tl;dr
- Gitcoin’s technology, including the Grants Stack and Allo Protocol, provides credibly neutral tools for capital distribution, while the community is an enthusiastic group of public goods champions.
- Gitcoin’s technology and community are distinct yet complementary parts in supporting our purpose-driven flywheel & mission.
- Harmonizing technology and community efforts is key to Gitcoin’s future success, as it will drive growth and catalyze change in line with the organization’s mission and values.
Introduction
Since the introduction of our technology, the problem I’ve continued to bump up against is that our tech stack (Grants Stack and Allo Protocol) is a credibly neutral set of tools that allows anyone to distribute capital to fund what matters most to them.
and this feels distinct from…
The community, a sincere group of people who believe that crypto can be used to promote human thriving — I can say with certainty that the people deep in our orbit are anything but “credibly neutral”.
I know that others at Gitcoin have struggled to see the connection and so I think these two concepts are worth defining and distinguishing to drive more clarity on how they can coexist with each other.
The purpose of each of these entities are more or less defined as such:
-
Technology: Drive development and adoption of our products to support our mission at scale. This work is wholly owned and stewarded by Grants Lab
-
Community: Foster a thriving, passionate community that acts as an exemplar for model for our mission. This work is wholly owned and stewarded by The Ecosystem Collective
Here’s how I think we can do both and do them well:
What is Gitcoin?
With the emergence of Gitcoin 2.0, our whitepaper and other planned initiatives, we are working to reinforce our position as leaders in the web3 grants/capital allocation space. Gitcoin = Grants and we enable communities to fund what matters to them with grants.
Under the umbrella of Gitcoin, we strive to be a thought leader and an exemplar model for how our capital allocation can be leveraged both for ecosystem growth and to fund the common good.
We have a purpose-driven flywheel centered around our mission of funding OSS that is currently poised to look something like:
**Given we are pre-revenue, what the DAO chooses to do with profits is yet to be exactly codified but I think this is a fairly safe model to assume given our shared desire to make impact and the org’s historical values.
We make this happen with two levers: our technology and our community.
Technology
Our tools are made to enable any community to fund what matters to them. Most communities focus their grants programs on fuelling growth of some nature and so Grants = Growth reflects Grants Stack’s purpose of enabling any community to use grants to fulfil their mission.
There are a variety of tactics that will support product adoption, some of which are listed in the above diagram as examples, some of which live in internal-facing GTM plans that will continue to be executed on 
Community
As Gitcoin evolves, I feel that the lever of “community” is slighly more ambiguous of the two and deserves some attention with regard to how we’re thinking about efforts from the Ecosystem Collective contribute to Gitcoin’s overall mission, vision and Allo GMV.
As a collective, we strive to be the exemplar model for how to use our tech stack. We work to exemplify the power of community-driven capital allocation to fuel growth and we want to fuel growth for (the common) good — because it matters to us.
We do this through:
- The Gitcoin Grants (GG) program, which includes:
- Funding OSS as a lever to advance the common good through Gitcoin’s flagship OSS GG rounds
- Giving values-aligned, adjacent communities opportunities to fund what matters to them through GG community rounds
- Citizen Grants, which encompasses:
- funding strategic initiatives that add value to our network with the aim of expediting our mission at scale
Among other initiatives, these two in particular use our tech stack and drive GMV through Allo (aligning to our north star goal) and positions our community as an examplar model of how to use our stack — both from a technical standpoint and from the vantage point of fulfilling Gitcoin’s vision (a world shaped by community-led positive change).
As a community of purpose-driven public goods champions, I think that these are important things to articulate and discuss to drive more clarity around how we are (and always will be) working toward our impact mission—specifically enabled by Gitcoin Grants—how that mission is bolstered (not hindered) by the emergence of our tech in the Gitcoin 2.0 future.
In essence, by harmonizing our technology and community efforts, I believe that Gitcoin is poised to drive growth and catalyze meaningful change in line with our mission and values.
