Gitcoin Governance Report
June 2023
Find attached the Gitcoin Governance Report. This report chronicles governance activity for the month of June 2023 and looks forward to the month of July. As always, we welcome any feedback to make this report better. The objective of this communication is to:
- Improve governance transparency.
- Provide a go-to platform for proposal and comment summaries.
- Highlight a couple governance initiatives during the period
- Illustrate GCP and non GCP efforts being worked on or evaluated.
June has been focused on preparing for the Steward Council elections as per [GCP-007] S18 Fund Thin Governance. According to the time tracker, time spent was on track. To bring time spent into the allocated range, meeting attendance was reduced however I did begin joining the weekly MMM calls.
Governance proposals and performance during the period:
This chart can be an illustration of 1) governance engagement during the period and 2) individual proposal performance. Over time, we will be able to illustrate if governance changes influence token voting and in later versions, individual voter influence. Gitcoin has 8 stewards who hold between 800K to 1.3M tokens – which can influence the variability in tokens cast during any single vote. Applied to the chart above, it takes the four largest voters to vote in unison to surpass the high water majority vote of ~5M votes.
Links to the specific proposals:
| Close | Title | Ref doc. | $ Requested |
|---|---|---|---|
| 26-Jun | Gating who can make Gitcoin proposals on Snapshot | (link) | 0 |
| 14-Jun | [GCP012] - State of Web3 Grants Report | (link) | $17,500 |
| 7-Jun | [Proposal] - Amendments to the Steward Council | (link) | 0 |
| 23-May | [GCP-011] Funding the Commons Hackathon and Conference | (link) | $60K+100K |
| 15-May | [GCP-010] Evolving Gitcoin Grants: The Q.E.D. | (link) | $ 27,240 |
| 10-May | S18/S19 Allo Workstream Budget Request | (link) | $ 3,223,170 |
| 10-May | S18/S19 MMM Workstream Budget Request | (link) | $ 1,191,196 |
| 9-May | [GCP-008] S18 Discord Management | (link) | $ 23,400 |
| 9-May | [GCP-007] S18 Fund Thin Governance | (link) | $ 20,800 |
| 9-May | S18/19 - Gitcoin Passport Workstream Budget Request | (link) | $ 1,323,472 |
| 8-May | Season 18 & 19: Public Goods Funding Workstream Budget | (link) | $ 1,149,333 |
Top 10 forum discussions during the period by response rate:
- [Discussion & Proposal] Ratify the Results of Gitcoin’s Beta Round and Formally Request
- [Proposal] OpenData Community - Gitcoin founding role and request for support
- [Proposal] DeSci “recognized subDAO” framework development
- GTC - After 2 years
- Greenpill.network $5k QF Round Wrap-Up/Review
- Allo + Grants Stack Mid-Season Update
- [GCP-013] Seed Universal Impact Pools
- [Proposal] DeSci “recognized subDAO” framework development and implement
- [Proposal] Withdraw and leverage (partial) USDC balance in treasury
- [Proposal] Gitcoin MetaFest
- Q.E.D. program update 1 + request for community input
- Insights from a Gitcoin Grants Citizens Round Project: Archimedes’ Lever
Governance activity during the period:
Steward Council Elections:
In an effort to work through the +60 potential nominees, Governance increased support by working through the list of viable candidates to help workstreams narrow in on 12 nominees. As of July 07, here is the current status:
The goal is to have 12 nominees who will run in a token weighted quadratic election for 8 external seats on the 13 member Steward Council. Recall four seats of the 13 seats are held by workstream appointees, and one is held by the Gitcoin Foundation. We plan to share the final list of nominees on July 11 or 12th via a post on the forum and continue the process via this schedule:
See our elections plan here and view the potential nominee slide deck here.
Spam attack on snapshot account:
Recall earlier this year there were several spam proposals posted to our snapshot account which prompted the lockdown of proposal creation and the creation of Gating who can make Gitcoin proposals on Snapshot. At the end of June, we had +30 spam proposals posted to our snapshot account even with the new Passport gating in place. Thanks to @coachJ, we were able to quickly remove the proposals and lock down proposal creation to these five addresses: 
We continue to work on defining either the right stamp configuration, or with the help of the Snapshot team, implement the passport scoring methodology. In the meantime, either @shawn16400 or @kbh can help you get a proposal loaded, or add you as an author to the site until we get Passport gating sorted.
Other assets worked in the period: CSDO Charter v2, PGN: the Gitcoin Foundation and the DAO, the (IPA) Independent proposal assessment and refinements with AI generated summaries of forum proposals & discussions.
Looking forward – governance work coming up in July
We have two “big rocks” in July and will continue to address other smaller items. Work that is coming off the plate is improving the monthly reports, exploring shielded voting, and advocating for quadratic voting at Gitcoin.
Big Rocks for July
- Steward Council Nominations & Elections & snapshot configuration
- Recommendations for Governance moving beyond S18
Smaller Rocks for July
- Steward & steward council recognition
- Snapshot voting clean up (QV subsite)
- Snapshot and Passport - getting stamps right
- Gating the forum using Passport
- Using Push protocol for governance communications
- Keep or kill AI efforts related to forum summaries
The entire list of governance project work along with daily movement can be seen here. This includes GCP-007 work and extracurricular deliverables.
Thanks for reading this month’s summary – we appreciate any and all feedback.
