Gitcoin Product Collective Workstream S16 Budget
Season 16 Budget Proposal
This is a funding proposal for the Gitcoin Product Collective (GPC) Workstream requesting ratification budgetary funds for Season 16
TL;DR 3 main takeaways:
- GPC merged with the Moonshot Collective, consolidating the Gitcoin DAOâs software building teams into one workstream. The GPC Budget for S16 is relatively flat from S15 despite the merge and the inclusion of new talent from Moonshot, as the merge relieved GPCâs reliance on outside contracted resources.
- GPCâs focus is now 100% on launching the Grants Protocol with the DAOâs recent commitment to replace GR16 with an alpha round on the protocol.
- Gitcoin Passport is here, and itâs awesome. We will spend much of this season growing our list of integration partners and continue to refine & build out initial use cases to confirm product market fit.
Amount:
GPCâs budget request in S16 is 1,100,689 USD or 647,464* GTC. This amount does not include a re-up of our 60 day reserves, and the full budget breakdown can be found at the end of this post.
*Based on a 20 day price average of $1.70
Milestone Report for Past Season
Note: This Milestone Report does not conform to the standard template, as the S15 GPC budget was published before the new template was ratified.
Success
Incomplete but will hit goal
Incomplete, will not hit goal
Canceled
Review Shared Commitments
Across all 3 protocol domains, in Season 15 we committed to:
Enabling Moonshot Collective builders to be able to extend protocol functionality through developer documentation and on-going developer support
This support served as early feedback on the implementation of the protocol and has ensured developers are first-class citizens in our protocol ecosystem.
We will brand and name all protocol components in collaboration with MMM.
Each of the protocols have unique naming, and seeds of branding as well. We will likely evolve this now that our product strategy is more clear.
GPC will work with DAO Support to develop Gitcoinâs knowledge base and evolve the support process, integrating the efforts to support existing products and onboarding new ones for support as they launch.
Support for the protocols was improved and much of the work was done to bolster the docs. We have the opportunity to reframe the communities expectations on how to receive support in future seasons as well.
Launch and run partner programs that drive a user-centered approach to our protocol development and scale adoption over time.
The Round Manager team, with support from the Grant Hub team, will collaborate with PGF on the Grants 2.0 Design Partner Program. Our goal is to use this program to test and validate design decisions for the protocol while also building up an initial Grant Program user base.
The Passport team will launch an Alpha Partner Program, which targets 4-6 other application teams who have high interest in using Passport for identity verification.
Passport
Review Commitments:
Move over all GR15 contributors to Passport and decommission cGrants Trust Bonus entirely.
Review the performance of the Passportâs technological architecture and interface, and the Trust Bonus in GR14, ship protocol and interface experience improvements for GR15.
Improve the accuracy of Trust Bonus in GR15 by a measurable degree. The exact target for improvement and how to measure it will be determined in collaboration with GitcoinDAO Fraud Detection and Defense.
Drive adoption of Passport by other dApps through an alpha partnership program.
Grant Hub
Review Commitments:
Build out Phase 2 of Grant Hub, which will enable project owners to apply to a round, view application status,
track active grants, and
view historical project data.
We will test Phase 2 of Grant Hub in partnership with Grants 2.0 Design Partners (i.e. Optimismâs RPGF round targeted for early August 2022)
Expand Grant Hub project metadata to store verified fields, starting with verified spam and fraud signals
Verifying ownership of Twitter & Github social accounts
Research how to further leverage Grant Hub project metadata to support building project reputation and niche curation. Long term, this enables more automated grant round eligibility curation.
Round Manager
Review Commitments:
Allow Round Manager to ingest verified spam and fraud signals from Grant Hub and filter projects based on those signals
Allow Round Operators to select and configure a voting/contribution module from 2-4 options
Design the Grant Explorer for Gitcoin rounds (i.e. interface for contributors to browse/vote) based on PGF partnership
Partner with PGF on the design of the future Gitcoin grants program
Enable Round Manager to generate payout calculations based on the selected voting/contribution module and votes cast via a Contributor-facing front-end
Recap of the S15
Beyond the green and yellow callouts above, we wanted to offer a bit of a narrative on how the season progressed and offer some insight into our goals S16 and beyond. We are very excited to be welcoming the Moonshot collective into our workstream this season. The builders have been absolutely instrumental in the development of a number of our protocols and bringing the two teams closer made a lot of sense. We would be remiss to not call out that our Head of Product for the last year is going to be moving on. Saying goodbye is always hard, but we love the idea of creating a culture where DAO life can be more fluid than most âfull-timeâ roles. Lindsey will be missed, but her impact on the workstreamâs creation, general DAO leadership and the creation of the protocols will be felt for quite some time - Kyle will be stepping in to support the team.
Through S15, we have started to make some significant traction on protocol development and traction. Passport has nearly fifty thousand unique wallets set up and has become the largest issuer of DIDs on the Ceramic network. This is increasingly exciting as we have welcomed nearly a dozen other dApps integrating and leveraging the tech.We will really double down on the core use cases and ensure we have the ability to support exponentially more dApps.
The Grants Protocol and Grants Hub are here. The steel threads are done, the protocols are in private alpha, and we will be running our first full Grant Round in just a couple of weeks. The teams have been laser-focused on ensuring the use cases for the protocol are well-defined, and we will ensure experimentation on funding mechanisms, project details, and user interfaces continue to be a focus.
List of Season 16 Commitments
We have included additional details below on the roadmap items each protocol team is targeting to complete over the next twelve months (four seasons). We have also broken down Objectives and Outcomes in the template format requested. You can review the details in the Roadmap and Commitments for context on the Objectives. It is known that some of these roadmap items will take longer than 1 season to accomplish. Each of the roadmap items are focused on growing adoption and retention of users to the protocols.
Passport Season 16 Roadmap and Commitments
Updated Vision: The Passport protocol enables individuals and communities to authentically and securely interact through transparent/accountable/sovereign data control and privacy-preserving validation. It seeks to spin a utility flywheel between individuals and communities to empower meaningful and consensual relationships. It will allow individuals to collect evidence of their reputation and identity in a single source where they have transparent/accountable/sovereign data control and enable communities to secure their platforms with simplified access to user data using privacy-preserving data validation.
Strategy:
1-2 year Goal 1: 80% of web3 communities have integrated Passport to solve identity verification problems
1-2 year Goal 2: 80% of passport holders are using their passport for verification in > 1 communities
S16 Outcomes:
Goal 1:
- Gitcoin Grants protocol is able to use Passport to programmatically identify donors as unique humans
- Passport has a productized set of scoring methods that meet the use cases of the majority of interested of communities
- Passport and its components are verifiable on-chain so any dApp can integrate passport, verify, and trust the source of passports data/components
Goal 2:
- Passport holders are able to easily navigate their passports to understand how it could be used across different communities (Research and Design output)
Grants Protocol (Round Manager and Grants Explorer) Season 16 Roadmap and Commitments
Updated Vision: We envision a world where communities are able to grow and evolve by funding their shared needs. The Grants Protocol will enable thousands of funding programs to run at any given time, uniquely designed to fit their communities.
Strategy:
1-2 year Goal: 80% of web3 ecosystems with grants programs are using the Grants Protocol to run their program.
- Our primary focus is protocol adoption among web3 ecosystems with grant programs. We believe this enables us to build a foundation in a market where we already have strong product fit.
- Key considerations
- We will design the protocol in a way that is extensible & approachable.
- Web2 programs/communities that are willing to use web3 tech will be able to adopt the protocol, but are not the initial targeted market for protocol adoption.
- Anti-goals:
- Building GTC utility and/or revenue model into the core protocol. We may end up building token utility tools compatible with the protocol, but only if we feel itâs a viable strategy for significantly increasing adoption. Revenue models, fee switches and token sinks are all being considered, but no timeline for implementation has been defined at this time.
S16 Goal: This season, our goal is to ensure that Alpha / Design Partner Grant Programs running on protocol can use v1 mechanisms for all core operations. In Season 16, we want to finish building out the core protocol and its initial interfaces. We will also run a number of closed alpha rounds on the protocol to prepare for a public beta launch.
S16 Outcomes:
- Round Operators can run a Quadratic Funding round on the protocol
- Round Operator can run a Quadratic Voting round on the protocol
- Round Operator can execute payouts on the protocol
- Round Operator has confidence in the accuracy of application data from all 3 levels of the Project Selection Pyramid (PSP)
- Donors can browse and assess the projects in a round
Project Protocol (Grants Hub) S16 Roadmap and Commitments
Updated Vision: We envision owners using the protocol as a place they incept their projectâs existence and then use it as a vehicle for growth over time. As an open source, permissionless protocol it will provide critical signals to communities that support and enable project growth over time. It will be the web3 space for creating a connected home for your project that allows you to build a reputation for sustainable fundraising, recruiting talent, reporting progress over time, and promoting your expertise.
Strategy:
1-2 year Goal 1: Enable the growth and adoption of Project Protocol through supporting project owners to apply to grants rounds on the Grants Protocol
1-2 year Goal 2: 80% of project owners who have used the Project Protocol to participate in a grants program are also using it to attest their legitimacy or manage their project on another platform
S16 Outcomes:
Goal 1:
- Project owners can collect the reputational data that Round Manager needs to programmatically verify for round eligibility
Goal 2:
- Enable external integration(s) with Grants Hub that leverage project reputation
- Empower project owners to build project reputation
Objectives and Outcomes
| Objective & EI | Objectives | Outcome Description | Likely Projects/Initiatives |
|---|---|---|---|
| What is it? | What will be done? | What impact will it have? | What might the work look like? |
| Gitcoin Passport Adoption 1.2 | 1-2 year Goal 1: 80% of web3 communities have integrated passport to solve identity verification problems | We believe that building a widely adopted, highly open and permissionless identity layer for the Ethereum ecosystem will reduce Sybil accounts, and enable real humans to showcase themselves without doxxing themselves. This will grow interest, trust and usability of web3 in general | Gitcoin Grants protocol is able to use Passport to programmatically identify donors as unique humans. Passport has productized set of scoring methods that meet the use cases of majority of interested of communities. Passports and its components are verifiable on-chain so any dApps can integrate passport, verify and trust the source of passports data/components |
| Gitcoin Passport Adoption 1.2 | 1-2 year Goal 2: 80% of passport holders are using their passport for verification in > 1 communities | Identity and reputation are much more valuable if they are fresh, and are not full of stale credentials. We will ensure we maintain a high activity rate to maintain the value a passport has for dApps. | Passport holders are able to easily navigate their passports to understand how it could be used across different communities (Research and Design output) |
| Grants Protocol Adoption 1.1 | 1-2 year Goal: 80% of web3 ecosystems with grants programs are using the Grants Protocol to run their program. | The value flowing to projects through the grants protocol makes it more valuable to project owners. By growing adoption of the grants protocol, the quality of project owners applying increases and the number of grants programs seeking talented teams to support increases. | Round Operators can run a Quadratic Funding round on the protocol. Round Operator can run a Quadratic Voting round on the protocol. Round Operator can execute payouts on the protocol. Round Operator can have confidence in accuracy of application data from all 3 levels of Project Selection Pyramid (PSP). Donors can browse and assess the projects in a round |
| Project Protocol Adoption 1.1 | 1-2 year Goal 1: Enable the growth and adoption of Project Protocol through supporting project owners to apply to grants rounds on the Grants Protocol | Ensuring Project owners can apply to rounds, and express the unique value they are creating in the space will ensure funding is deployed to those with the largest impact. | Project owners can collect the reputational data that Round Manager needs to programmatically verify for round eligibility. |
| Project Protocol Adoption 1.1 | 1-2 year Goal 2: 80% of project owners who have used the Project Protocol to participate in a grants program are also using it to attest their legitimacy or manage their project on another platform | For project owners who are returning users of the Project Protocol, we want to enable them to leverage the project reputation capabilities of Project Protocol outside of the Gitcoin ecosystem (i.e. through key partnership integrations) | Enable external integration(s) with Grants Hub that leverage project reputation. Empower project owners to build project reputation |
Budget Breakdown
| Budgeted | Budgeted | Budgeted | Budgeted | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expense Statement | 2022.11 | 2022.12 | 2023.01 | S16 | |
| GPC | |||||
| Staffing | |||||
| Round Manager Core Contributors | 100,872 | 100,872 | 100,872 | 302,617 | |
| Grants Hub Core Contributors | 87,898 | 87,898 | 87,898 | 263,694 | |
| Passport Core Contributors | 103,001 | 103,001 | 103,001 | 309,002 | |
| GPC Core (all teams) | 28,125 | 28,125 | 28,125 | 84,375 | |
| Severance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total Staffing | 319,896 | 319,896 | 319,896 | 959,689 | |
| Contracting | |||||
| DevOps | 12,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 | 36,000 | |
| Total Contracting | 12,000 | 12,000 | 12,000 | 36,000 | |
| DevRel | |||||
| Hackathons & Bounties | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 15,000 | |
| Total DevRel | 5,000 | 5,000 | 5,000 | 15,000 | |
| OpEx | |||||
| Saas and Infrastructure | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 90,000 | |
| Total OpEx | 30,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 90,000 | |
| Total GPC Budgeted Spend | 366,896 | 366,896 | 366,896 | 1,100,689 | |
| 60 Day Reserves | 733,719 | ||||
| S15 Treasury Balance | 0 | ||||
| Total S16 Request | 1,834,408 |
Overall, we wanted to ensure we defined the outcomes we cared about without being overly prescriptive in how we accomplished them.
