Thanks to @MathildaDV for initiating this proposal! Based on extensive consultation and feedback, we have come up with an updated version of the developer tooling and core infrastructure round that addresses the concerns raised by @owocki & @deltajuliet
GG24 Dev Tooling & Infrastructure Domain (Updated)
Ethereum’s developer tooling & infrastructure is underfunded. The tools that secure billions in value receive minimal funding while user-facing applications attract most investment. Nine of twelve stakeholders in our sensemaking interviews identified infrastructure as the most underfunded area. Teams maintaining libraries receive sporadic funding despite widespread usage. Development frameworks rely on GitHub sponsorships and occasional grants. Most infrastructure teams lack even these limited options. Multiple stakeholders emphasized that new teams entering the space require ongoing support, yet they lack a clear path to access it.
We are proposing to run a Dev Tooling & Infrastructure domain, including a Deep Funding round for more established open source repositories already important to Ethereum while focusing the Quadratic Funding round on projects as a whole (early stage and mature).
| Mechanism | Size | Summary | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep Funding | $350,000 | Prediction market on Seer where traders bet on the value an individual repo would receive if it was evaluated. Weights derived from markets determine allocations, example here | Solves granularity and fairness problems via focus on repos, moves away from brand or social signaling-based allocations, keeps allocation weights current and reusable |
| Quadratic Funding | $200,000 | Matching based on QF formula (emphasizing breadth of support), run via Giveth with tailored eligibility | Encourages community participation in funding decisions, works well for broadly supported, user-facing tool |
Deep Funding Round (Experimental Prediction Market Model)
Objective:
Allocate funds based on market-based predictions of a repo’s value to Ethereum if evaluated by a jury. Enables granular, repo-level allocation using scalable, incentive-aligned mechanisms.
Deep Funding Round
We request a total of $200,000 from the Gitcoin matching pool for allocation via the Deep Funding mechanism. $175,000 will go towards projects in the round, while $25,000 is kept for operating expenses to conduct the round (model builders, liquidity for repos to be traded on and opex for Seer.)
This round has a matching partner in Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, with a commitment of $175,000 to the repos and $55,000 incurred in operating expenses for running the mechanism itself.
Broadly defined, the allocation mechanism is based on models or AI agents predicting the value of a repo to Ethereum if it were assessed by a jury. Traders win or lose money depending on actual jury evaluation of repos, which they can purchase or have randomly spot checked. In case a repo is not evaluated, capital is returned to traders at no loss while the weights of a repo are still used to allocate funding to it.
Deep Funding Round Eligibility
- Applications are per GitHub repository, rather than per organization/project, with a maximum of 128 repositories. For this round, only Github repos can apply. Please do not apply with your organization. Instead, send us the direct link of your Github repo; more than 1 repo from the same organization can apply. An example of accepted repos from earlier rounds can be found here
- Your repo should be valuable to the Ethereum base layer and those building on top of it, as judged by an eligibility committee. This round is not for apps.
Some of the repo categories that are eligible (taken from Octant Epoch 8);
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Direct protocol improvements (consensus, execution, data availability, core networking)
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Shared infrastructure (clients, testnets & tooling, p2p networking stacks, security & formal-verification frameworks, transparency)
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Open dashboards, datasets, or studies (roll-ups, bridges, MEVs - resulting insights must strengthen Ethereum)
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Protocol-level research + specification work (advancing Ethereum’s roadmap)
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Repo must be open source, with an OSI approved license
Repos with licenses that are source available but not open source will be desk rejected. -
Part of the funding will be kept for dependencies of the qualifying repos.
Number of repos accepted to the round
- A maximum of 128 repos can receive any funding at all.
Since 45 repos are already in the round, at most an additional 83 more repos can enter this round for GG24. An eligibility committee shall decide upon entry into the round.
Amount in liquidity or trading subsidy
- This round will run on the prediction marketplace Seer. The Ethereum Foundation has covered $55,000 as opex, with 3 broad categories of expenditures
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$30,000 as liquidity for repos to be traded on
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$20,000 as subsidy to model builders
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$5,000 overhead to Seer
- We estimate an additional ~$25,000 in Opex from Gitcoin for these buckets
Cofunding or sizing domain
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$175,000 is allocated via a commitment by Vitalik to fund through this mechanism based on weights obtained
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From the Gitcoin matching pool, an equivalent amount ($175,000) is requested for a total pool size of $350,000 via deep funding for at most 128 repos plus their dependencies
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The opex in this round for getting weights between the repos is a total $80,000: $55,000 from EF and $25,000 from Gitcoin
Why Deep Funding as an Allocation Mechanism?
Problem # 1: Existing credibly neutral funding mechanisms do not scale very well. For example, Grow the Pie, an Ethereum analytics dashboard, received the same amount of funding in the Octant epoch 8 as Protocol Guild, a collection of all consensus and execution clients on Ethereum, which is not reflective of value to Ethereum.
Solution: The Deep Funding round will be more granular in its approach, considering grantees at the repo level instead of the project or brand level. So Protocol Guild & Dev Tools Guild cannot apply as entities, but they may submit applications on behalf of their member repositories (with funds directed to Protocol Guild or Dev Tools Guild respectively if they choose, or use Merit Systems to grow their contributor base).
Problem # 2: Participants in decentralized systems should earn rewards across a vast network based on contribution instead of social games or their ability to coordinate a crowd.
Solution: A funding mechanism that scales human judgment. Specifically, setting up a prediction market where traders, models and bots bet on the value a repo would receive if it was to be evaluated for its contribution to Ethereum by a committee. Unlike regular prediction markets that resolve based on an objective truth in the world, these markets would resolve based on subjective assessment by jurors.
Problem #3: The weights obtained in various rounds don’t remain fresh and instead get outdated with each passing day.
Solution: Deep Funding has a dependency graph with repos relevant to Ethereum. Models bet on the value of these repos if they were assessed by a jury. This keeps the weights fresh and relevant, letting other funders deploy money into the graph to support Ethereum even beyond GG24.
A detailed writeup of the mechanism is found here:
Timeline
Here is the estimated timeline of events leading up to the GG24 Dev Tooling and Infrastructure Deep Funding round
- Ongoing competition on Pond to get weights between 45 seed nodes important to Ethereum, ending September 30 (funded by EF at $25,000).
Concurrently, a multiscalar market on Seer where traders can submit their predictions and also put money behind their answers to influence weights. Unlike Ponds approach of prizes, the payout function to model builders in Seer depends on liquidity put into the market, the amount other participants put in to back their predictions and the accuracy of submission
In GG24, we expand the multiscalar prediction market on Seer with an additional 83 repos.
- A simple scalar market is launched on Seer for each of the repos in GG24 to let traders to bet on their “Originality Score” determining the funds staying with repos vs passed on to their dependencies. For example, Solidity is built with a dependency minimization framework and may have an originality score of 0.8, while Remix has many dependencies so would have a lower score. This market will resolve based on subjective assessment by jurors for a subset of the repos.
Upon conclusion of GG24, $350,000 is allocated based on the prevailing weights between repos and their originality score. In case people suspect market manipulation, manual jury evaluations are triggered on specific repos and their judgments will have precedence over the weights derived from trading activity. These jury evaluations also determine P & L for the traders participating in these markets.
- After GG24 ends, we launch a competition on Pond for getting weights between dependencies of the seed nodes (funded by EF at $25,000). While seed nodes can claim their share of funds immediately upon GG24 conclusion, the money for their dependencies is kept in abeyance until the competition predicting dependency weights is concluded.
Deep Funding Operators
@clesaege from Seer will be primary lead and host of the deep funding edition for GG24, with Devansh Mehta at the Ethereum Foundation serving as round operator.
@conor10 will also help with the following functions, including recruiting other OSS contributors where needed
- Vetting the applicant repos so we only have 128 eligible ones
- Advising on which repos are overweighted so we trigger jury evaluations on those
- Helping with jury selection to resolve particular markets
Team Tiger and Gitcoin will help in an operational capacity where required, with @MathildaDV serving as a point of contact.
Dev Tooling & Web3 Infrastructure Quadratic Round
Objective: Empower communities to direct funds toward public goods through matching based on the number of contributors, rather than total donation size.
The Quadratic Funding round within this domain will focus on empowering earlier stage projects to shed light on what they are building as they are growing in the space, enabling community participation through the signalling that QF brings. The larger goal is strengthening the Ethereum ecosystem’s foundational infrastructure by supporting projects crucial for its development, scalability, and security, and improving developer efficiency in the OSS and Web3 ecosystems through supportive tooling and libraries.
Round Size
Matching Pool: $200k
Opex: $25k
Eligibility
Ethical and Community Standards
- No Hateful Content: We firmly stand against discrimination and hate speech.
- Deceiving Users: Prohibited is any content that could harm users or lead to unintended consequences.
- Falsification: Attempts to falsify contributions, including Sybil attacks or other manipulative practices, are strictly banned.
- Fraud & Impersonation: Projects must accurately represent their affiliation and intentions to maintain transparency and trust.
- No Quid Pro Quo & Bribery: Incentives in exchange for donations are disallowed, maintaining the integrity of the contribution process.
- Advertising Restrictions: Utilizing grants for direct promotional activities or sales is prohibited.
- Funding Caps: Projects with significant external funding may be reconsidered to ensure equitable distribution of resources.
- Legal Compliance: Mandatory is the adherence to all applicable laws and regulations for participation.
Open-Source Principles and Project Activity
- Licensing Requirement: Projects must be fully open source, offering “source available” for anyone to fork, modify, and redistribute, embodying the essence of open-source collaboration.
- Activity Metrics: Demonstrated established and ongoing development activity as evidenced by GitHub commit history.
This eligibility framework is devised to ensure that the projects we support are aligned with the foundational values of the Gitcoin Grants Program and actively contribute to the growth and integrity of the OSS ecosystem. Projects that violate these guidelines will face disqualification from consideration, underscoring our dedication to maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct and community engagement.
Projects fulfilling the licensing requirements and displaying sufficient activity metrics will be directly approved. Those partially meeting these standards will be subject to a manual review process, while projects failing to satisfy any of the criteria will be deemed ineligible.
Target Areas for Funding
- Core Client Teams & Development: Support for teams behind essential Ethereum clients (e.g., Geth, Nethermind) and projects enhancing core network functionality.
- Staking Infrastructure and Diversity: Initiatives improving staking processes and promoting client diversity to strengthen network security and resilience.
- Security and Scalability Innovations: Research and development aimed at bolstering the network’s security through EIPs and scalability solutions like sharding and rollups.
- Wallet Security and Privacy Technologies: Innovations in wallet security, recovery solutions, privacy pools, and zero-knowledge proofs, aiming to protect users and advance voting mechanisms.
- Standardization and Future-Proofing: Efforts to standardize crucial technologies and develop forward-thinking solutions, such as account abstraction and statelessness.
- Client integration libraries
- Development frameworks.
- Smart contract development frameworks that enable secure, efficient smart contract development.
Round Specific Criteria
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Significant reduction of development barriers or enhancement of project efficiency.
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Demonstrated support and usage within the developer community.
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Infrastructure Impact: Projects must demonstrate a significant contribution to the Ethereum network’s infrastructure, addressing both foundational needs and innovative solutions to current challenges.
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Engagement in Pioneering Development: A focus on pioneering technologies or approaches that promise to elevate the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly in enhancing privacy, interoperability, and user experience.
Evaluation Process
Our evaluation process combines quantitative measures, such as adherence to open-source licensing and active development indicators, with qualitative assessments, including the project’s contribution to the OSS ecosystem, community engagement, and innovation.
Quadratic Funding Round Operators
@karmaticacid from Giveth will be be primary lead and host of the Quadratic Funding edition for GG24, with @MathildaDV , @Sov and Team Tiger serving as round operators.