Catching up here after a couple weeks out and wanted to say how great is that we’re having this conversation in public. Thank you @J9leger
After reading this post, I became tentatively supportive of Option 1 because I think it’s better to focus on nailing the next version of Grants instead of being pulled in the other direction so hard it slows progress.
However my biggest concern, shared by many others I see posting, is that not having a GR16 in December will upset the financial runway of projects relying on Gitcoin. But I wasn’t sure how many projects actually rely on Gitcoin as a consistent and significant source of quarterly funding. There is intense variability among the over 1k+ grantees we get each round. I took a look at the data from the last year (rounds 12 to 15) to see if I could answer: how many grantees raise at least $X thousand from gitcoin every round?
Over 5K every round: 18
Over 10K every round: 12
Over 20K every round: 6
Over 50K every round: 2
Of the grantees who raised at least 5k in every round during the last year, the average total yearly raised was $206k and the median was $190k. There is great variability from round to round with one grantee going from raising over 400k in one round to less than 10k the next. This is why the average is so high despite these being a small number of grants raised over 50k every round.
These results indicate there is a small, but important, number of grantees who do rely on Gitcoin as a somewhat steady and significant source of funding.
These grantees are significant and (by virtue of their QF results) well-liked members of our community. However, this does not consider what other funding sources these projects may have. Still, I think it could erode trust we have built over time with Grantees (and their supporters) if we were to rug them by not holding any round without greater advance warning.
I also asked: how many grantees raised over 5k in X of the last 4 rounds?
3 or more of 4 rounds: 56 (Average Yearly Fund: 136k, Median: 113k)
2 or more of 4 rounds: 141 (Average Yearly Fund: 86k, Median: 53k)
After seeing these results, my suggestion would be in-line with what others raised above about an Option 3: hold a single, stream-lined, and curated round during GR16. I would include only grantees who have raised at least 5k in 2 of the last 4 rounds. This smaller pool of grantees who have already been vetted will significantly reduce resource strain as they should not require reviews.
There is also a question underlying these results but tangential to this conversation: Why does funding change so much from round to round for some grantees? can/should we enable more consistent funding? The variability experienced by grantees is significant although it still allows them to raise large sums over time.