Itās been great to see the growth of the QF rounds and the strong interest in Direct Grants. Iām a yes for this budget. Good work on managing the reserves so well in the last season!
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Thanks for the breakdown and updates @meglister! I continue to be blown away by the GS team. I am incredibly impressed by all the team has accomplished since the June launch! Here are some 
for you and the team.
The only question I have is regarding the goal of 5 paid rounds. I am wondering how this paid model will work, are there additional features or other services that these rounds are paying for? In the future will there be a fee for all rounds run on GS? I know you linked to the longer 2 yr vision and other docs which I havenāt dug into yet. Let me know if this is already outlined elsewhere.
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Thank you for the flowers ā sending some back to you!
Re: paid rounds, great question! We will introduce a product fee on the grants funding (whether QF matching pool on DG direct payments). This fee will likely be between 5-10% ā we are still gathering data and feedback on this for DG. Service fees, like KYC or round management, would apply on top of the product fee, as we aim to charge appropriately for the value created for clients.
We believe pricing is an important part of our growth ā we want to reinvest in the productās future growth, and better optimize towards the value weāre creating for our grants managers, builders, and communities. (Thereās no PMF on a free product!) That said, we donāt want it to be a blocker to usage and will look for ways to make this non-onerous for smaller rounds or organizations.
I love seeing the progress thatās happening with Grants Stack ā kudos to the team. Iām supportive of this budget 
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I may have missed this, but what is DG? I couldnāt find a definition with ctrl-f. Iām new to the forum. I do know what QF is though! (Quadratic Funding). BTW thanks for writing this proposal. Canāt say I understand it fully yet, but I like the thoroughness.
Thanks!
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Sorry about that! DG stands for Direct Grants. We use this term to refer to a popular mechanism for grants funding distribution, where a single grants manager (or small committee/council) disburse funds directly to recipients.
Happy to answer any questions about the proposal too, or chat more! You can find me on discord @catjam__ . And I just granted you (and anyone else with the link) viewership permissions on all the linked docs, apologies that wasnāt already set!
Glad to see the accomplishments in QF and self-serve rounds! Kudos!
- As there are competitors in the market for Direct Grants, are there any specific strategies to differentiate this offering?
- With adoption growing, are there any plans to add contributors for āCustomer successā to the team?
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hey @jengajojo thanks for reading and great questions!
Absolutely! Weāre focused on two pillars for Direct Grants this season:
- Solidifying the product and workflows: creating a bug-free experience and seamless workflows for the most common direct grants needs. Weāve heard that a few grants programs have churned from competitive products due to lack of stability, so this will be our first priority.
- A strategic focus on connecting grants programs with the best builders for their needs, leveraging the network of 3k+ grantees that Gitcoin has funded over the years as a competitive advantage. Easy workflows (above) are nice, but ultimately grants programs will be as successful as the builders they fund. Weāre exploring ways to get started here that include skill & project attestations, application scoring, and more.
You can read more about our product strategy here and the 2 year vision here
Youāll read more on this soon 
, but the PGF team is in the process of reconfiguring some roles on their team to align with the growth of our products. Iām so excited to be working closely with the team led by @Sov and grateful to @koday for stepping into a Customer Success role for our Grants Stack customers!
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Am supportive of this budget and Iām really grateful for the work that @meglister put into the strategic docs that this budget is based on. Really excited to see this project gain adoption!
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I too am supportive of this budget, especially as sights are set on revenue generation. I also appreciate that sights are being set on leveraging external community to build with/on Grants Stack rather than hiring more internally. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out.
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Fully supportive of this budget!
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I just wrote a longish post for Passport - and I need to save some gas for Allo - but Iām supportive of this budget request and plan to vote yes.
Iāll offer some brief feedback in a format that Jared from Subway would approve of:
- I love how this team has had its ear to the community and the fact that self-serve rounds are gathering steam is testament to this. I imagine thereās still some handholding required to onboard newer ecosystems, but itās unbelievable to compare the state of things today vs just a few seasons ago!
- The roadmap and product vision talk about discoverability improvements as if this were a feature request but IMHO this is the name of the game. As there are more rounds and rounds get bigger, I find myself getting less discerning about what I support. It really feels like a popularity contest. How many users who visit the explorer page are actually clicking through and discovering projects vs scanning the grid and quickly checking off familiar projects? How much traffic is coming from links on groupchats that say āplease please please fund my projectā vs actual in-app discovery? We all love how quick (and cheap) the checkout experience is, but is this making us lazy voters? I donāt have a solution to propose but I think some deep thinking is required to find something that is 10X better and not just 10% better. (I know some new features are about to ship ā¦ I hope to be proven wrong!)
- I think itās great that this team is rolling out new grant mechanisms and experimenting with pricing strategies. The adoption over the last two seasons is very compelling and the aggressive growth forecasts for the next two are even more compelling.
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thanks @ccerv1 ā appreciate your support and feedback! the kind words really donāt hurt, either 
Really appreciate the call out about our engagement w community. Itās been a big focus for us and Iām glad to see it both paying off in our internal efforts and recognized!
Your comment around discoverability brings up a bigger meta issueā¦
1 Youāre totally right about the importance of discoverability wrt Gitcoin Grants rounds, which use Quadratic Funding
2 At the same time, self-serve QF rounds have not reached nearly the size of GG rounds, and this is not a pain point for them
3 Weāve also experienced a much faster rate of growth in direct grants adoption and the BD pipeline for direct grants vs QF. Since June (5 months) weāve run 8 QF rounds, and ~5 of them were funded by Gitcoin or @owocki . Since 10/2, weāve launched 3 direct grants rounds, have about 10 more in the pipeline, and 0 of them are funded by Gitcoin/Owocki.
4 Given all of the above, itās really challenging for me to figure out how/why to prioritize things that are needed by the Gitcoin Grants program but do not immediately benefit self-serve QF and are not applicable to direct grants. We do have some new features coming out for discoverability for GG19 which Iām hoping are helpful, but my approach has been a bit of āhedging betsā ā trying to make things serviceable for GG to keep the community happy while being able to keep resources/progress in other areas where we see more growth. (And as product people know, hedging bets is generally not a healthy approach when weāre trying to grow in the early stages!)
Would be happy to chat more and very open to feedback on this approach and priorities.
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Itās been great to watch this team grow and continue to push adoption for Grants Stack. The goals outlined here are ambitious and Iām excited to support this proposal!
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I am excited about the future of Grants Stack and I will be voting yes on this proposal.
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This snapshot has closed and option 1 āYes ā has won.
The full text for the option was: Voting āYesā to fund the Grants Stack Workstream for $1,037,180 for S20-21.
Metrics:
2,848 unique votes
~6.4M GTC tokens cast.
Thank you to the author for the proposal and to all the stewards and GTC token holders who cast their vote.
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I (owocki.eth) am a member of the Gitcoin WalletGuard. 
Iāve verified that the code on the tally proposal matches the intent of the proposal.
If you are interested in joining the Gitcoin WalletGuard click here.
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I (jonruth.eth) am a member of the Gitcoin WalletGuard.
Iāve verified that the code on this proposal matches the intent of the proposal.
If you are interested in joining the Gitcoin WalletGuard click here.
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I (cryptobenthicš .eth) am a member of the Gitcoin WalletGuard .
Iāve verified that the code on this proposal matches the intent of the proposal.
If you are interested in joining the Gitcoin WalletGuard click here
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