[Proposal] Gitcoin Round 10 Matching Pool Allocations

Gitcoin Round 10 Matching Pool Allocations :robot:

Summary

This proposal looks to discuss and finalize how funding allocations from the Gitcoin Grants Round 10 Matching Pool are distributed.

Abstract

The distribution of the Matching Pool to different Grants categories (community, infrastructure, NFTs, etc) has been handled by the Gitcoin Core team (rounds 1-5), and later in consultation with the Funders League (rounds 6-9).

With the launch of GTC, this decision should be managed by Gitcoin Stewards (and therefor GTC) who will decide on the best allocation based on community sentiment.

This process will set a precedent for how future Matching Pools are distributed, and give Gitcoin Stewards more ownership over the ongoing maintenance of Gitcoin Grants.

This proposal also takes into account Vitalik’s suggestions to remove categories entirely and distribute the matching pool pro-rata among all grants using Gitcoin’s quadratic formula directly.

Motivation

As Grants Round 9 saw the highest engagement to date, Gitcoin Stewards should play an active role in the governance and handling of Grants Round 10.

Taking point on the governance of the Matching Pool allows Stewards and by proxy, the wider community to have a meaningful impact on the allocation of grants, without drastically altering the underlying foundation that has worked so well to date.

In GR9, the $500k GR9 matching pool was allocated as follows:

  • Infrastructure: 30%
  • Dapp Tech: 25%
  • Community: 25%
  • East and Southeast Asia Regional: 10%
  • NFTs: 10%

The above allocations were chosen via an informal governance process from the Gitcoin Core team with feedback from trusted community members and partners. The core motivation was to maintain a fair distribution across the breadth of the space and ensure that the categories were up to date with trends in development at the time.

Specification

Through discussion on this proposal and an eventual Snapshot vote, one of the following three options will be selected as the matching pool breakdown for Round 10.

Round 10 currently has $650k allocated to matching though that may increase with the addition of new sponsors.

Option 1:

Distribute the matching pool pro-rata relative to the quadratic formula using one bucket and no specified categories.

Option 2:

Distribute the matching pool based on the following breakdown. These allocations are proposed by the Gitcoin Core team alongside :fire:_ :fire:.

  • Infrastructure: 30%
  • Dapp Tech: 25%
  • Community: 20%
  • Latin America 10%
  • NFTs: 7.5%
  • dGov: 7.5%

The goal of this new breakdown offers key aspects:

  1. Retire the SE Asia category to determine if that community can sustain development without regional support.
  2. Introduce a new Latin America group to seed development and encourage more globally diverse funding.
  3. Introduce a new decentralized governance category to fund projects that enable groups like Gitcoin to adopt tooling and infrastructure which aids progressive decentralization.

Option 3:

Gitcoin Stewards and wider community decide on a new matching breakdown. We encourage any Steward or community member to submit their own matching pool breakdown!

Please submit your proposal to the forum over the next week so that the community has sufficient time to vote before the round begins!

Benefits

  • Give GTC governance the power to ratify the direction of matching funds.
  • Allow the community to have more ownership over which pools receive the most matching.
  • Create a precedent for future matching allocation.

Drawbacks

  • Reduce convenience of distribution in favor of a more decentralized distribution process.

Vote

Once we have gathered feedback on both this and other proposals, :fire:_ :fire: will gather all formal proposals and submit a Snapshot vote to decide which to move forward with.

Please do not submit a snapshot vote for your proposal specifically! This just adds confusion and makes it harder for the community’s voice to be heard effectively.

58 Likes

Love the LATAM grants! I would vote for option two. How we would know if the Asia grants did sustain?

15 Likes

I think Option 2 is looking very good in terms of the diversification of categorys and % :slightly_smiling_face: :ok_hand:
In my eyes a great proposition by the Gitcoin Core Team, well done :+1: :+1: :+1:

11 Likes

I like Option 3. Would make sense for the community to be able to decide on a specific allocation.

10 Likes

I really like option 2, but I also want to see what stewards propose.

9 Likes

If only we had an algorithm for efficiently allocating capital… :trollface:

In all seriousness though, this is something we’ve talked about a lot at clr.fund. The TL;DR is nested matching rounds. Recipients at the the top level are the categories listed above, which are each distinct matching rounds with recipient projects within their respective categories.

This way, rather than coming up with some arbitrary (and ultimately biased) capital allocation for the categories, we can just let quadratic finding work its magic.

It also provides a nice opportunity for folks who want to contribute broadly to a category, but don’t know the best way to allocate to projects within then category.

We haven’t implemented this for clr.fund yet because we’re not yet at a scale where it makes sense, but I think Gitcoin Grants is well and truly beyond the scale where this would be the most efficient way to decide the matching pool allocation between categories.

15 Likes

So let me see if I understand correctly. So have some certain top categories and people just donate as before to a grant belonging to a category and the category with the most donations takes the biggest part of the pool as per the CLR algorithm? But also people can donate to just a category pool instead of a certain grant?

Some questions there:

  1. Wouldn’t that be a bit late to implement for round 10? I think it’s supposed to be this month right? I don’t know the technical work required.
  2. Who decides which the top categories are going to be? At least for that it would be nice if community could have a say.
  3. Who decides if a grant belongs to a category? I guess like now? So self-choice with the opportunity for the community to step in and correct miscategorizations or abuse.
  4. I have a fear that such an approach may make the most popular types of projects take an even bigger piece of the overall pie, leaving newcomers or not so popular categories with an even smaller part.
7 Likes

I like Option 3,I hope to get better and better and look forward to the success of Option 3

6 Likes

I would rather apply option 1, which seems fair, globally speaking

5 Likes

I support option3, look forward to the success of Option 3 and GTC better and better

2 Likes

Nothing is more convincing than option 2!

2 Likes

nothing better than option 3,all depends on gitcoiners can spread all over the world

2 Likes

I VOTE FOR OPTION 2!!! i think the distribution is fair and i like it, so if i vote, i’ll vote for it.

you guys do alot, mucho gusto!

2 Likes

I would rather apply option 2, I think this option is fair.

2 Likes

I think option 3 is good, but obviously option 2 is more fair

2 Likes

I prefer to option 3, that is better

3 Likes

I love option 3 .but due to this is a community so lets the community decide :heart::heart:

2 Likes

I’d like to understand this subject a bit better, so here’s one question: Why hasn’t Gitcoin been using Option 1, and instead opted for separate buckets?

2 Likes

I like the category breakdown in Option 2 but happy with Option 3 as well if the community has a different preference.

4 Likes

Great to see such continued governance participation :robot:_ :robot:!

Just a note for Option 3, want to encourage the community and specifically Gitcoin Stewards to propose these different categories & allocations, ie;
New Category: xyz new category proposed
New distribution: x: 15%, y: 30%, z: 5%, etc

This will mean there’s a lot of different proposed allocations so make sure to ‘:heart:’ allocations you agree with!

cc: @lefterisjp, @linda

7 Likes