEC etc rather than more general categories like all web3 community and education projects, which won’t have a driving force to raise initial matching funds that unlock the extra funds from gitcoin.

So i don’t see community rounds as filling up the space being vacated by gitcoin in getting rid of the free for all web3 community and education round. Gitcoin rounds are a schelling point that bring together teams and people - now they will mostly bring together devs and specific communities running their own round. Which is a negative for everyone in the space, we want diverse groups of people during the festive season of gitcoin rounds.

@umarkhaneth

Personally I think the recent community round results have shown the eligibility criteria are too broad and leave room to fund almost anything, including communities dedicated to airdrop farming. Running not one community round but several which are each more focused and helmed by someone with subject matter expertise to draft tight eligibility criteria could lead to better outcomes.

I hear you on these points, for every ZachXBT we funded there were countless other low performing projects.

@thedevanshmehta

We should try something similar for W3C where we can self evaluate projects by going through content artifacts from their community or education work

I have put some ideas for making web3 community and education more like open source rounds by judging content artifacts similar to how we look at code. similar to open source software, the impact of content can be assessed online.

Overall i hate to see gitcoin give up on this space simply because evaluation is hard. I also think it will reduce the diversity of projects participating in rounds , as you either need to belong to a niche subcommunity holding a round or have active open source repos.

@meglister

Right now I’m hearing from grants managers in other ecosystems (typically funding more mature/unicorn projects) that they have healthy pipelines of community projects, but a lack of OSS projects and dApp builders. Given that, it feels like the Gitcoin Grants program can have the highest impact on the ethereum ecosystem this year by funding those OSS projects & filling that pipeline.

This is a fair point. I would push back on the notion that good web3 content creators have enough funding sources already - because we honestly don’t. And even aside from the matching funds, these rounds let people who appreciate our writing contribute to us. We no longer have that avenue

[jengajojo]

Glad to see the increased matching pool for ETH Infra and OSS BUIDLing. Running rounds twice a year will definitely help focus attention and resources optimally.

@thedevanshmehta makes a good point on the $25K threshold being suitable only for certain well capitalized communities. I’d rather like to see this threshold be adjusted based on how closely a community meets a given criteria how well is their work aligned to the greater ecosystem needs at a given point.

I’d additionally like to suggest a term limit for badgeholders with a clear performance criteria and code of conduct in order to continue playing the role as well as some from of compensation in the GTC (ideally locked for 1 year)

[Jimi]

The proposed changes to the Web3 Community & Education Round would be for GG20, right?

If so communities better get cracking to fundraise for their rounds

This approach is definitely motivating for more communities to do so.

Would there be chain requirements like the Arbirtrum matching or is the matching open to all EVM chains?

[Sov]

Thanks for your comments and support!

Big +1 to this comment … you summed up perfectly our thinking with this new approach and we are looking forward to realizing the full potential of this community in the days ahead.

@wasabi

Gitcoin is shifting from trying to fund everything to fund what matters to the long-term growth of Gitcoin and enabling communities to do the same with the Grants Stack.

[Sov]

Thanks for your feedback, always appreciated.

@thedevanshmehta

I have put some ideas for making web3 community and education more like open source rounds by judging content artifacts similar to how we look at code. similar to open source software, the impact of content can be assessed online.

I would be curious to know more about this and see what we can do to help support.

We have funding partners still expressing interest in providing funds for community and education focused rounds and you as a governor (as @meglister mentions) piloting this concept may be a way we can continue forward and fill the gaps you mention.

[Sov]

@jengajojo

@thedevanshmehta makes a good point on the $25K threshold being suitable only for certain well capitalized communities. I’d rather like to see this threshold be adjusted based on how closely a community meets a given criteria how well is their work aligned to the greater ecosystem needs at a given point.

Yes, very fair point. As I mention above the $25K minimum was a precedent that was established some time back and I think we would be open to changing it now that we are looking to add additional matching funds.

[Sov]

@Jimi

The proposed changes to the Web3 Community & Education Round would be for GG20, right?

Yes the proposed changes are intended to go into effect with GG20 which should happen sometime in April.

@Jimi

Would there be chain requirements like the Arbirtrum matching or is the matching open to all EVM chains?

The Arbitrum matching program is not mutually exclusive to the work of Gitcoin Grants. These matching funds mentioned in this proposal would be open for any community to apply for regardless of their network alignment. With that being said we would only be running rounds on networks that are currently supported on Grants Stack.

[KarlaGod]

Great to see how Gitcoin is evolving, and keeping the culture of innovation for Public Goods funding.

[Decentralizedceo]

IMO, I don’t think this new proposal is a bad idea. It would work out in terms of impact tracking and giving grantees enough time to utilize the funds and generate impact for their community.
However, just like many here, I am worried about the effect it will have on smaller communities who participate in the Web3 community and education rounds. As @lanzdingz mentioned, these communities may not be able to raise the $25k proposed amount.
@Sov I suggest we amend this proposal while keeping the same points and budget.

Amendment:

• Appointed badge holders will be split into groups in charge of picking x amount of small communities, mid-sized communities, and large communities that will be matched.
• These badge holders will come up with elements that make up their “avatar community”
• The “matching on matching pool” fund will be split in to these 3 tiers of small, mid, and large communities.
• Based on the tiers’ budget, the badge holders will know how many projects/communities’ matching pool will be matched.

I believe with this slight amendment arises a compromise where most are still included, the Ethereum ecosystem is still enhanced, and @owocki /GC Community’s vision of GG’s continuous growth will still be on track. In actually, doing it like this will grow the matching pools and vicariously assist more grantees. Also, this is a way for communities to bring economical value to the GitCoin table instead of only extracting it.

[Sov]

Thanks @Decentralizedceo all good callouts and things we can consider as we take in feedback on this proposal!

[owocki]

sharing some feedback from zachxbt (who is somewhat of a legend in the white hat hacker community in eth) with his permission…

As someone who relied on community and education rounds due to a decrease in donations during the bear market it’s unfortunate to see the proposal to reduce focus there and instead prioritize OSS.

how should i respond to him?

my early thots: i challenge the gitcoin citizens/community to run great community and education and/or security rounds in the future (and to leverage matching on matching to do it)…

now that anyone can run these rounds… there is an opportunity for others to pick up the slack. the changing round structure should support the decentralization of running these rounds (not the wind down of them).