Gitcoin Grants Round 21 (GG21) is focusing entirely on ecosystem and community-driven rounds. This edition embraces a theme of collaboration with partners and empowering external communities.
“GG21 isn't just another funding round - it's a jam session. We're empowering diverse communities to riff on ideas and new approaches to QF. As usual, we're not following the sheet music—we're improvising. It's time to make some noise.”
Sov, Head of Grants at Gitcoin
Innovation and creativity, by nature, are unpredictable, disruptive and experimental. This sentiment encapsulates the spirit of Gitcoin Grants 21 (GG21), which is Gitcoin’s twenty-first funding round, with a focus on collaboration and empowerment.
Gitcoin Grants is a community-curated quarterly funding program that exists to seed the next generation of high impact builders in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Since its launch in 2019, Gitcoin Grants has distributed over $60M through 270,000 unique supporters, across more than 3,700 projects, through its quarterly funding rounds. Gitcoin Grants uses Quadratic Funding, that maximizes the impact of community contributions (Impact Results | Gitcoin). It is a pivotal initiative in web3, designed at the core, to empower communities to fund and fund digital public goods. The program has become a cornerstone of the Ethereum ecosystem, supporting projects that enhance digital infrastructure, promote decentralized governance, and foster innovation across various domains (Program | Gitcoin).
Gitcoin Grants Round 21 (GG21) is focusing entirely on ecosystem and community-driven rounds. This edition embraces a theme of collaboration with partners and empowering external communities. Our OSS Program now runs twice annually. By decentralizing the grant management process, GG21 empowers local communities to prioritize and support projects that align with their unique needs and values.
“I believe we’re really creating the future of philanthropy here and I believe that future is based on trust based philanthropy where we’re funding outcomes but also the people who are doing the work and we’re trying to make it easier for those people to get the funding to do the work that matters. Doing that onchain is one of the most powerful tools we have to shift how we fund what matters together.” - Benjamin Life, Open Civics
There are two ecosystem rounds running in GG21 that cater to large, established ecosystems within the web3 space. These rounds are run, managed, and funded by external partners, and they operate in parallel with Gitcoin’s broader grants program.
Matching Pool: 150,000 ARB
Matching Cap: 10%
This round, with 150K ARB in funding, is dedicated to supporting projects that enhance the Arbitrum ecosystem. It’s available to anyone already building in the arbitrum ecosystem or that can make it credible that they intend to build or move their product into the arbitrum ecosystem. It focuses on core infrastructure, developer tooling, innovative dApps & Apps, Stylus, and Arbitrum Orbit Chains. The initiative aims to accelerate Arbitrum's expansion by funding promising projects, evaluated based on their contributions to the ecosystem, community engagement, and technical feasibility.
Matching Pool: $75,000 cUSD
Matching Cap: 7%
Targeting projects that make a tangible impact on physical communities, this round aligns with Celo's mission of financial inclusion and sustainability. With a 75K matching pool, it supports initiatives in areas such as regenerative finance (ReFi), real-world assets (RWA), decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN), and more. The round aims to expand the scope of Celo's ecosystem, particularly in financial inclusion and environmental sustainability, by supporting projects with real-world applications.
Since GG20, Gitcoin introduced a new governance framework that decentralizes the management of funding rounds, allowing communities to take the lead and apply for extra matching funds from Gitcoin. This process, overseen by an external community council, enables local ecosystems to support projects that reflect their unique priorities and needs.
Matching Pool: 50,000 USDGLO
Matching Cap: 10%
In early 2023, initiatives like ReFi local nodes, GreenPill local chapters, and Celo regional DAOs began independently developing Web3 solutions to address local community needs on the ground. Recognizing the potential for synergy, these groups started to align their efforts, leading to the creation of the Regen Coordi-Nation Round. In collaboration with GreenPill Network and Celo Public Goods, this round supports regenerative communities leveraging Web3 technology to address local challenges. With a 50K matching pool, it focuses on developing tools for impact tracking and reporting, fostering a collaborative environment among different community initiatives.
Matching Pool: 125,000 ARB
Matching Cap: 10%
This round, offering 125K ARB in matching funds, is a partnership between MetaGov's Grant Innovation Lab and the Cartographer Syndicate. It supports new members, existing contributors, and innovative ideas in Web3 grants research, tooling, and thought leadership, helping to attract talent and foster a thriving community. This round is dedicated to advancing thought leadership, research, and tooling in the Web3 grants space. The community around this round was originally started in a Telegram group and has grown into a significant initiative.
Matching Pool: 33,500 ARB
Matching Cap: 15%
With 33.5K ARB in matching funds, this round supports research and artistic projects related to psychedelics. It is the first time that this round is running in a Gitcoin Grants round. It aims to democratize resource access through a decentralized, blockchain-powered platform, promoting innovation and collaboration in psychedelics.
Matching Pool: 60,000 DAI
Matching Cap: 15%
This round focuses on tooling, research, education, and social infrastructure projects within the Optimism and broader Superchain ecosystems. With 60K DAI in matching funds, it prioritizes initiatives that demonstrate significant potential for impact and alignment with ecosystem goals. Successful projects may also qualify for a retroactive funding round to further reward their contributions.
Matching Pool: 30,000 USDC
Matching Cap: 30%
This experimental round explores the threshold funding mechanism, where projects must declare a minimum funding amount required to achieve their goals. If donations and matching funds do not meet this threshold, the funds are reallocated to other projects that meet the criteria. This approach reduces the number of partially funded projects, ensuring that resources are directed towards initiatives capable of delivering significant community value. The round focuses on collaboration technology, an untapped area in the Web2 B2B SaaS market with vast potential for sustainable business models and positive global impact. The round includes a 30K USDC matching pool, and aims to evangelize the emerging category of "collaboration tech."
Matching Pool: 39,000 USDC
Matching Cap: 10%
Continuing from previous DeSci rounds, this initiative offers 39K USDC in matching funds to support decentralized science projects. It aims to create a transparent, equitable ecosystem for scientific research and knowledge dissemination, promoting collaboration and innovation in academia and beyond. The DeSci round supports multi-language applications.
Matching Pool: 42,000 USDC
Matching Cap: 15%
This round, offering 40K in matching funds, supports civic engagement and governance projects. It encourages the development of tools and methods for community organizing and requires grantees to use multi-signature wallets, promoting transparency and collaboration. The round also seeks to address feedback from its last round, by exploring credit card donation options and aims to increase the number of grantees from previous rounds. Participants are required to share their progress on KarmaGap, creating an online web of trust to ensure transparency and accountability. The round emphasizes the creation of open-source public goods, focusing on research and knowledge that can be utilized by community organizers to empower their local communities.
“We’re reaching an inflection point in web3 where we have so many tools, and in some ways more than anything now we need education to help the public discover how they can utilize web3 to directly empower their communities.” - Benjamin Life, Open Civics
Matching Pool: 250,000 USDGLO
Matching Cap: 10%
Led by the Climate Coordination Network, this round supports projects focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building essential infrastructure for Web3 climate solutions. With 250K USDGLO in matching funds, it aims to catalyze diverse forms of climate action for a sustainable and equitable future.
Matching Pool: 75,000 DAI
Matching Cap: 9.33%
Focusing on projects that advance the Asian public goods ecosystem, this round offers 75K DAI in matching funds. It supports initiatives in Ethereum development, policy advocacy, public goods funding protocols, privacy, and anti-censorship, aiming to unlock the potential of Asian innovators and builders.
Gitcoin Grants is powered by Grants Stack, which is a protocol-enabled solution that allows any community to easily create, manage and grow a grants program. Gitcoin Grants Stack runs on Allo protocol, an open-source protocol that enables groups to efficiently and transparently allocate pooled capital.
“Allo protocol allows for anyone to build a front-end interface that draws from the same underlying onchain data.” - Benjamin Life, Open Civics
Gitcoin Grants is protected by an advanced two-pronged sybil resistance strategy. Connection-Oriented Cluster Match is based on standard QF and attenuates a project’s funding if many of its donors have similar donation patterns. In conjunction with COCM, Gitcoin Grants utilizes Gitcoin Passport’s Model-Based system. It requires minimum user interaction and greatly reduces user frustration. Users’ wallets will be automatically scanned in the background and assigned a score based on their history. No stamps required!
Gitcoin Grants Round 21 is a critical step toward democratizing funding within the web3 space. This round is an invitation to all program managers to collaborate, share knowledge, and support each other, fostering a community-driven environment.
GG21 empowers communities to take charge, making decisions that best serve their unique ecosystems: Funding What Matters to them.
We encourage everyone—builders, donors, and community members—to participate in GG21 and support the projects that resonate with them. Visit grants.gitcoin.co to learn more and contribute to empower the next wave of builders and maintainers of the Ethereum ecosystem.