Gitcoin’s biggest quarterly event is kicking off on March 9th and running through March 24th, 2022. In this post, you’ll find everything you need to know to participate in Grants Round 13.
Gitcoin’s biggest quarterly event is kicking off on March 9th and running through March 24th, 2022.In this post, you’ll find everything you need to know to participate in Grants Round 13.
tl;dr
In short, to support people and organizations that are building public goods. That is, people & orgs who are building software, tools, media and other artifacts that are freely available AND create positive externalities to the world.
Many people think of Gitcoin as a meta public good – a public good that enables other public goods (+builders of public goods!) to spawn, grow and thrive.
DAOs and other ecosystem builders see Gitcoin’s quarterly grants rounds as an opportunity to partner regularly with the broader web3 community to fund the most impactful projects & builders. We’ve run 12 quarterly grants rounds so far, which have collectively raised over $36 million for public goods. Learn more about results.
We’re just getting started. Read more about our long term vision for Grants 2.0.
Grants can be complicated! Let’s do some quick background on the three equally important parties that participate in grants rounds: Matching Sponsors, Individual Funders & Grantees (or Grant owners).
Matching Sponsors:
Typically Web3 projects, like @Uniswap or @0xPolygon, who generously commit large sums of capital (often $100K+) to our matching pools.
Individual Funders:
Ordinary people, like you and I, who might donate $5-10 (or much more!) towards grant(s). It’s common for individuals to give small amounts of money to many grants at once, often as many as 50!
Grantees / Grant Owners:
Early-stage builders – often open-source devs – who are seeking funding for their project.
Two key clarifications for any n00bs out there:
We hope this helps clear up some of the most commonly asked questions!
Now onto some more details about the structure of this grants round!
The overall structure for Grants Round 13 is similar to Grants Round 12, where we’ll again have three types of rounds:
For GR13, the main round includes $1.2M in matching funds, which is up from $1M in GR12 and has been steadily rising since the inception of Gitcoin Grants in 2019. All grants that qualify for matching funding receive funds from the main pool – in other words, these funds are the least restrictive, and grantees need only ensure their grant is active to be eligible for matching funds.
Please join us in thanking all of our incredible main round matching sponsors for their incredibly generous contributions for GR13: Polygon, Uniswap, Yearn Finance, Rainbow Rolls, Gnosis, Radicle, EPNS, Chainlink, Maple Capital, PoolTogether, dydx, Figment, and NounsDAO.
It’s not too late to join – if you or your organization is interested in funding public goods, contact our team at founders@gitcoin.co.
Matching cap:
Starting in GR12 and continuing in GR13, there is a matching cap of 2.5% of the total main round pool. This means that once a grant has hit $30k in matching funds from the GR13 main pool, they’re no longer eligible for additional matching. This change was adopted by the community in order to distribute limited funding more evenly and prevent any one grant from running away with a disproportionate amount of the matching funds. Learn more hereabout the tradeoffs the community considered in adopting this cap.
Ecosystem rounds are focused on funding grants that support the objectives of the sponsoring ecosystem. This typically includes:
Uniswap is one of the largest trading protocols in decentralized finance and was one of the first partners to run an ecosystem round. See this case study to find out why they run ecosystem rounds each quarter.
Here is a list of our ecosystem round partners for GR13:
ZK Tech (@ZKValidator, @0xParc & more)
Open Gaming (@OPGames_ & more)
Polygon (@0xPolygon)
ENS (@ensdomains)
Algorand (@AlgoFoundation)
OlympusDAO (@OlympusDAO)
NFTs (@opensea)
Uniswap (@uniswapgrants)
Radicle (@radicle)
Grantees interested in receiving matching funds from ecosystem partners may learn more by reading the round briefs here.
While ecosystem rounds are aimed at rallying funding for and signaling sentiment within a particular project’s community, cause rounds usually support a broader impact area.
Cause rounds were inspired by the positive-sum worlds essay and our community entreaty last summer for new kinds of public goods. We saw massive interest in how web3 interacts with the real world, and were inspired to expand grants rounds and quadratic funding beyond digital public goods.
For GR13, we have 3 cause rounds: Climate Solutions, Support For Ukraine and Longevity.
Like the Climate round in GR12, this round will again focus on projects combating climate change, both in Web3 and beyond. Working with climate activists in the All for Climate ecosystem like Xavier Damman and academics like Primavera Di Filippi we are working to curate innovative climate solutions from visionaries around the world. Read more here to determine if your grant may be eligible for these funds.
In just the last few days since the war started, the need for raising & sending meaningful sums across borders has become highly evident. Projects like Unchain Fund have raised significant sums of much-needed funds very quickly, and Gitcoin stands with these projects.
To properly mobilize the web3 community, we must put all of our combined social reach towards this historic world event. Therefore, we have decided to add a matching pool for humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people and to a few reputable organizations that are supporting them. Projects are likely to include: International Medical Corps, Kyiv Independent & Unchain Fund. This round is evolving quickly with a small team, so expect more updates in the coming days and weeks. Read more here to determine if your grant may be eligible for these funds.
This round will focus on open science in the context of human longevity, a topic close to the hearts of a number of major figures in the Ethereum ecosystem including Vitalik, who recently made a large donation to the Methuselah Foundation in the latest of a string of donations supporting the cause. Similar to GR12, the list of grantees for this round was curated by VitaDAO and lifespan.io with the help of the Gitcoin community.
When creating a new grant, you will soon be able to see the new matching pools and select the ones that are most relevant. If you have an existing grant that may qualify for one of these new matching pools, we will provide a way to request matching funds. More details on this process will be announced prior to GR13. Read more here to determine if your grant may be eligible for these funds.
On Wednesday, March 9 at 10:00 am MST Gitcoin will be hosting the official Grants Round 13 Kick-Off event. Add to your calendar.
During this event, key representatives from Gitcoin will present alongside round participants. We’ll celebrate the beginning of GR13, walk you through the details of the round & highlight the ways you can get involved to build and fund public goods across all of our rounds!
Just like last time, everyone who attends will earn a POAP for their participation!
It’s never been easier (or more fun!) to support your favorite builders!
In Grants Round 12, over 26,000 people chose to participate by funding one or more grants. We can’t wait to build on this success in Grants Round 13.
Why donate, you may be asking?
For clarification, unlike some other funding platforms like Kickstarter, donors do not receive anything in exchange for their generous donations (no physical goods, equity, etc). Oh, and don’t be this person – “Wen airdrop?“
You’re able to support your favorite builders at any time, but your donations will only be eligible for matching funds during a grants round, which is from March 9 – 24, 2022.
In order to ensure that transaction/gas fees don’t get in the way of making a big splash, we recommend bridging funds to Polygon and/or Zksync. More details here.
Most importantly, to find all of the grants you’d like to support, visit gitcoin.co/grants during GR13! Remember, we couldn’t do any of this without you, so thank you in advance for supporting public goods!
shhhh we’re hearing some rumors that our frens at Gitcoin DAO’s Moonshot Collectivemay soon unveil a **firey** NFT that evolves as you fund more grants…so keep your eyes peeled for more details here!
If you’re new to this whole thing, first of all, welcome! As you may know, Gitcoin Grants allows developers like you to get recurring cash flow for working on projects you’re most excited about. Isn’t it amazing that you can build things that are good for the world AND get paid for it? We’re building a truly amazing future here in Gitcoin-land!
Incredible projects like Uniswap, Bankless, Dark Forest, Coin Center and POAP have used Gitcoin Grants to unlock valuable insights & funding from the web3 community.
If you have never used Gitcoin Grants and are looking to raise matching funds in Round 13 you’ll first need to create a grant. We recommend taking your time to fill out this form, as the more detail provided in the grant description directly influences the success of your grant. After you have provided detailed information on the “who”, “what”, and “how” in your grant application you’ll want to create a visually appealing logo to grab the attention of potential donors. Learn more about how to maximize your matching here.
We recommend submitting your grant as early as possible to ensure your grant is approved and put into an active status. There is typically a 2 to 3 day review period before grants are published after being submitted. All grants must be submitted before Wednesday, March 16th in order to qualify for GR13 Matching Pool funds.
If you have an existing grant, now is the time to review it and provide updates in order to maintain an ‘active’ grant status to be eligible to receive Matching Pool funding. It’s good practice to provide milestone updates on your grant to keep your funders updated. If you haven’t updated your grant since GR12 ended your grant is currently listed as “inactive” and will not be eligible for Matching Pool funding.
What to include in your grant updates:
If you need support creating, updating or optimizing your grant for funding success, please check and see if your question has been answered in the Grants FAQ page. If not, please feel free to reach out in the #grants-support channel in our Discord Server!
We’re once again running a Hackathon alongside Grants Round 13. And it’s not just for developers!
Whether you want to help as a designer, project manager, write documentation, or do something else, there’s room for you! Often the projects that do well at hackathons are the ones that focus on more than just code. Join a sponsored hackathon and team up with new friends to tackle new challenges and learn new skills while earning rewards in Open Source. Find out more and get hacking here.
Connect with the builder community in Discord by selecting the ‘Hackathons & Events’ role in the #{start-here} channel. Find a team and connect with builders on the Gitcoin Discord in #{team-up}. Check for updates on the Gitcoin Discord in #{builders-general} and #{gr13-hackathon} and your email inbox. Make sure to submit your projects by March 30th at 11:59 pm UTC.
That’s all for now! We’ll be sure to keep you updated as Grants Round 13 gets underway. The best way to keep in touch is to follow Gitcoin on Twitter.
Let’s make this our best (aka most generously funded!) round yet. We can only do this with your help. We’re so happy you’ve joined us to build and fund the open web together.
– Team Gitcoin