My last post, Rapid Prototyping @ Gitcoin talked about the history of RP at Gitcoin, how it helped us find Gitcoin Grants in 2019, what we’ve learned from it, and also tried to sense what the future of RP could look like in the future.
We also talked about why we should rapid prototype at Gitcoin in the 2024 era+ (Acts as a 0-1 booster/assist for 0-10 product workstreams, Gives Gitcoin More Agility in Rapidly Changing Market) and the various risks associated with venturing into rapid prototyping.
In this post I want to talk about the areas of exploration (AoE) that are interesting to me, articulate why they are interesting to me, and get feedback about whether they are interesting to you.
How do we prioritize Areas of Exploration (AoE)?
An area of exploration is interesting for me if
- If it fits in Gitcoin’s Ikigai:
- What can we be paid for?
- What are we uniquely good at?
- What is our mission?
- What does the world need?
- If it fits in Gitcoins 2024 Essential Intents.
- If it fits within my 2024 focus as Gitcoin = Grants = Growth.
The more of these boxes it checks, the more interesting it is to me.
Areas of Exploration
High Level Summary
Here are some of the top areas of exploration to me, ordered by priority:
- Grants = Growth
- Retro PGF
- Web3 Business Models Research
- Allo Protocol
- Unique Funding Opportunities (UFOs)
- RegenLearnings.xyz
- Passport
Details
Below I will go into detail about each AoE.
1. Grants = Growth
Why?
- Gitcoin Grants is our oldest product. We are just starting to gain market momentum in the deployment of Gitcoin Grants Stack.
- People hire gitcoin grants ( a product ) for growth (a job to be done). IN what ways can we make this business line more successful.
Why not?
- Does the 1 to 10 team need the assistance of the 0 to 1 RPers?
- How do we open up Allo/Grants Stack to more community contributions?
Priority Council:
- Owocki, Meg, Kyle, Rena
2. Retro PGF
Why?
- The market has evolved, and Quadratic Funding isn’t the hot new thing anymore. Since Optimism RPGF 3, RPGF is the next hot thing in the ecosystem. RPGF 3 distributed $120m, more than all Gitcoin rounds combined, and there is interest in many people in the ecosystem to run RPGF rounds.
- This can be a sub AoE in the Grants = Growth AoE, like we pinched and zoom and discovered a niche in higher resolution.
Why not?
- Is this something we can be uniquely good at? Perhaps with our expertise in grants + relationships there, it is something we need to be good at.
Priority Council:
- Owocki, Meg, Kyle, Rena
3. Web3 Business Models Research
Why?
- We’ve not yet found a reliable business model, and a business model is important to ensure the longevity of it’s mission.
- This is one of our 2024 Essential Intents.
- This can be a sub AoE in the Grants = Growth AoE, like we pinched and zoom and discovered a niche in higher resolution.
Why not?
Priority Council:
- TBD,
4. Allo Protocol
Why?
- Allo protocol allows anyone to take the power of Gitcoin Grants and put it into their app. Allo could potentially have more network effects, value accrual, and impact potential than any one webapp we launch.
- We could do for capital allocation what Open Zeppelin did for ERC20/721 contracts… We could create a flywheel of better contracts, which attracts more developers, and that creates better contracts, and so on… (repeat)
- This flywheel spins + that creates value for the ecosystem. It also creates more tools & services in the Allo ecosystem. This increases Allo’s network effects + eventual financial upside. It also is a moat against a potential competitor. One Allo is seen as THE resource for capital allocation, it will make it very hard for any competitor to usurp Allo.
- We’ve seen demand from some partners for modular pieces of functionality built out of custom integrations (Janine: We want Zupass integration into Gitcoin Grants, Hats: we want to give ppl a Hats role + thats their ability to vote). This unit could priorities these asks + make sure we are super 0 to 1 agile + responsive to functionality the market is demanding. (this assumes we solve for How do we open up Allo/Grants Stack to more community contributions? )
- This can be a sub AoE in the Grants = Growth AoE, like we pinched and zoom and discovered a niche in higher resolution.
Why not?
- We have historically not been very successful in doing good devrel or protocol design. Though this has trended better over the last few quarters we are still not world class at it yet.
- Is this Grants+ (and therefore beyond our Grants = Growth focus)?
Priority Council:
5. Unique Funding Opportunities (UFOs)
Why?
- We’ve not yet found a deep, legitimate, and recurring source of funding for Gitcoin Grants like our friends at Optimism have. Unique Funding Opportunities (UFOs) could be our way of prospecting for such an area.
- This can be a sub AoE in the Grants = Growth AoE, like we pinched and zoom and discovered a niche in higher resolution.
Why not?
- Lots of the frontier UFOs are deeply technical or require deep domain expertise… Stuff like MEV, Stablecoins, L2 sequencer fees, etc coulid be deep, legitimate, and recurring source of funding, but do we have the domain expertise to tap those? Or should we partner w the people who are tapping them?
- On the other hand, we have proven our dynamism in raising money. We’ve successfully raised over $1m each from large donor donations, NFT launches, dogcoins, and market appreciation of our tresaurires. See Where does the Gitcoin Grants Matching Pool Money Come From?
- It’s priority number 5. Is 5 priorities too many? Crawl then walk then run.
Priority Council:
- TBD, maybe Owocki + Sov + rotating in domain specific folks.
6. RegenLearnings.xyz
Why?
- In the past several months, I’ve been working w @ccerv1 to do research on various public goods funding programs. During this time, we’ve had a heavy emphasis on both empirical data (leveraging our data skills) and working with program designers (like Gitcoin + Optimism), and theorists (like the authors of QF paper, and Vitalik’s vision for RPGF). It is in the intersection of these things that the magic happens. We’ve published a handful of posts that help illuminate the design space.
- This can be a sub AoE in the Grants = Growth AoE, like we pinched and zoom and discovered a niche in higher resolution.
Why not?
- It’s priority number 6. Is 6 priorities too many? Crawl then walk then run.
Priority Council:
- Carl + Owocki + Umar
7. Passport
Why:
- To support create a more sybil resistant web. To bootstrap another possible giant business line for Gitcoin (or an eventual Passport Side-Dao).
Why not?
- Not within Grants = Growth focus.
- It’s priority number 7. Is 7 priorities too many? Crawl then walk then run.
Priority Council:
- Kyle, Jeremy, Owocki
Open questions
- For the projects that are closely tied to a workstream, the workstream will fund the Labs work.
- How do we fund/govern the work that does not have a clear workstream owner focused on it? Is it possible to fund work through inchoate workstreams/GCPs/RFPs?
- Should we allow guests to join the priority council and under what circumstances?
- How do we surface the highest priority projects + priorities + enable the community to tackle them? How do we allow the community to surface the highest ROI projects?
- How many RP AoEs can we responsibly explore in parallel?
- How do we effectively and responsibly build a decentralized talent funnel to explore these AoEs with us?
Feedback Welcome
Feedback welcome.