Planned for April 25th to May 9th, we're excited to announce the Gitcoin Grants Beta Round as the second set of Gitcoin Grants Quadratic Funding rounds that will run on the new decentralized Gitcoin Grants Stack.
Last update to this article: May 2, 2023
Note: The round is live! To donate, visit grants.gitcoin.co.
Join this Telegram group for updates: Gitcoin Beta Round Announcements (for donors).
We are excited to announce the Gitcoin Grants Beta Round as the second set of Gitcoin Grants Quadratic Funding test rounds that will run on the new decentralized Gitcoin Grants Stack. Planned for April 25th to May 9th, this round will include core rounds decided on by GTC token holders and core community members as part of the Gitcoin Grants Program. Additionally, this round will introduce a new concept to experiment with within the grants program on Grants Stack: independently managed Featured Rounds.
As part of our ongoing efforts to decentralize and democratize the grant funding process, we have been transitioning from a centralized grants platform to a decentralized protocol that enables multiple grant rounds to run concurrently on-chain. This empowers any community to coordinate its own grants program, creating a more inclusive and community-driven funding ecosystem.
The Gitcoin Program Alpha Round, which took place from January 17-31, 2023, was a crucial testing phase for the new protocol, allowing us to gather feedback, identify and fix any issues, and learn best practices while continuing to provide impactful funding to Gitcoin Grantees. The Beta Round continues this test as we progress towards this exciting new future of Funding What Matters in a collaborative and decentralized manner.
The Core Rounds are a limited set of recurring thematic rounds most aligned with the Gitcoin DAO’s community and mission. Here are the briefs outlining general eligibility for the Beta Round and specific eligibility for the core rounds.
The quadratic voting for Core Rounds for the Beta Round took place between Feb 22 and March 1, and the rounds include:
$350k DAI Matching Pool
10% matching cap
Grants in this round are primarily focused on climate solutions (the group may do other work, but the grant proposal must be directly related to climate solutions). The projects are explicitly helping to reduce GHGs, and/or serve as an important core infrastructure for web3 climate solutions.
$200k DAI Matching Pool
10% matching cap
Ethereum Infrastructure grants are in support of, or directly advancing the Ethereum ecosystem. This includes areas like: Core client devs, tooling providers, and grants showcasing the power of critical ecosystem ideas.
$200k DAI Matching Pool
6% matching cap
Web3 Community and Education grants focus on non-software related projects that are helping to push the Web3 space forward. Example of projects in this round include: Growing new communities, providing educational resources, creating content (youtube tutorials, newsletters, blog posts, podcasts, etc), protecting users by investigating bad actors, DAOs focused on socialization, onboarding new users, and working on inclusion/diversity/advocacy.
$350k DAI Matching Pool
4% matching cap
Web3 OSS grants are open-source projects primarily focused on developing on top of, or advancing the broader Ethereum and/or web3 industry.
$150k DAI Matching Pool
10% matching cap
ZK Tech grants are in support of, or directly advancing zero-knowledge tools, libraries, community, or protocols.
$50k DAI Matching Pool
Projects eligible for the DEI Bonus Round are those with 50% of their team reflecting the diversity of the community their project serves—with a particular emphasis on including women, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC), individuals with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community
Grants Program Featured Rounds are primarily operated by external parties (most akin to our legacy "ecosystem rounds") that are mission-aligned partners. We believe showcasing more rounds alongside the quarterly Gitcoin Grants Program as one cohesive event will create network effects that benefit all communities involved.
$85k Matching Pool
Run by: DeSci community stewards
The DeSci round includes grants that fall into the domain of decentralized science. This includes research projects following the principles of open science and projects building public infrastructure for funding, creating, reviewing, crediting, storing, and disseminating scientific knowledge fairly and equitably using the web3 stack.
$100k DAI Matching Pool
Run by: Coinbase
The blockchain industry faces an existential threat from misguided regulation, one that can only be neutralized by collective community action. The Gitcoin Advocacy round supports organizations that advocate for responsible regulation and legal clarity for the blockchain community.
$25k (DAI) Matching Pool
Run by: Supermodular
The metacrisis refers to the existential threats facing humanity driven by multipolar traps, wherein competing agents inadvertently create collective harm in the pursuit of self-interest. The round is inspired by the conversations between Kevin Owocki and Daniel Schmachtenberger on the GreenPill podcast, and the subsequent activity on metacrisis.xyz. Grants must be associated with a metacrisis vertical (nuclear disarmament, biosecurity, weaponized drones, grid fragility, biodiversity collapse, etc) and/or horizontal topic area/generator function (multipolar traps, perverse incentives, plausible deniability, etc).
$25k Matching Pool
Run by: Token Engineering Commons
The grants being offered 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.
$25k Matching Pool
Greater China is an informal geographical area that shares commercial and cultural ties with the Chinese people. But generally speaking, if you have any connection to Chinese culture, we consider you part of the Greater China community, no matter where you come from or what you do, and invite you to join this QF round.
$50k Matching Pool
Run by: Mask Network
Mask is building a complete Web3 social network ecosystem that can be compatible with all social apps and protocols. Our vision is to protect everyone’s self-sovereign identity and freedom of self-interpretation.
$25k Matching Pool
Run by: FDD
The sybil resistance comes about as the start of a new era. Gitcoin’s Fraud Detection & Defense workstream is dissolving, but the fight against fraud lives on. A new, decentralized method of funding the resistance is being tested. This first round is sponsored by Trusta Labs, winners of the first Open Data Community Hackathon who came back as sponsors of the second. Now, they are back funding a grant round to further decentralize the communities fight against fraud.
$50k (DAI) Matching Pool
Run by: ENS
ENS Ecosystem featured round is meant to support projects building on top of ENS. Any project that is growing or enhancing the ecosystem should apply.
$25k (DAI) Matching Pool
Run by: ReFi DAO
A global network of sovereign tech-enabled regenerative villages in startup cities, regenerating the earth using the most powerful tools of our time.
$50k (DAI) Matching Pool
Run by: BitDAO
Mantle is a new L2 built by BitDAO. This round is all about finding builders who want to build some of the first applications on Mantle.
During the Gitcoin Program Alpha Round, donors were unable to verify their unique identity for most of the program due to infrastructure instability with Gitcoin Passport.
This post-mortem provides the detailed analysis and steps taken to prevent similar issues from happening in the future. Gitcoin Passport offers a critical mechanism to detect and reject false identities and to keep web3 communities safe from malicious actors. We look forward to offering a trustworthy web3 experience and maximize your ability to benefit from Gitcoin Grants using Gitcoin Passport.
Since the Gitcoin Passport scores reset after 90 days, be sure to refresh by re-collecting your stamps before the Beta Round starts on April 25th: https://passport.gitcoin.co
By empowering communities to coordinate their own grants programs, we aim to foster innovation, collaboration, and impact in the open-source community. With the Gitcoin Grants Beta Round, we are taking a significant step toward our vision of a decentralized and community-driven grants ecosystem. With the transition to Gitcoin Grants Stack, anyone will be able to launch and manage their own programs the same way we manage ours at any given time.
In practice, Gitcoin Grants Stack removes a major barrier to adoption and gives any ecosystem the tools to fund their own shared needs and become a program manager without relying on Gitcoin. In the long run, our tools will allow projects and communities to experience the benefits of community-driven funding at scale.