TEMP CHECK - ethereum extitutional

🧙 🧙‍♀️ Ideas and Open Discussion
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TEMP CHECK - ethereum extitutional

tl;dr

  • ethereum’s culture has institutionalized. the counterculture that built the app layer needs a home, a canon, and a funding mechanism

  • ethereum extitutional is that experiment: events + canon + infrastructure (quadratic funding + a trust graph), organized as an open network rather than a formal org

  • value to ethereum: a counterweight to institutional ethereum that funds app-layer execution and keeps the weirdos building here

  • value to gitcoin: a live, 2027-era ready brand for gitcoin’s funding in ethereum, and a testbed for trust-graph governance before it touches gitcoin itself

  • temp check: modest gitcoin treasury support and a QF round under the ethereum extitutional banner by end of year. feedback wanted before anything goes to a vote

what is an extitution

an institution creates an enclosed environment: clear boundaries, formal roles, an inside and an outside. an extitution is the opposite shape. it’s a flexible, provisional network of relationships, rituals, and shared culture with no hard boundary. open by default.

the term comes from michel serres and has been developed by primavera de filippi and others in extitutional theory. open machine has a good public thread on one rendering: small, sometimes ephemeral organizational forms that take on just enough structure to serve an open network, then dissolve when the job is done. we hold the semantic lineages loosely.

there’s a real tension in this frame and we want to name it honestly: QF rounds and funding mechanisms require legibility, and radically networked forms resist legibility. holding that dissonance, and designing forms that bridge it (structured, ephemeral, service-oriented), is part of the work. if we resolve it well, we end up somewhere new.

why now

ethereum 2015 to 2025 was a political economy: a tribal identity, in-group dynamics, realpolitik. that era is over. the technology mainstreamed, the culture got liquidated, and ethereum is now just part of the internet.

institutional ethereum (the foundation, the L2 business models, the etf era) is doing its job. but the app layer, the networked orgs, and the counterculture that made ethereum generative in the first place have no counterweight institution. no canon, no funding stream, no gathering ritual. the people still building weird, open, commons-oriented things at the edges are exactly the people ethereum can’t afford to lose.

extitution.io is the flag we’re planting: a counterweight to institutional ethereum, focused on the app layer and on networked organizations.

the shape: three legs

  1. canon. collect and co-evolve the theory: what extitutional forms are, what counts as an execution, which lineages we draw from. collaborators are getting edit access to the extitution.io site, and a canon workshop with extitutional theorists is being organized

  2. events. small, intimate, IRL. high-bandwidth trust-building over conference-scale broadcasting. several gatherings are already forming around existing events this year

  3. infrastructure. a QF round under the ethereum extitutional banner (target: end of year), and a trust graph to hold reputation and influence funding decisions without a central gatekeeper

value to ethereum

  • retention of executional talent. the builders shipping app-layer and commons work have watched funding flow to protocol infrastructure for years. a dedicated funding stream, however modest, says: build here

  • a cultural counterweight. healthy ecosystems have both an establishment and a loyal opposition. ethereum currently has one of these. an extitutional pole gives dissident energy somewhere productive to go, inside the tent

  • bridge-building. exital forms naturally operate across ethereum’s boundary: funding external communities, connecting ethereum tooling to non-crypto networks. that expands ethereum’s surface area instead of enclosing it

  • new coordination primitives, tested live. trust graphs, attestation rituals, ephemeral orgs. ethereum’s next decade needs governance tech beyond token voting, and someone has to run the experiments

value to gitcoin

  • a live, 2027-era-ready brand for gitcoin’s funding work in ethereum. the gitcoin brand carries 2017-2025 baggage. ethereum extitutional is a fresh banner that gitcoin’s QF machinery can run under, aimed at the people still building weird, open things at the app layer. gitcoin keeps doing what it does best (fund public goods in ethereum) with a story that fits where ethereum actually is now, not where it was

  • a testbed for trust-graph governance before it touches gitcoin itself. we’re exploring trust-graph-based delegation for gitcoin (see the transitionary stewards temp check). piloting the same primitives here first, with a smaller, high-context group, means gitcoin inherits a mechanism that’s been run in production rather than a whiteboard idea

  • a fundraising surface gitcoin doesn’t currently have. real capital is flowing into the new ethereum institutions right now (treasury companies, etf issuers, the etherealize-era wall street push). the same funders have an obvious interest in ethereum’s app layer and culture staying alive, and an extitutional round is a legible thing to write a check into. that’s new matching-pool money into the gitcoin ecosystem, not recycled treasury

scope

  • gitcoin’s role: curate and fund, never operate. the initiative runs on its own energy

  • the ask: modest, and designed to attract external sponsors for the matching pool. if this advances to a formal proposal, it will itemize matching pool vs. operations so the split is legible

  • the form: a group chat, a recurring call, an open repo, a trust graph. no new legal entity; any treasury support would flow through the gitcoin foundation’s existing rails. whether this thing acts primarily as a funder or ever as an executing entity is an open question we’re sitting with

the temp check

before anything goes to a vote, tell me:

  1. does an extitutional counterweight to institutional ethereum feel valuable to you, or like a distraction?

  2. should gitcoin’s treasury support a QF round under this banner, and at what scale?

  3. does trust-graph-influenced funding excite or worry you? why?

  4. what would make an extitutional round legible enough to fund without killing what makes it extitutional?

  5. who should be part of this? name them below or dm me.

  6. who can get me an intro to tom lee?

Disclaimer: This post is for informative purposes only and is not financial advice. This post reflects my personal views ahead of the stewards’ review, not a decision or commitment by Gitcoin governance. Forward-looking items in it, like the october node zero timing, are targets, not commitments. The information in these posts is subject to change as we continue learning. This post may contain estimates, may contain errors, and is provided on a best-effort basis. DYOR, do not make any financial decisions based on these posts.

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Trust graphs and transitionary stewards: weaving the next era of gitcoin governance