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Gitcoin’s Grants Round 14 is almost upon us, and with it #ReFiSummer will be officially here. The event is kicking off on June 8th and running through June 23rd at 23:59pm UTC. If you’re just joining us, Gitcoin is where the world’s leading web3 projects are born, validated & funded. This includes @Uniswap, @poapxyz & @BanklessHQ, just to name a few! In today’s post, we’ll outline everything you need to know to participate in Grants Round 14 and…
The event is kicking off on June 8th and running through June 23rd at 23:59pm UTC.
If you’re just joining us, Gitcoin is where the world’s leading web3 projects are born, validated & funded. This includes @Uniswap, @poapxyz & @BanklessHQ, just to name a few!
In today’s post, we’ll outline everything you need to know to participate in Grants Round 14 and the accompanying GR14 Hackathon.
Whether you’re looking to raise money for your project, earn tokens by building, fund your favorite builders & projects (or all of the above!), we’ve got you covered.
Grants rounds are the best mechanism we’ve found to support people and organizations that are building the open internet & other impactful causes.
All types of projects are welcome on Gitcoin. This includes software, tools, critical digital infrastructure, media & communities. If the project is freely available to everyone and has a positive impact on the world, it’s probably good to go!
The need for funding is particularly acute in difficult economic times, as other funding sources dry up. Gitcoin takes this role – as a pilot light for community builders & projects – very seriously. We know that the community counts on us to be there in good times AND bad.
So, how are we doing? Gitcoin has distributed over $60 million in total, including $40 million through grants alone. In just 3 years, we’ve helped provide funding for over 2500 grants from tens of thousands of unique contributors across 2 million+ contributions. After 13 quarterly grants rounds, we’re proud of how far we’ve come.
And yet, we’re just getting started.
There are three important parties that participate in grants rounds. Each of these has a key role to play: Matching Partners, Grant Funders & Grantees.
Matching Partners: Communities & grant-making organizations like @0xPolygon or Momus generously contribute large sums of capital (often $100K+). This shows support for builder communities, helps them identify promising projects & is a way to give back.
Funders: Ordinary people donate $5-10 (or much more!) to web3 builders & causes they care about.
Grantees: Builders (typically early-stage, but not exclusively) who are seeking funding for their project & to get paid to build for the open internet.
Grants Rounds bring these three groups together & then add some special sauce to the mix:
Quadratic Funding!
Now that you know the basics, let’s go over some more details about this season’s epic grants round!
The overall structure for Grants Round 14 is as follows, with three types of rounds:
For GR14, the main round includes $1M in matching funds. 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.
Matching cap of 2.5%: There is a matching cap of 2.5% of the total main round pool, just as in the past two rounds. This means that once a grant has hit $25k in matching funds from the GR14 main pool, they’re no longer eligible for additional matching. This is to ensure that limited funding will be distributed more evenly & prevents a few popular grants from running away with all the matching funds.
Please join us in thanking all of our incredible main round matching sponsors for their incredibly generous contributions for GR14: Yearn, Chainlink & Polygon. And a massive thanks to all of our GR14 partners.
Ecosystem rounds are focused on funding grants that support the objectives of the sponsoring ecosystem. This typically includes:
There are 13 ecosystem round partners for GR14, with 8 new & 5 returning from previous round(s).
New ecosystem rounds:
Returning ecosystem rounds:
In total, over $1.1 million in total matching funds will be distributed to hundreds of builders. You may be one of them!
Action for grantees:
Learn more about how to apply to receive matching funds in the Round Briefs & if you believe your grant qualifies for one (or more) of these ecosystem rounds, submit a request here.
While ecosystem rounds are aimed at supporting builders & projects within a specific community, cause rounds are all about impact.
Cause rounds were inspired by Other Internet’s groundbreaking positive-sum worlds essay and Gitcoin’s call for new kinds of public goods. We saw massive interest from major donors in funding intersections between web3 and traditional causes, and over the past 3 grants rounds we’ve funded causes like climate solutions, support for Ukraine, human longevity and advocacy.
For GR14, we have 3 cause rounds: Climate Solutions, Crypto Advocacy & DEI (Diversity Equity & Inclusion).
The Climate Solutions round is an opportunity to support projects from around the world at the cutting edge of innovative climate solutions. This is a testing ground for new ideas, an opportunity for cross pollination and fertile ground for big ideas that could change the world for the better.
Thank you to our climate round sponsors: Momus, Ocelot, Stakefish & Kimbal Musk.
The Crypto Advocacy round is focused on building support for trailblazing organizations at the forefront of good crypto policy and in defense of the open web. As crypto becomes a bigger issue on the global stage this is more important than ever.
Thank you to our crypto advocacy round sponsors: Protocol Labs, Celo, AllianceDAO, Aave Grants, Anoma, Index Coop, Omidyar & an anonymous donor.
The DE&I Round is a collective effort to help nurture and advocate for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the web3 community.
Thank you to our DEI round sponsors: Ocelot, Zora, BLVCKHAND, Unlock Protocol & Pleasr.
Action for grantees:
If you believe your grant qualifies for a cause round, please submit a request here.
It’s never been easier (or more fun!) to support your favorite builders!
In Grants Round 13, over 17k people chose to participate by funding one or more grants, which distributed over $4.6M to more than 1,000 grantees. We can’t wait to build on this success in Grants Round 14.
Why donate? Here are just a few reasons:
Remember, you can support your favorite builders at any time, but donations are only eligible for matching funds during grants rounds (for GR14 it’s June 8 – 23, 2022 at 23:59 UTC).
Finally, in order to ensure that transaction/gas fees don’t swallow all your funds, consider bridging funds to Polygon and/or Zksync. More details.
Action for funders:
Most importantly, to find all of the grants you’d like to support, visit gitcoin.co/grants during GR14!
If you’re new to this whole thing, first of all, welcome! Gitcoin is where the world’s leading web3 projects are born, validated & funded. You’ve come to the right place.
“Gitcoin made me realize people actually get to fight for a free internet for a living. I quit my job within a month of that seed being planted and I love my life now that I feel like I have purpose in my work. Gitcoin’s raison de etre played a part in giving me the courage to join the revolution.” – scrohe
Isn’t it amazing that you can build things that are good for the world AND get paid for it? We’re all about regeneration here at Gitcoin, and builders have a crucial role to play.
Incredible projects like Uniswap, Bankless, Dark Forest, Coin Center and POAP were funded via Gitcoin in their early days, and have grown to be pillars of the growing web3 community. Your grant could be next.
If you believe your grant qualifies for ecosystem and/or cause rounds, learn more about the rounds in the Round Briefs and to apply for matching funds, please submit a request.
If you have never used Gitcoin Grants and are looking to raise matching funds in Round 14 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 should be submitted before June 15, 2022 in order to qualify for GR14 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 GR13 ended your grant is currently listed as “inactive” and may 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 14. 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 #{gr14-hackathon} and your email inbox. Make sure to submit your projects by 23:59 UTC on June 29th.
That’s all for now! We’ll be sure to keep you updated as Grants Round 14 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 will get there with your help.
We’re so happy you’ve joined us. Together we’ll fund the shared needs of our communities.
– Team Gitcoin