It's a new year, and we have really exciting transitions in the pipeline for 2023! Gitcoin has always believed in creating an empowering space for fundamental web3 projects and organizations to make their mark in this emerging space.
It's a new year, and we have really exciting transitions in the pipeline for 2023! Gitcoin has always believed in creating an empowering space for fundamental web3 projects and organizations to make their mark in this emerging space.
Last update to this article: Jan 17, 2023
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Over the years, we have cultivated our Grants Rounds to support diverse ecosystems and allow countless projects to make their visions come to life while elevating community experience, and as a result our grants program has distributed $38M in funding. It’s time for us to evolve beyond what we have begun, retiring our centralized grants (cGrants) platform and fully transitioning to our new Gitcoin Grants Stack (currently in testing). This is to achieve our goal of decentralizing funding using our new protocols.
As we build our new Grants Stack, we have successfully kicked off our Alpha Test Season with two partner rounds: UNICEF and Fantom.
Now, it’s time for the Gitcoin Program Alpha Round, a Quadratic Funding round that will support 200 grantees working on Open Source, Ethereum Infrastructure, and Climate Solutions with a $1M total matching pool.
From Jan 17th to 31st, we invite you to vote with your wallet and help us allocate our matching pool to our selected grantees. In the process, you’ll help us test and improve our UX for our Grants Stack, enabling crowdsourced grants programs to the entirety of web3 and beyond. Our team is working hard to ship tools and solutions to support grantees at scale post-Q2.
To learn how to donate, visit Grants Explorer Guide. Please note: the option to donate for individual rounds activates once the round goes live, and only stays open for the duration of the round period. In other words, you can only donate from Jan 17-31. Join Gitcoin Alpha Rounds Announcement Telegram Group (for donors) so you don't miss any updates relevant to your participation.
Historically, our most contributed-to rounds have been: Open Source Software, Ethereum Infrastructure, and Climate Solutions. For this reason, we have opened each of these rounds to include a subset of existing grantees.
You would already be familiar with our new platform if you participated in either of our partner rounds in December. The difference with the Gitcoin Program Alpha Round will be that because we are hosting three separate rounds (OSS, ETH Infrastructure, and the Climate Round) under the Gitcoin Program Alpha Round umbrella, each will have its unique link to Grants Explorer, where you will be able to browse grants and donate using Quadratic Funding.
What is Grants Explorer? It allows donors to browse through and donate to projects that have been approved in a single round (for example, Climate Round, OSS, or ETH Infrastructure). Each round will have its own link that will go live once it is active. Want to find out more about how to donate on Grants Explorer? Please visit the Grants Explorer Guide.
Gitcoin Passport will be integrated in this round to ensure the mitigation of sybil attackers. In order to increase your donation's matching fund, make sure you create your Passport. To read more about Passport, read Introducing Passport - Digital Identity as a Public Good.
Please bear in mind that this is a test round, so the donation UX may have some issues - we invite all donors to report UX issues to make our Grants Stack the best it can be. If you have questions or concerns, please visit this link to contact our support team.
We have pre-selected grantees to help test our new Gitcoin Grants Stack for this round. There will be a separate matching pool for each round, and the eligibility criteria for each are summarized below. We're excited to have an open round again when we officially launch the Grants Stack!
The Open Source Software Round features 88 grantees invited based on previous funding criteria from GR14 and GR15 outlined in this governance post. In addition, grants must meet these requirements:
- Be an open-source project with meaningful Github activity in the prior three months demonstrating work completed towards the project's mission.
- Primarily focused on developing on top of or advancing the broader Ethereum and/or web3 industry.
The Ethereum Infrastructure Round features 22 grantees who are building in direct support of the Ethereum ecosystem. This includes areas like core client devs, tooling providers, developer education, and those showcasing the power of critical ecosystem ideas. Additionally, grants are open source if they are software related. Similar to the OSS round, grants were invited to apply based on the GR14 and GR15 funding criteria outlined in the governance post linked above.
The Climate Solutions Round features 40 climate projects from GR15 that were invited because they received the most support based on the number of unique contributors, and ten bundled use cases for the remaining GR15 projects working in Renewable Energy, Carbon Markets, Verification Infrastructure, Oceans & Forest, Agriculture, Community Engagement, Creative Works, Climate Research, Climate Advocacy & Activism, and Emerging Markets and Indigenous Communities.
For more information on these rounds, including final invite lists, and info for grantees, please visit this gov post.
For the Alpha Test Season, we are running a POAP Quest where donors can claim a POAP for every round they participate in. Users who collect all POAPs are included in a draw to win a Schelling Point VIP package, including $150 in Gitcoin merch. Check out the POAP Quest contest details for more info. Do you have questions? Join our Telegram group for more info!
In 2023 we're transitioning to a blockchain-based Grants Stack that allows anyone to launch a Quadratic Funding grants program. This new Grants Stack will enable funders to set up a grants program anytime and add more flexibility to grantees who can apply across different rounds and donors who want to provide micro-funding that helps influence the size of grants given to impactful projects. In the long run, our tools will allow projects and communities to experience the benefits of community-driven funding at scale.
As we embark on this exciting transition, check out our new Gitcoin Community Hub, which is continually updated with opportunities, including events, bounties, and impact certificates. Please know that we value your feedback and input and appreciate your help in shaping the future of Gitcoin grants.
For more information, read Introduction to Gitcoin Grants Stack.
To donate to these rounds, keep a close eye out on Twitter for when the round goes live!