Request for Review of the Proposed Future for the Grant Programs and GR16 as we Transition to the Protocol
Reference: Future of the grants program, Gitcoin Protocol Launch Event and Gitcoin Brand Evolution
Iâd like to call out fellow DAO contributors @connor @lthrift @nategosselin @ceresstation @kevin.olsen @Viriya who co-wrote and/or deeply contributed much of this thinking. Iâd also like to call out all 23 contributors from all our workstreams in the DAO that participated in our cross-workstream GR16 planning workshop.
TL;DR
Weâre currently at a pivotal point in the Gitcoin Grants journey as we determine how to best transition from the centralized grants program to the grants protocol in a way that scales up our ability to help our communities fund their shared needs.
We would love your reflection and thoughts around this key transition decision. We believe that it is in the best interests of our community to let our program take a breath in S16 so that we can fully prepare for our grants protocol future. Specifically, we propose that we do not run GR16 in December and use the bandwidth to prepare the protocol launch in Q1 2023. If youâre opposed to this suggestion, our other consideration is running GR16 in December in a smaller / more manageable capacity.
The core Grants team has explored several options for this transition period (see full exploration details below) and we believe that this pause is our best option. If the community agrees with this recommendation, the PGF, MMM, FDD and Support team would all shift focus immediately to prioritize our exciting future Gitcoin Grants program and support our partnersâ programs transition to our decentralized and permissionless protocol. We would ideally launch the new Gitcoin Grants Program in Q1, 2023 and begin transitioning our partnerâs programs onto the protocol at the same time. This would be an exciting step for Gitcoin to make sure weâre building a strong foundation as we start the next step of our journey as a DAO.
If you are opposed to this suggestion, an alternate option is running GR16 Dec 1-15, 2022 on C-Grants with a narrowed scope that would only include rounds focused on core Gitcoin community themes. These would likely include rounds for Open Source Software, Ethereum Infrastructure, ZKTech and cause rounds such as DeSci, Climate and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). We would start partnering with all other partners from rounds to transition to the protocol after GR16 is complete. This would not include a main round and would be set up this way to reduce the current friction associated with running such a complex grants program on the fragile C-grants platform. While this would mean that we continue with our typical quarterly cadence for GR16, we would likely need to refocus and delay the launch of our program on the protocol.
We ask our community to share their reactions to the suggestion of sunsetting c-grants and voice what they think is best for the future success of Gitcoin. When commenting please specify if youâre a Partner, Steward, Grantee, Donor or Gitcoin Contributor.
Context and Details to Consider
Our Ideal Final State Vision
As a reminder, at a high level we aspire to provide the mechanisms to help communities â whether they be DAOs, companies, countries, cities, not-for-profits, groups of friends â fund their collective needs in the way that is right for them. Our ambition with this new protocol & program delineation is to be able to accomplish this vision on a much larger scale, funding tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in shared needs through a permissionless and decentralized system.
The first post about the future of the grants program summarized the history of the program, our current state, key aspirations for the future and the three key elements to make our next phase for Gitcoin Grants successful. We aligned on the idea that in order to achieve this aspiration, the future state will have three major components - the Protocol, the Gitcoin Grants Program and Grants Services.
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The Protocol: A Decentralized and Permissionless Platform to run Fully Independent Grant Programs
- For communities that do not require any service and minimal support, they can run a grants program on the protocol on their own. There will still be a small team focused on partner grant program success (in onboarding partners) and call center style support
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Gitcoin Grants Program
- A major event that happens on a regular basis (i.e. quarterly) in which GTC holders select N# of causes they wish to fund to have an impact
- This means there is no single âmain roundâ but instead a main event with a set number of impact areas, voted on by the community, with their own eligibility criteria. Initially we will start this as four key areas the community cares about supporting but could grow this as we see fit to help achieve the largest impact as Gitcoin, with support from the community, while helping drive protocol interest.
- A major event that happens on a regular basis (i.e. quarterly) in which GTC holders select N# of causes they wish to fund to have an impact
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Grants âServicesâ
- We will provide services to ecosystem grant programs running on the protocol. These may be fully supported rounds, a tiered offering or an âa la carteâ menu from our list of supported services (marketing, FDD, operations as a service).
- We would manage how we scale up our services model based on demand.
- Note: Partners are still welcome to manage their own programs or use a 3rd party provider, so the GitcoinDAO services capacity is not a limiting factor to growth
Where We are Today
Gitcoin Grants has prioritized running quarterly grants rounds and scaling GMV. Weâve been mostly successful and have grown round over round since inception although declining in recent rounds. However weâve increased program complexity with adding new rounds to our program every round. The GR15 program consisted of a general main round, four cause rounds (climate round, crypto advocacy, DEI and DeSci) and 12 ecosystem rounds (for projects that want to fund growth in their specific ecosystem). We run all these rounds together in a two week period once a quarter. The current process, scale, complexity and lack of product updates (due to our product teams focus on developing the protocol), is under significant strain.
The current scalability challenges and complexity of the c-grants program are unnecessarily creating an unpleasant experience for grantees, donors, partners and our Gitcoin contributors / team. These program challenges span across:
- The number of rounds we run in a two week period
- When we open and close the grantee application period
- Our manual grantee review process
- Increasing fraud and sybil attacks
- The speed of our round cadence
- The fragility of and tech debt in our legacy centralized product (c-grants)
In order to transition to the protocol successfully, itâs critical for us to build a better decentralized grants program that alleviates some of these challenges, while achieving the protocol objectives: a decentralized grants protocol that scales our overall impact both as Gitcoin Grants and as a broader community to fund our shared needs.
As Gitcoin, we have to make a hard decision around the most strategic way to sunset the C-grants product and transition to the Gitcoin Grants Protocol in a way that prioritizes a successful transition to the protocol and a positive experience for our key stakeholders.
Considerations for GR16
After many internal conversations around this complex and nuanced decision and a broader team retrospective with a representative from every workstream (23 individuals in attendance) of what GR16 should look like, we aligned on two main options (mentioned above and shared again below). In the activity we outlined risks and benefits of both options for you to review as a way to inform or reflect your own perspective.
Option 1:
Sunset C-grants and focus our team on launching our program on the protocol in Q1, 2023. We would do this while working with partners to help launch their programs on the protocol late Q1 and Q2, 2023. Note, with this option, this does not exclude the opportunity to have partners donate to existing Gitcoin grants in December if we feel strongly about supporting our top grants on the same regular cadence. Whatever we do in this decision, weâd ideally like to focus on still delivering value to grantees and partners, while prioritizing our teamâs time around launching the protocol.
Option 2:
Run GR16 Dec 1-15, 2022 on C-Grants with a narrowed scope that would only include rounds focused on core Gitcoin community themes. This would not include a main round. While this would mean that we continue with our typical quarterly cadence for GR16, we would have to revisit the turn around time to transition to the protocol.
Below are summaries of all the risks and benefits contributors shared during our workshops that helped inform our broader decision:
Option 1: Sunset C-Grants and Launch our Gitcoin Program on the Protocol in Q1
Risks
The main risk to consider is that the protocol is still not fully ready by a program launch event at the end of February/ March. If we end up pushing back our program further because of delays, we may lose credibility with a lot of our community.
Risk factors to our stakeholders
- Grantees
- Grantees will be upset that GR16 is not happening as some projects depend on our funding
- Uncertainty and changes to the program may create panic
- Gitcoin may lose some grantees because of changing the cadence
- Gitcoin is concerned that GR15 wasnât enough of a goodbye round
- Donors
- Donors have become used to our quarterly cadence and we may lose some if we transition to the protocol a few months delayed
- December is a key time for donations
- Partners
- Partners may be upset about rounds they wanted to run this quarter and have pre-paid for (note there may still be the opportunity to donate to specific grants partners would still like to support)
- We may lose some funders in the transition
- Stewards
- Stewards may wonder if Gitcoin will lose momentum if we donât run GR16 in December
- Gitcoin Internal / Contributors
- There is increased risk of the product team moving too fast to deliver and as a result have many more bugs and issues
- Support will have a lot of questions about why there is not a round that they will have to manage
Benefits
The main benefit of sunsetting c-grants is that our team can fully focus on defining the strategy and begin executing around how we transition the Gitcoin program and our partners to the protocol. In addition we can spend time including our community in voting on how we decentralize our grants program and causes to focus our funding efforts around.
Benefits to our stakeholders
- Grantees
- Grantees can start learning about the protocol and have enough time to get up to speed and reopen their grants on the protocol vs being rushed between rounds
- Grantees wonât have to go through the current c-grants process again, including the manual and broken grant review process, which caused a lot of frustration and backlash in GR15
- Donors
- Donors can start learning about the protocol and how to fund on the protocol through our smaller design partner rounds before participating in our program round
- This break could relieve donor fatigue
- Partners
- Partners can get some breathing room and will have the potential to be more organized around how they run rounds with us in a decentralized fashion
- Partners will no longer have to navigate the challenging review process and instead will get to experience the protocol review process.
- Partners would receive more attention from the Gitcoin team in their transition, so while decreasing the number of grants funded in December, we will hopefully help partners build a higher quality grants program on the protocol
- Partners can build out the programs they want to build out vs run them how Gitcoin expects them to
- Stewards
- Stewards will rally around our focus on becoming a decentralized protocol and program
- Gitcoin Internal / Contributors
- All contributors involved in running the c-grants will avoid wasted hours and attention on c-grants, a platform that will not be used again
- The team will have increased focus on the grants protocol / program launch
- We will be able to really reflect on the current program structure and have time to create a real strategy around the future, test it properly and develop our services offering while partnering with partners to transition effectively
- The internal team can be focused on mapping out talent needs to thrive on the protocol without burning out and dealing with more attrition of highly talented team members who are frustrated with the current platform and dealing with burnout
- The team can be invested in bridging grantees from c-grants to the grants protocol will take time and energy
Option 2: Run a small GR16 C-grants round
Risks to our stakeholders
- Grantees
- We will receive backlash for running a smaller round and that itâs seen as us losing momentum vs reprioritizing
- There will be limited improvement around grant review timelines, support help and fraud review
- Many projects will receive less funding and look elsewhere for funding
- If our team runs the round, we will not be able to think about and invest in how we structure the protocol launch and future until mid-Q1 2023
- Donors
- Donors doubt Gitcoinâs stability and ability to scale given the fragility of the c-grants platform (especially with the number of times the site goes down)
- Lose engagement from donors
- Partners
- Partners might really want to run a round or have already committed to running a round that we turn down
- The size of the round will still interrupt momentum of recurring rounds for all ecosystem partners
- We would have to pick specific partners, which may come across as if we are picking favorites
- Stewards
- Stewards will be concerned about running a smaller round while also not being fully ready to transition to the protocol
- Gitcoin Internal / Contributors
- The C-grants platform requires immense effort to run in its current state and even running a smaller round will likely require the same if not more effort due to communicating changes all to still communicate the change to the protocol the following round, improving / changing the review process etc. all to abandon it after
- We will see burnout between the shorter timeline between GR15 and GR16 and the increased need to support with both the program and the protocol development
- The current rounds take the full attention of PGF Partnerships, Grant Ops and MMM for 6-8 weeks, FDD works close to 24/7 during the round and product needs to help resolve a lot of bugs and issues with the product during the round, when we need them focused on developing the protocol
- The team will not be able to transition focus to any work on the protocol until mid-Jan. This includes supporting the protocol and investing in the strategy and execution of transitioning to the protocol, building out the program strategy and services for the protocol.
Benefits
- Grantees
- Grantees may find it easier to understand what rounds we are running because it is more focused
- This shift alludes to where our future state program vision might be
- Donors
- Donors will find it easier to donate because there will be fewer grants and the rounds will be more defined
- Partners
- Will appreciate that they are supporting core building for the ecosystem during a bear market
- Stewards
- Stewards will appreciate that weâre still making an effort to run rounds and support public goods
- Gitcoin Internal / Contributors
- The team can work on making the round more manageable between now and December
Based on the above risks and benefits, and the exciting future weâre moving toward, internally weâre leaning toward fully refocusing our time on a successful protocol launch in Q1 and not running a round in December. However, we recognize that this decision does not come without trade-offs and a significant investment of time over the next few months to make this a success.
Helping us weigh in on which of these options is of critical value, and we want to hear from as many people as possible. We appreciate your reactions, thoughts and ideas to help us inform our final decision. Once a healthy dialog has occurred here, we hope to crystalize the result with a snapshot vote.