I would strongly suggest carving out a separate Ethereum Developer Tooling & Infrastructure sub-round dedicated to Libp2p support and contacting the library maintainers.
Major parts of Libp2p, critical component of networking stack of many blockchain projects initially supported by Protocol Labs and then transitioned to Shipyard are currently at risk of losing funding.
Shipyard will continue active maintenance of go-libp2p and js-libp2p until September 30, 2025, while working with credible community members or organizations with a proven track record to ensure a smooth handoff. We are committed to helping place these critical implementations in capable hands.
We recognize the significance of this change and want to be transparent so downstream projects can plan accordingly. If you or your organization relies on libp2p and is interested in supporting its future, we encourage you to reach out.
On github, pcfreak30 made a nice article showing how criticial it is and was historically (*a bit of nuance is that some Ethereum projects transitioned to fork of libp2p => devp2p, but upstream effort should still be recognized here): LibP2P Ecosystem · GitHub
Self-reported list of users (created Jan 28): Libp2p users.
If Gitcoin wants to build a coalition of funders and regain its role as important part of Public-Goods funding ecosystem it is hard to find a project that is more “neutral” than networking stack used by major chains.
Additionally:
- Ethereum Community Foundation (zak.eth) is willing to support the project [1]
- Libp2p was an early Gitcoin RetroPGF round sponsor directing $100k using Gitcoin mechanism [2]
- Libp2p was a recipient of grants from Optimism (76k OP RPGF), EF, IPFS others. I would bet they will find some source of funding eventually even if Gitcoin is not involved.
My suggestion to future DevTools round lead (which is most likely @MathildaDV) or whoever does Gitcoin partnerships:
- Carve out a separate round for Libp2p for more visibility and to guarantee minimum funding from Gitcoin treasury
- Contact Libp2p maintainers to find out what level and mechanism of funding is desired.
- Contact Shipyard to see who already expressed interest in Funding Libp2p
- Try to build a coalition of funders and get them to pledge long term support.
This is a second time (after Week In Ethereum News) top builders on X (Protocol Guild, EF, ECF, Erigon, Vyper) are having a big public discussion about a well-known, credible public good that is struggling with funding, and I am very disapointed that despite all the sensemaking no public representative from Gitcoin nor Gitcoin X handle is proactive enough to offer any solutions or even join the conversation.