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November 9, 2023

Announcing: Gitcoin Grants 19

It’s here, it’s here. It’s finally here! The biggest Quadratic Funding event in web3 is back for its final season of 2023. GG19 kicks off on Nov 15th, and ends on Nov 29th, 2023. Essential intents for GG19 include recentering core values, improving program quality and user experience, increasing transparency, and advancing decentralization. Back to our roots.

TL;DR

  • 3 Program Rounds; 9+ Community Rounds; $1.24M in Matching Funds
  • Applications will remain open throughout the round, but apply ASAP via http://grants.gitcoin.co. We review on a first-come , first serve basis. Early bird deadline for guaranteed reviews before the round starts was Nov 8th.
  • Since the Gitcoin Passport scores reset after 90 days, refresh your passport score before GG19 starts on November 15th: https://passport.gitcoin.co. Note: you will need a minimum score of 15 to be eligible for matching. Matching power will proportionally increase for scores between 15 and 25.
  • The GG19 program rounds OSS & Web3 Community will run on the Public Goods Network (PGN). Community Round program managers can choose which network they want to run on. All grantees have received an email with step-by-step instructions for onboarding to PGN.
  • For more GG19 resources, check out the Grants Portal: https://grants-portal.gitcoin.co/
  • GG19 starts at 12:00 UTC on Nov 15th, 2023
  • GG19 ends at 23:59 UTC on Nov 29th, 2023

Introduction

Gitcoin Grants aims to foster innovation in the web3 space while aligning with the principles of decentralization and community empowerment. The broader vision for GG19 is to maintain the essence of Gitcoin Grants amid a shift towards a suite of decentralized products, ensuring the community ethos remains vibrant. Essential intents for GG19 include recentering core values, improving program quality and user experience, increasing transparency, and advancing decentralization: back to our roots.

We are so excited to announce Gitcoin Grants 19! GG19 is our big finish for 2023 and our main areas of focus are:

  • Transitioning to an invite-only curated format for the Ethereum Infrastructure round
  • Introduce the use of AI/LLM tooling for grantee evaluations, blending technology with human intervention for unbiased and efficient reviews of the web3 OSS round
  • Providing for representation and inclusivity in the Community and Education round
  • Establishing the Climate Solutions round as an independent entity within the Community Round framework, alongside 1inch, Arbitrum, MetaPool, MetaGov, and others. 

Continue reading for more details on the various rounds activating during GG19… 🤓

Program Rounds

“Thank you for supporting open source solutions and public goods. We could not be more excited to see all of the amazing projects that get funded this round. Please let us know your feedback, ideas and suggestions at #GG19. Hold on to your hats, touch some grass, drink lots of water because then we go on another epic adventure as GG19 kicks off! 🔥– Ben West, Gitcoin Grants Program Team Lead

Program Rounds refer to the specific grant rounds directly managed and overseen by the Gitcoin Grants Program Team (GPT, formerly PGF). These rounds involve different levels of curation and are optimized to align with Gitcoin’s mission and values, emphasizing transparency, decentralization and community engagement. You can review the general and program round eligibility criteria for GG19 here.

Ethereum Infrastructure

200,000 USDC Matching Pool
10% Matching Cap
Eth Infra is transitioning from an open application process to an invite-only curated format, where projects are selected with input from various highly informed teams and historical data. The round will include teams and individuals supporting integral components of the Ethereum network, projects that, first and foremost, enable the success and longevity of Ethereum. This includes areas like Core client teams (e.g., geth, nethermind, prysm, lighthouse); Staking infrastructure and tooling; Client diversity; Core developers (can apply as a team, a specific project, or simply as an individual); Tooling providers (e.g., hardhat / ethers.js); Security researchers, EIPs, censorship resistance; Sharding, rollups. scaling, etc; Account abstraction, zero-knowledge technology, statelessness, future proofing, and more.

Web3 Community and Education

200,000 DAI Matching Pool
7.42% Matching Cap
These are grants focused on non-software projects pushing Web3 space forward, including growing new communities, providing educational resources, creating content, protecting users, and working on inclusion/diversity/advocacy. In GG19, round-specific eligibility is primarily focused on filtering spam and preventing fraud . By doing so, we aim to ensure that genuine projects, irrespective of their size or history, get a fair shot at funding. The Grants Program Team’s role will evolve from custodians  to guardians, focusing primarily on avoiding  spam and addressing Sybil attacks. 

Web3 Open Source Software

200,000 DAI Matching Pool
7.42% Matching Cap

Web3 OSS grants are for open-source projects primarily focused on developing on top of, or advancing the broader Ethereum and/or web3 industry. In GG19, our goal is to create a level playing field where all grantees, irrespective of their stature or history, are evaluated based on their merit and eligibility criteria for the open-source software round preserving the balance between automation and human intuition as part of grantee evaluations. 

Note: The Climate Round, previously managed by the Gitcoin team , has now transitioned into a more decentralized entity and will be conducted  as a Community Round in GG19. This move allows the initiative to gain autonomy, enhance growth and pursue new funding opportunities. The separation is seen as a graduation, signaling the Climate initiative's readiness to operate independently and have a greater impact. 

Community Rounds

"Community Rounds are an excellent representation of our industry's growth and potential to achieve mass adoption. Protocols and communities join our grants festival to fund what matters to them. From regional public goods, to tech implementations that benefit the ecosystem as a whole, and real world solutions that impact non crypto users. It's all here." - Carlos Melgar, Head of Memepact

Community Rounds are primarily owned and operated by external parties, with support provided by GPT, MMM, and Product Workstreams. These rounds offer a more decentralized and community-driven approach, allowing external entities to take the lead in organizing and managing the rounds.

Showcasing more rounds alongside the seasonal Gitcoin Grants program as one cohesive event will create network effects that benefit all communities involved. The Community Rounds will run in the same 2-week window, the topics and details of which will be updated on https://grants.gitcoin.co/

Arbitrum Citizens Retrofunding Round 1

100,000 ARB Matching Pool
5% Matching Cap

This round supports rewarding the outstanding individuals who have proactively contributed to the Arbitrum DAO since the DAO was launched. Applicants must apply individually and showcase their contributions in the areas of governance, data analysis, data-driven decision-making, workshop/governance calls organization, etc

Meta Pool

30,000 DAI Matching Pool
10% Matching Cap

Round focusing on building DApps on NEAR 2.0 - Blockchain Operating System. Engaging builders from all over the globe to build decentralized applications with the support from Proximity Labs and Meta Pool DAO.

Global Chinese Community

30,000 DAI Matching Pool
10% Matching Cap

This round aims to foster innovation, collaboration, and sustainable development, ultimately leading to positive and transformative impacts in the public goods area in the Global Chinese Community. This time, our round focuses are: Cryptography tech, Staking/LSD-fi related tech, Web3 Social, Dev Tools & Dev Communities, Security, Policy Advocacy and Research & Tooling of decentralized governance. 

Token Engineering Commons (TEC)

50,000 DAI Matching Pool
15% Matching Cap

The grants in this round are for public goods projects primarily focused on education, tooling and research related to token engineering. This includes topics like the design and analysis of cryptoeconomic systems.

Open Civics

25,000 DAI Matching Pool
10% Matching Cap

The OpenCivics Genesis Round is the first grant round of the OpenCivics consortium and the first quadratic funding grants program focused on civics and advocacy projects. This funding is intended to help jumpstart the decentralized civics sector, with the consortium providing a hub for ongoing collaboration between participating projects.

Climate Solutions

150,000 DAI Matching Pool
8% Matching Cap

For projects primarily focused on climate solutions. The proposal should explicitly outline how this project will help reduce GHGs or is an important core infrastructure for web3 climate solutions. 

Web3 Social

22,500 ARB Matching Pool
4% Matching Cap

The main criteria for Web3 social round are that you’re actively doing work that accelerates Web3 social space and the overall decentralized world. This can be anything related to Web3 Social, but we are especially interested in Web3 infrastructure layers, info distribution protocols, data storage, Web3 social dApps, and games. Mask Network is excited to host the Web3 Social grant round with Gitcoin to help web3 social-related projects flourish using Quadratic Funding.

Meta Gov - Governance Research

25,000 ARB Matching Pool
20% Matching Cap

The focus of this community grant round, run by Metagov, will be governance research. More specifically, the focus of this round is to support more researchers and practitioners exploring topics within DAOs and digital governance more broadly. This includes topics such as DAO governance and design, blockchain governance, open-source governance, AI governance — any research project pertaining to digital and decentralized governance is welcome. See the open problems at DAO Science (daoscience.org) for a sense of the range of possible research questions. To be clear, you do not have to be researching DAOs or Web3 specifically as long as the outcomes of your research have implications on or learnings for those working in digital and decentralized governance. This round was made possible with the generous support of Arbitrum, Uniswap, and MetagovDAO. This is not required, but any research that can address questions relevant to Arbitrum or the Uniswap Foundation is much appreciated.

1inch LatAm

34,500 ARB Matching Pool
15% Matching Cap

We aim to incentivize LatAm based projects that are aligned with 1inch mission and values: DeFi focus: Projects should be directly related to the DeFi field (DeFi protocols, wallets, educational initiatives, etc). Defi should be an element of the project. Innovation and technology: Projects that leverage new technologies and solutions in the DeFi space. Projects that have the potential to establish Latam as an innovation hub for Defi Scalability with regional relevance: Projects that propose a solution that can be transferred to other parts of the world. Integration (1inch as a scaffold): Encourage projects that have successfully integrated 1inch APIs as part of their infrastructure or operations. Measurable outcomes: Projects must define clear metrics for tracking and reporting their impact Social Impact: We emphasize DeFi projects that have a significant social impact on Latin American communities with a focus on: -Financial inclusion: Projects that aim to use Web3 tools to include the people who is excluded from the TradFi world -DeFi tools: Projects that are building web3 infrastructure/Dapps to make better decentralized services -Web3 onboarding: Projects that make people jump from the TradFi or CeFi world to DeFi

A Word on PGN

"PGN is a public good itself.It is a mechanism for generating legitimate, recurring and bountiful funding for public goods *at large*." - Nicole d'Avis, protocol lead.

Two program rounds and a few community rounds will run on PGN in GG19. Here's some key info to remember: 

  • For applying to the round, Safe isn't currently supported, so make sure you set up your payout address through a traditional custodial wallet address. Please ensure that your address is secure! To enhance safety, consider using a hardware wallet as a reliable option.
  • For bridging, you have the option to use our bridge. However, it's worth noting that other alternatives are available, such as Layerswap and Super Bridge. Cashing out back to the mainnet may be faster with these alternatives. If you choose to use our bridge, please know it may take up to 7 days.

For all the information you need to use PGN, please click here. 

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