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August 29, 2022

Grants Round 14: Round Results & Recap

tl;dr Grants Round 14 ran from June 8-23, 2022 $4.9M will be distributed to public goods as part of the round, of which $3.2M came from the combined matching pools and $1.7M was contributed by the community. Record-breaking community participation with over 44,000 contributors making just shy of 600,000 contributions to over 1,250 grants

tl;dr

  • Grants Round 14 ran from June 8-23, 2022
  • $4.9M will be distributed to public goods as part of the round, of which $3.2M came from the combined matching pools and $1.7M was contributed by the community.
  • Record-breaking community participation with over 44,000 contributors making just shy of 600,000 contributions to over 1,250 grants
  • Strong participation from industry participants across eighteen rounds:
  • Main round
  • 14 ecosystem rounds
  • 3 cause rounds: Climate, Crypto Advocacy, & DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion)

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What are grants rounds & why do we run them?

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 $65 million in total, including $45 million through grants alone. In just 3 years, we’ve helped provide funding for thousands of projects from tens of thousands of unique contributors across 2 million+ contributions. After 14 quarterly grants rounds, we’re proud of how far we’ve come.

And yet, we’re just getting started.

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Grants Round 14 Recap

$4.9M will be distributed as part of the round, of which $3.2M came from the combined matching pools and $1.7M was contributed by the community. We saw a record-shattering 44k+ contributors make almost 600,000 contributions to over 1,250 grants (all-time highs across the board!).

GR14 featured three types of rounds:

  • The main round, supporting all eligible projects
  • 14 ecosystem rounds, including: AURORA, Celo, Ethereum Name Service (ENS), Ethereum Infrastructure, Lootverse, Mask, Open Gaming, Oakland Local, Polygon, Protocol Labs, Radicle, The Graph, Unlock Protocol, zkTech
  • Three cause rounds: Climate Solutions, Human Longevity, and Support for Ukraine.

Here are the top 10 grants for GR14 (highest total matching funds received across all rounds):

Across all eighteen rounds, Grants Round 14 will distribute just under $5M to over 1250 grantees (an all-time high).

We were delighted to see record-breaking participation from the community, with over 44,000 people donating in total (a 59% increase over GR13 in March 2022). Results highlighted below:

Main Round Results

Grants of all types are eligible to receive matching funds from the main matching pool.

Funds are allocated based on the QF mechanism with a 2.5% maximum cap in place in order to ensure matching funds are not overly concentrated to just a few grants. For GR14, the maximum match was $25,000 per grant given the $1M overall pool size.

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Ecosystem Round Results

GR14 built on the success of GR13 in terms of ecosystem rounds, with over $1 million in total across 14 ecosystem rounds (vs $800K across 9 rounds in GR13).

Helping more ecosystems within Web3 to participate in Grants by creating their own matching pools is a key part of achieving our mission. GR14 saw two notable organizations, Coinbase and Unlock Protocol, make long term commitments to support public goods via Gitcoin Grants.

Coinbase joined prominent names like the Ethereum Foundation, ENS, Optimism, NounsDAO and Polygon as one of the largest donors helping support the cryptoeconomy’s infrastructure with their $1 million pledge across the next 3 grants rounds and Unlock Protocol initiated a Gitcoin Aqueduct, dedicating a percentage of their treasury to public goods that is distributed over time.

Finally, we were excited to partner with City3 to run our first local round, where 7 Oakland non-profits will receive quadratically matched donor contributions. We are excited to see how blockchain can be used to allocate resources outside of the typical crypto projects with which we’re all familiar.

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Cause Round Results

GR14 marked the third quarter in a row running cause rounds, which are dedicated pools to fund specific social and environmental causes. We continue to see significant interest in expanding Gitcoin Grants into the off-chain realm.

In GR14 we ran 3 cause rounds, two of which were returning: Climate Solutions & Crypto Advocacy, and one which debuted in Grants Round 14: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI). The DEI Round had $150k in matching available for projects directly involved in increasing the diversity and inclusivity of web3 projects and the ecosystem at large. Because if #WAGMI, that needs to include *EVERYONE*. Novel perspectives, full representation, and diverse opinions/backgrounds are the bedrock that strong, holistic, enduring initiatives are built on.

With cause rounds, we’re seeing promising early signs in using community-powered funding allocation mechanisms like grants & quadratic funding and continue to be blown away by the community’s interest. We were also excited to see philanthropist Kimbal Musk step up with a contribution to Climate Solutions.

Given the results we’re seeing so far, we hope and expect to see more interest from philanthropic groups & individuals in the coming rounds. We plan to continue our investments in new and returning cause rounds in GR15 and beyond.

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Next steps

For all grantees looking to claim matching funds, you can expect matching payouts to be available to claim as of July 15, 2022.

Look out for an email closer to this date with specifics on how to claim.

Conclusion

We are immensely thankful to all of our GR14 funding partners, grantees, and the community for their generous contributions to this round. We’d like to thank those who funded the GR14 ecosystem rounds:


And those who funded the GR14 cause rounds:

Last, but not least, we’d like to thank GR14 main round partners, including those listed on this banner as well as our anonymous donors.

We’re closing out GR14 with so much gratitude for the incredible Gitcoin and broader web3 communities, including the tens of thousands of you joining us for the first time. We look forward to building upon this progress together in Grants Round 15 and beyond!

– Team Gitcoin

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