The Gitcoin Grants Round ran from April 25 - May 9, 2023, featuring 5 Core Rounds alongside 10 independently-managed Featured Rounds, with a matching pool of $1.25M for the Core Rounds. It was the second set of Gitcoin Program QF test rounds that ran on the new decentralized Grants Stack.
Gitcoin's purpose is to empower communities to fund their shared needs. Our goal is to provide mechanisms that allow communities – including DAOs, companies, countries, cities, nonprofits and groups of friends – to fund their collective needs in a way that works best for them. Throughout our journey, we learned that no single model suits every organization and communities need the ability to create a program that best suits their goals. To achieve this on a larger scale, we began transitioning from our centralized grants platform to a decentralized protocol enabling numerous grant rounds to run concurrently, onchain, at any given time. In other words, we are on the path to empowering any community to coordinate its grants program.
Built with Gitcoin’s Allo Protocol, Gitcoin Grants Stack is a decentralized and customizable solution that enables grants program managers, project owners and community members to manage and participate in community-oriented grant programs. We began testing the Grants Stack during the Alpha rounds with UNICEF, Fantom and the Gitcoin Grants Program. The Gitcoin Grants Beta Round was the second set of Gitcoin Program QF test rounds that ran on the new decentralized Grants Stack. We collaborated with key ecosystem partners to host a season of public rounds, empowering communities to fund their shared needs while allowing us to build our grants suite in public.
The Beta Round consisted of Core and Featured rounds. We requested feedback to help select 4-6 Core grant rounds and then utilized Quadratic Voting to determine the level of support for the proposed Core Rounds.
Additionally, the PGF Operations team collaborated with past round operators and ecosystem partners to create a short list of potential rounds for consideration to be “featured” in the Gitcoin Grants Program. The primary difference between Featured Rounds and Core Rounds is that the Featured Rounds were not run directly by Gitcoin but by their respective community members and supporters who functioned as Round Operators. The PGF team also sought input from DAO contributors, stewards, and community members that helped finalize Gitcoin Grants Program General Eligibility Policy and each specific round’s eligibility criteria for participation. The details of each Core and Featured Rounds with matching pool information can be found here.
Across a total of 15 rounds, approximately 107K contributions raised a total amount of $607K (refer to dashboard for additional details). For the purpose of this post, we’ll be diving into the Core Round results of this round.
(Note: The number of contributions and estimated total contributed amount in the following sections indicate contributions counted for matching calculations after Sybil checks.)
The Climate Solutions round comprised 104 projects with 1,968 contributions from 495 donors raising approximately $40K. For the full list of grants in this round, view this sheet.
The Ethereum Infrastructure round comprised 25 projects with 4,307 contributions from 1,062 donors raising approximately $42K. For the full list of grants in this round, view this sheet.
The Web3 Community & Education round comprised 217 projects with 2,896 contributions from 1,023 donors raising approximately $62K. For the full list of grants in this round, view this sheet.
The Web3 Open Source Software round comprised 110 projects with a staggering 81,811 contributions from 14,554 donors raising approximately $330K. For the full list of grants in this round, view this sheet.
The ZK Tech round comprised 12 projects with 8605 contributions from 1848 donors raising approximately $31K. For the full list of grants in this round, view this sheet.
A huge thank you to our core round funders, supporting hundreds of grantees from around the world. Without you, none of this would have been possible.
Results are currently being officially ratified by the team. Please visit this gov post for a detailed run-through on the payout process and schedule.
At Gitcoin, we're all about inspiring positive change led by communities. We think one of the best ways to do that is by building open-source, democracy-first tools everyone can use. The Gitcoin Grants Stack offers communities the tools to cultivate a thriving ecosystem by leveraging their collective intelligence and democratically funding their most promising builders. Public goods are good, and we're honored to have the opportunity to serve as a Schelling Point for public goods in the web3 ecosystem.