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)
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.
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.
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:
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 âavatar communityâ
The âmatching on matching poolâ fund will be split in to these 3 tiers of small, mid, and large communities.
Based on the tiersâ budget, the badge holders will know how many projects/communitiesâ 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 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.
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.
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:
Great point. The thing is that in my scenario it would be up to the badge holders, whom are part of GC Community, to determine that. I think the point is to delegate some of these tedious round running aspects to the community while shining a light on OSS so GCâs initial goal of growing the Ethereum ecosystem is still in tact. This will allow the GC team to focus on the overall post metrics and adjust as needed. Then fine tuning the GG program for better results, round to round. I can only imagine the bandwidth it takes to do what they do. It maybe time for the willing community to assist.
Just wanted to acknowledge all of the awesome feedback and ideas that have come in over the weekend â thank you all and keep them coming!
The Grants Lab team is digesting and will likely propose some revisions in the next day or so⊠if youâre interested to weigh in as we craft those please reach out!
What is the % of the fund allocation to these projects? Eth community definitely knows so much more about crypto that even without Sybil spawns it is able to skew QF to their advantage, leaving the classical Open Source with less money. I worry that it may by significantly less.
My experience with convincing Open Source projects to participate is that it is hard, because there is a lot of FUD around crypto. Even Python Software Foundation could not find experts to dispel or confirm (mis)conceptions. Therefore even for popular Open Source project, I assume the amount of people able to operate with crypto, and from them the amount of people willing to donate, and from them the amount of people who can go through the Gitcoin donation process is drastically lower.
It would be nice of course, to calculate crypto literacy for projects. The amount of Gitcoin contributions / subscribers. Maybe also balanced by amount donated. To get metric that reflects projectâs economic value (users + usersâ financial well-being) .
Hey @abitrolly thanks for the feedback! Almost every project in the Open Source Software round is a crypto-based project, so you can rest assured that all funds here are going to crypto-oriented orgs. You can see all projects that participated in the last round here: https://reportcards.gitcoin.co/424/0xd4cc0dd193c7dc1d665ae244ce12d7fab337a008 . While weâd love to onboard popular Web3 OSS projects in the future, our focus is squarely on Web3 for now!
I agree w/ @ZER8 on this. Having some portion of the $125K set aside for rounds that donât make the $25K threshold could help create on-ramps for new round operators to gain experience. I say this even as someone whoâs org (the TEC) has, and will likely continue to, run $25K+ rounds. Something like three $10K and four $5K matching pools would probably a bit more work, but in addition to helping to grow the field of round operators, it might also help generate more diversity in the rounds. The Web3 Community and Education round held a lot of that diversity previously and it would be sad to see that go.
