I like the
open source software. I can focus on metrics related to downloads and onchain creations.Thanks for the comments, very much appreciated. I wanted to add some responses in line to your comments.
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.
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!)
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.
hey, awesome.
iâm fairly new to gitcoin mechanics and i donât 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
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.
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 doesnât 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 Gitcoinâs credible neutrality
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.
+1 on this one, he could do a great job running a round. 
Thanks for all replies, really appreciate the back and forth!
If i correctly understand the community round structure, they are âmatching on matchingâ 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 wonât have a driving force to raise initial matching funds that unlock the extra funds from gitcoin.
So i donât 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.
I hear you on these points, for every ZachXBT we funded there were countless other low performing projects.
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.
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 donât. And even aside from the matching funds, these rounds let people who appreciate our writing contribute to us. We no longer have that avenue
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. Iâd 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.
Iâd 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)
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?
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.
Thanks for your feedback, always appreciated.
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.
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.
Yes the proposed changes are intended to go into effect with GG20 which should happen sometime in April.
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.
Great to see how Gitcoin is evolving, and keeping the culture of innovation for Public Goods funding.
IMO, I donât 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:
I believe with this slight amendment arises a compromise where most are still included, the Ethereum ecosystem is still enhanced, and @owocki /GC Communityâs vision of GGâs 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. 
Thanks @Decentralizedceo all good callouts and things we can consider as we take in feedback on this proposal!
sharing some feedback from zachxbt (who is somewhat of a legend in the white hat hacker community in eth) with his permissionâŠ
As someone who relied on community and education rounds due to a decrease in donations during the bear market itâs 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)âŠ
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).
I do agree that(at least in my perception) the OSS round has been getting less attention in the past few GGs as other types of rounds have been getting traction and itâs great to see the matching pool 4x to $1M. This + the fact that the rounds will twice/year is a great strategic decision! Kudos!
Unfortunately while I understand why Gitcoin decided to shut down the Web3 Community and Education round I believe that the decision to only match communities with $25k in matching pools is not optimal. My worry is that this is just gonna create an âecho chamberâ of aligned and already funded organizations that will run rounds and get matching for this. They will possibly be of higher quality because having 25k to run a round would imply a certain level of prosperity and organization for the matchee, but what about the smol guys? 
How about some compromise here? Maybe having something like $100k to match $25k rounds and the other 25k to match smaller rounds based on a more strict curation/review.
This is great news! Personally I would love to apply as a badgeholder and curate rounds(already have some XP here), but would still like to push the idea above, to allow smaller rounds to get matched without having 25k. Maybe the matchings we offered to run rounds on Arbitrum can help as an example
I would be happy to help out in any role that benefits content creators!
I do have some reservations on the sustainability of this approach long term for web3 community and education, simply because we run into the classic problem of collective action where concentrated minority interests are overrepresented while diffuse majority interests get trumped.
Niche well organized communities would have the drive to fundraise for a round & get matching on matching funds, while there would be no one to do that for as large a category as âall web3 content creatorsâ
This is an interesting approach that partly solves the issue raised above. I still wonder how large communities overcome the collective action issue and appoint individuals in charge of fundraising for the round to unlock the matching on matching
I am of the opinion we should keep web3 community so he can fundraise from his well-wishers and gitcoin keeps mindshare in this space, while potentially lowering the matching in the round to an amount Gitcoin is comfortable with.
To overcome the issue of scammy projects in the round, it can also be kept invite only or heavy screening with an application process requiring projects to show proof of regular content creation & engagement.
Plus 1 to this. Iâm guessing that the decision to eliminate the web3 round came from the fact that value inflow and curation are difficult to tackle for this round, but this is an assumption. It would help if Gitcoin told us stewards why this decision was made and what the issues there wereâŠthen we could find a solution together.
Nailed it!
I honestly donât know, my first reaction would be to tell him to create his own web3 anti fraud community round, but I donât know if he has the resources to do it.
This raises a question, how would someone like ZackXBT apply to those rounds? If all the rounds have their own eligibility then someone like zack might be able to apply in all of them? (if the round owners decide it ofc) .This would not be ideal also imo.
I hear a lot of understandable concern about $25k being a high bar for fundraising for many communities. I want to highlight that itâs possible to do the following:
