Since its launch in 2019, Gitcoin Grants has been a powerful tool leveraged by Gitcoin's community and our partners to fund digital public goods and beyond. Powered by Quadratic Funding, our grants program has distributed over $50M, all done democratically. We couldn’t do any of it without our matching pool funders—champions of public goods and supporters of innovation who pool the necessary resources in support of thousands of grantees from all over the world. We sincerely thank you as we embark…
Since its launch in 2019, Gitcoin Grants has been a powerful tool leveraged by Gitcoin's community and our partners to fund digital public goods and beyond. Powered by Quadratic Funding, our grants program has distributed over $50M, all done democratically. We couldn’t do any of it without our matching pool funders—champions of public goods and supporters of innovation who pool the necessary resources in support of thousands of grantees from all over the world. We sincerely thank you as we embark on our next chapter—the launch of Gitcoin Grants Stack, a suite of open-source tools aimed at empowering communities to fund what matters most to them.
Building new tech is always challenging, and doing so in a bear market creates added complexity. We are incredibly grateful to those who decided to join us on this exciting transitory phase during the Alpha Test Season– where we ran three test rounds—the UNICEF, Fantom, and Gitcoin Program Alpha Round—on the Gitcoin Grants Stack. Collaborating with some of the most successful names in the ecosystem during our Alpha Round signals that we are amongst those who want to elevate web3 but build something that leaves a meaningful impact on the world– in web3 and beyond.
As we built our new tech stack and moved to this decentralized grants solution, this test period was an electric time for our community! It certainly didn’t come without its challenges, but we are grateful for the success it brought to our progress and the ecosystem. Thanks to all who participated and shared the feedback necessary for us to improve!
This Gitcoin Program Alpha Round had three sub-rounds: Climate Solutions, Ethereum Infrastructure, and Open Source Software, with matching pools of 333k in DAI per round.
The Climate Solutions Round featured the 40 most popular climate projects from GR15 (based on the number of unique contributors) and ten sets of bundled grantees for the remaining GR15 climate projects building solutions 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.
The Climate Round saw a total of 3,033 unique donors and 14,506 total donations, with a total of $76,422.33 donated. Thank you to the matching pool funders of this round:
Ocelot Labs is a multisig collective intending to innovate on the Celo ecosystem by focusing on four key target areas: research and development on open source projects, radical experimentation, emerging markets, and community growth.
“Decentralizing the grants protocol into an open, community-driven product stack has long been a visionary goal from folks in orbits around Gitcoin. It’s now a fresh, new era on that journey, and the Ocelot squad is thrilled to get to support it. Long live building cool sh*t together with web3 friends — and long live public goods.” Gabs from Ocelot
Filecoin Green is a branch of Filecoin (an incredible org that stores your valuable information safely) that measures the environmental impacts of Filecoin and verifiably drive them below zero. They are dedicated to supporting sustainable projects.
Momus.eth is an anonymous & generous NFT collector (or collective?) who's been the biggest supporter of the Climate Solutions Round & its grantees. They have contributed over a million dollars to the Gitcoin matching fund & continue to do good for the web3 ecosystem. Momus has long supported our grant rounds, donating $1M to matching pools over the years.
The Ethereum Infrastructure Round featured 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 Ethereum Infrastructure Round saw a total of 4,773 unique donors and 20,963 total donations, with a total of $89,008.34 donated.
Our incredible funder for this round was Coinbase, a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency, and has contributed a million dollars to the Gitcoin matching pools! Coinbase has donated $1M to our matching pools over the years, remaining committed to funding public goods.
"Coinbase remains committed to building a crypto economy with equitable access for all. Investing in and supporting secure public infrastructure is a critical component of this mission. We share the common goal of improving digital public goods for the crypto economy, and are proud to support all of the grantees who were included in this round. We are incredibly thankful for amazing partners like Gitcoin that make this accessible and easy." - Darin Carter
The Open Source Software Round featured 87 grantees invited based on previous funding criteria from GR14 and GR15 outlined in this governance post. In addition, grants must have met these requirements:
1) Be an open-source project with meaningful Github activity in the prior three months demonstrating work completed towards the project's mission.
2) Primarily focused on developing on top of or advancing the broader Ethereum and/or web3 industry.
The OSS Round saw a total of 26,203 unique donors and 164,984 total donations, with a total of $501,976.19 donated. Thank you to the funders of this round:
1Inch is a decentralized platform that aims to simplify and optimize the process of trading cryptocurrencies in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.
“At 1inch Network, we believe that open source software is the key to unlocking innovation and progress in DeFi. We are deeply committed to fostering an environment where developers can freely create innovative solutions for users worldwide. Open source code allows developers from all backgrounds to collaborate on projects in a permissionless fashion, which is why we’ve made it a priority to fund these initiatives through both our grants program and Gitcoin. By funding open source software, we hope to ensure that this unique space continues to thrive and evolve.” - Jordan R
ENS Domains is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain and has contributed almost a million dollars to the matching pool fund over the years for Open Source Software. ENS Domains has donated nearly $1M to our matching pools over the years.
OctantApp (Previously HexagonApp) is a community-driven platform for experiments in decentralized governance that tests various hypotheses around user control, voter engagement, and community funding. Octant was a first-time partner this round!
"We on the [Octant] team are really excited to be a part of supporting Gitcoin's OSS round. One of the core principles of [Octant] and Golem Foundation is supporting projects that value accessibility, collaboration, transparency, and community. So it naturally made sense to contribute and support these OSS projects to help ensure their sustainability and continued development. We would like to thank the Gitcoin team for their dedication in helping as many builders as possible, and congratulate them on a successful Alpha Round!"
As our program has evolved, so do we.
We are immensely grateful to each and every supporter who participated in our first tests on the Gitcoin Grants Stack. Whether you ran a test round, funded a matching pool, participated as a grantee, donated to a project, or farmed a POAP, we couldn’t do it without any of you.
This is an exciting time in Gitcoin’s evolution, and we are incredibly grateful for our community, who helped us build the foundations before we launch at scale in the coming months.