Is Gitcoin over its skis? should we hold spending flat while addressing unavoidable risks?

[myceliumcoordinator]

Costs

GitcoinDAO launched in May 2021 on a budget of $1million/month, for a total cost of $17million.

Giveth launched in Dec 2021 on $100k/mo, for a total cost to date of $1.1million. Lets assume they were working on their products for 6 months before their launch, and bring the total to $1.7million (exactly 10x less than what GitcoinDAO’s spent)

Outcomes

GitcoinDAO launched in May 2021 and has so far shipped

1. Passport (sort of, as Passport only starts to lay the foundation to prevent sybil attacks).
2. Conviction Voting (sort of, it was later abandoned)
3. anything else?

Giveth launched Dec 2021 and has so far shipped:

• it’s crowdfunding platform
• GIVPower
• GIVEconomy
• GIVGarden
• GIVFarm
• GIVBacks
• GIVStream
• Giveth Angel Vault

Of course the number of launched protocols is only one way to compare the two outcomes. I don’t know of an analytics tool for Giveth, but if you scroll through the Giveth crowdfunding platform you will see many projects with $10k+ raised, some with $100k+. Compare this to $0 raised on Gitcoin’s protocols so far.

Summary

Gitcoin is clearly running on the momentum that it inherited from before DAO launch, not on it’s own product team’s merits (yet).

@epowell101

As you know @myceliumcoordinator - it isn’t trivial to judge the velocity of a project. What tools would you use to compare the speed of development in Gitcoin vs. Giveth for example?

Gitcoin’s products cost 10x more to develop and are still being out-executed by other web3 crowdfunding projects (in this case we are discussing Giveth, but similar analysis’ could be run on other competitors). Just look at the data above.

That is worth it IF the quality of Gitcoin’s products is supreme. But it is not worth it if the quality of Gitcoin’s eventual product is not good or if the research doesnt lead to creating more value in a big enough market that people switch (reaching product/market fit). It’s not worth it if the product doesnt catch on and so the “heat” inherited around Gitcoin dissipates and GTC falls to $0.

@epowell101

I see in Gitcoin’s Grants Protocol and Passport well-thought-through projects that have spent a lot of time and effort addressing the needs of development partners with the help of extensive product management and design resources. Nonetheless, it is hard to know that development is moving in the right direction before the code is shipped and being used.

I agree.

I hope that Gitcoin’s protocols reach product market fit and gain a lot of adoption in early 2023. I also hope that someone can eventually explain to me what the utility of GTC is. Otherwise all of this expensive research was for naught.

Thanks for listening