Table of Contents: Tl;dr Introduction Main Round Results Ecosystem Rounds Results Cause Rounds Results When Payouts? Gitcoin’s protocol future
GR15 was our 15th consecutive grants round since we launched our first one back in 2019. Since then, we’ve run a grants round every quarter.
In that 5 year span, we’ve built a phenomenal community. This community includes our matching partners, grantees, donors, and GitcoinDAO contributors!
Along with the Gitcoin Grants community, we’ve helped to launch well-known projects like Uniswap, 1inch, Snapshot, Ethers.JS, POAP, Scaffold-Eth, and many others.
At the conclusion of GR15, this grants round will distribute almost $4.4M to 1,495 grants for public goods.
In total, Gitcoin has funded $69m worth of digital public goods over the lifetime of the program.
The Gitcoin Passport and the Trust Bonus are grants mechanisms that provide identity verification, improve Sybil resistance, increase the cost of forgery, and increase the weight given to grants donations from verified funders.
By connecting their internet identities to Gitcoin Passport (Facebook, Twitter, ENS, etc), donors were able to receive up to 150% matching bonuses.
In GR15, we had 19 stamps (which represent verification methods), up from 8 in the last round. Currently, there are 61 data points across the 19 stamps, with more to come.
The number of passports that had one or more stamp by the end of GR15: 33,515 passports.
Total number of stamps that were claimed/verified during GR15: 130,605 stamps.
Follow Gitcoin Passport on Twitter.
They say the bear market is the time to build and support builders, and GR15 reflects that.
For this grants round, we saw 39,750 contributors making ~465,000 discrete donations to GR15 grantees. They donated $1.3M of their hard-earned money, providing builders around the world with the funds they need to keep their amazing projects going in a tough bear market.
To everyone involved, please give yourselves a round of applause. 👏
Together, we are building the future of public goods!
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We had 31,148 donors contributing to our Main Round, giving over $ 832k to 1,065 projects. WOW!
Funds will be allocated based on the QF mechanism with a maximum cap in place in order to ensure matching funds are evenly distributed across a breadth of grants. For GR15, matching funds were capped at $12,500 per grant.
We’d like to extend our deepest thanks to everyone who participated in the Main Round! As our flagship round, this is where everything started, and the original program that enabled the funding of countless public goods.
We had some incredible projects this time around in the Main Round, and are excited to see what the future holds for all of our GR15 Main Round grantees!
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Our Ecosystem Rounds were round hosted by one or more of our matching partners. GR15 boasted 3 new Ecosystem rounds, 9 returning, and over $1.3M in matching funds.
These rounds were each tailored after a specific ecosystem interest area. For instance, the Ethereum Infrastructure Round was funded by Coinbase, and provided matching funds to projects building public goods such as protocols and educational resources for—you guessed it—Ethereum infrastructure!
A special thanks to all of our Ecosystem round partners!
Read on for charts from each round breaking down the number of contributions, total funds contributed, and matching amount for the Top 10 grantees in that round!
One of our larger rounds in GR15 was the Ethereum Infrastructure Round.
The ETH Infrastructure round exists to support projects in service of the Ethereum ecosystem. It provides the opportunity for to receive matching funds for building in:
👷♀️core client devs
🔧 tooling providers
🧑🔬use-cases of critical ecosystem ideas
The ETH Infra round is supported with $375k in total matching funds with a maximum match of $37,500 per grant. This round was made possible thank to our partners:
The ETH Infra round had 41 projects, with 6,483 donors crowdfunding over $85k in unique contributions. Thanks to our matching partners, the total amount of funds distributed was over $460k.
To all of those who participated in the ETH Infra round, as well as our sponsors, we salute you!
For GR15, a16z generously provided $300k in matching funds for their Ecosystem matching round created to fund crypto infrastructure. The maximum match for this round was $21,000 per grant.
a16z’s round provided matching funds for projects building public goods in:
📜 Zero-knowledge proofs
🐼 Infrastructure and ETH 2.0
✌️ The L2 ecosystem
⛓ Smart contract languages
The a16z Round attracted 13,717 donors crowdfunding over $111k to 27 projects. Thanks to our matching partner, the total amount of funds distributed for the round was $411k (pending KYC and sanction checks).
We want to thank a16z for partnering with over multiple grants rounds, to ensure the growth of critical crypto infrastructure!
You can read more about a16z’s ongoing partnership with Gitcoin to fund public goods here.
The purpose of the Polygon Ecosystem round was to advance the usability, community, tooling, governance, protocol politicians, and anything else within the Polygon ecosystem.
For their fourth grants round as a matching partner, they donated $100k in matching funds with a maximum match of $10,000 per grant.
The Polygon Round had 234 granted projects, with 24,634 contributors allocating over $294k in donations. Thanks to our matching partner the total pool was over $394k!
Thank you to all the grantees, contributors, and to Polygon for making this round happen!
Aurora isa bridge, and EVM scaling solution for Ethereum. The folks at Aurora graciously provided $100k in matching funds for their GR15 Ecosystem round. 👼The maximum match for this round was $20,000 per grant.
Aurora’s Ecosystem round had 7,389 donors crowdfunding over $27k to 14 projects. Thanks to our matching partner the total pool was over $127k!
For their Ecosystem, Aurora encourage builders to focus on the following categories in building public goods for the Aurora ecosystem:
🕹️Usability — improving UX
🤝 Community — ecosystem development
🛠️ Toolkit — improving the dev experience
🔀 Management — create tools for management
⚖️Protocol Policies — Campaigns for Governance Supporters and Delegates
Aurora, we salute you! Thank you for being our partner in helping to fund needed public goods in web3!
ENS provides domain names on the Ethereum network. In their words, they can give you "your web3 username".
ENS donated $69,420 in matching funds for GR15, with a maximum match of $3,471 per grant. –nice 😎
The ENS Round had 98 grants, with 16,717 donors participating in the round, allocating over $107k in donations. Thanks to the matching partner the total amount of funds distributed for the round was over $176k.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this round. The ENS round contained many high-impact, meaningful projects, and we thank them for being a positive force in the future of public goods!
Unlock is an open source protocol for membership NFTs. Unlock Protocol gives online creators new ways to monetize their content, and allows them to cut out Web 2 middlemen. 🙅♀️
As a GR15 ecosystem partner, Unlock provided a matching pool of $25k for projects in the Unlock ecosystem! The maximum match for this round was $6,250 per grant.
By the numbers, the Unlock Ecosystem Round had 3,111 donors crowdfunding $21.2k to 27 projects. Thanks to our matching partner, the total amount of funds distributed for the round was $46.2k.
Thank you to everyone who participated in Unlock’s ecosystem round. Together we are funding public goods for content creators, to empower them to cut out platform middlemen, and take charge of their own financial destiny!
G7 DAO, OPGames, and other members of the Open Gaming Collective funded the Open Gaming Round during GR15.
The round’s purpose was to fund the open source web3 gaming projects of tomorrow. It provided $60k in matching funds for GR15, with a maximum match of $9,000 per grant.
The Open Gaming Round had 14,895 donors crowdfunding over $77.1k to 56 projects. Thanks to our matching partners, the total pool was over $137.1k.
The term "Open Gaming" references their principles of building open source gaming projects on the blockchain, for the good of web3, and the world. 🌎
And as we've said before: Public Goods 🤝 Open Gaming!
Thanks again to G7 DAO, OP Games, and the rest of the Open Gaming Collective. We look forward to continuing our partnership to build the future of public goods and Open Gaming!
Our friends at The Mask Network hosted the Web3 Social Ecosystem round for GR15. They provided $50k in matching funds, with a maximum match of $1,000 per grant.
The Web3 Social Round had 20,516 donors crowdfunding $165.3k to 138 projects. Thanks to our matching partner the total pool was over $215.3k.
Mask Network has been an active supporter of Gitcoin since GR6 and has posted over 50 bounties.
You can read more about the work they are doing with their Mask Grant and Ecosystem programs that they have created to help build the Web3 Social ecosystem! 🌱
Thank you Mask Network for being one of our longest-standing partner relationships–it’s partnerships like these that are the engine for the creation of #web3social public goods!
Our friends at Forta hosted their GR15 Ecosystem round to build the future of web3 security. This included building detection bots to detect on-chain anomalies, as well as smart contract security tools. They contributed $30,000 in matching funds for their round, with a maximum match of $9,000 per grant.
The Forta Round had 2,315 donors crowdfunding $5,290 to 8 projects. Thanks to our matching partner, the total pool was over $35,290.
Although best practices in smart contract security have come a long way since 2015, today, keeping smart contracts secure is a daily battle! 🤺
With their ecosystem, Forta is helping buildooors create the threat-detection bots that will protect critical web3 infrastructure. Thank you Forta!
For the ZK Tech round, @ZKValidator, @0xPARC, and others have generously provided $45k matching funds to support projects working on ZK tools, libraries, community, and/or protocols. The maximum match for this round was $4,500 per grant.
The ZK Tech Round had 15,852 donors crowdfunding $77.5k to 33 projects. Thanks to our matching partners the total pool was over $122.5k.
At Gitcoin, we are fans of the ZK ecosystem-one example being that ZK Sync is built into the Gitcoin Grants check-out process! 🦾
We are excited to not only continue to build with ZK Sync technologies, but to continue to partner with them in helping to fund the future of public goods as well!
This $75k round funded by the Loot project aims to support projects directly advancing the Loot ecosystem, providing an invitation for a new cohort to build on ETH. The maximum match for this round was $7,500 per grant.
The Loot Project Round had 1,162 donors crowdfunding $9.2k to 21 projects. Thanks to our matching partner, the total pool was over $84.2k.
What started as 8k Loot bags released by @dhof has scaled into 75+ active builders, ~26k NFT holders, and ~1k in ETH across @lootproject, @BibliothecaDAO, @genesisloot and @thedivinecity, all coordinated in creating canonical scaffolding for a decentralized world.
Lootverse dreams to transform the collective creative consciousness of the community into a rich web of stories, characters, games, multimedia experiences, and beyond–a shared vision for a future full of builders.
Thank you, Loot Project, for partnering with us for GR15 to help fund the creative public goods of the future!
For GR15, Scroll and PlanckerDAO committed $50k in matching funds to open source projects in the Greater China Ethereum ecosystem.
The Greater China Round had 6,332 donors crowdfunding $44.1k to 48 projects. Thanks to our matching partners, the total pool was over $94.1k.
Thank you, PlanckerDAO and Scroll, for your efforts to fund public goods that promote more collaboration within the Chinese language-speaking Ethereum community around the world!
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Alongside the main round, which supports the development of Open Source software in the Ethereum ecosystem, Cause Rounds are thematic rounds designed to support specific causes, which in GR15, were Climate Solutions, DEI, DeSci, and Advocacy – Crypto Regulation.
These rounds showcase how communities can use web3 tech to fund and enable social and environmental projects that bridge the digital world of web3 with the physical, off-chain world.
The Climate Solutions Round supports the most critical of public goods: solutions that help reduce our greenhouse gasses or build core infrastructure for web3 climate solutions.
This round had 4,217 donors crowdfunding over $114.6k to 199 projects. Thanks to our matching partners, the total pool was over $464k. Thank you to Momus.Eth, Ocelot Labs, Force DAO, Lobby3, Alchemix Fi, Toucan Protocol, and Regen Network for supporting the building of climate solutions.
We’re also proud to have celebrated the Merge, which reduces Ethereum’s carbon emissions by 99.95% with our Carbon Offset & Mitigation partners. Thank you to Toucan, KlimaDAO, Nori, Regen Network, Helios and Zero Labs for offsetting and mitigating the carbon emissions from the last couple years of Gitcoin’s grants rounds and more than halfway to our total emissions to date.
Together, we keep the ship afloat by funding solar projects, supporting activists, building satellite oracles to verify carbon offsets, and so much more.
Crypto is complicated, and needs explaining, especially to policymakers, legislators, and officials who make the regulatory decisions that could determine the future of the open web.
The Advocacy Round funded projects working toward a future where crypto policy ensures, enables, and protects our financial freedom instead of restricting it.
This round had 1,526 donors crowdfunding $114.7k to 11 projects. Thanks to our matching partners, the total pool was over $414k with a maximum match of $45,000 per grant.
A huge thank you to our sponsors: Vitalik Buterin, 1inch Network, ENS, Aave, Frax Finance, Mask, Anoma, Aragon, AlchemixFi and Aztec for their support of crypto advocates who are making a difference.
The DEI Round supported projects directly involved in increasing the diversity and inclusivity of web3 projects and the ecosystem at large.
The round had 2,254 donors crowdfunding $53.6k to over 70 projects. Thanks to our matching partners the total pool was over $203.6k.
A huge thank you to Zora, Unlock Protocol, Wonderverse, Krause House, Lens Protocol, and ForceDAO
We create a more innovative, dynamic, and liberatory ecosystem when we actively work to enable marginalized people’s prospering, flourishing, and growing in web3 and beyond.
The DeSci Round funded projects that are creating new incentives for scientists to engage in open practices and validate research results, even outside of the university system, creating a culture of collective problem-solving, and an infrastructure for building a knowledge commons.
The round had 2,309 donors crowdfunding $67.9k to over 82 projects. Thanks to our matching partners the total pool was over $567k.
A huge thank you to Protocol Labs, Vitalik Buterin, Stefan George, Ethereum Foundation, SCRF (Smart Contract Research Forum), Molecule, Orange DAO, GreenPillCN, AlchemixFi, and Springer Nature for supporting builders who accelerate humanity’s progress and make open knowledge and research a standard.
Grants Rounds don't happen without all of our partners’ generosity.
In GR15 alone, they collectively contributed over $3.1M across the main round, ecosystem rounds & cause rounds.
We'd like to thank our incredible matching partners for their unwavering support. We thank them for contributing to matching pools that supercharged the wisdom of the majority in quadratic funding. We’re thrilled to see former grantees become partners leading by example. They paid their own successes forward by reinvesting them into the future of community-led projects.
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For the 1250+ grantees who are looking to claim their matching funds, we expect matching payouts to be available to claim ~3 weeks after round close (~10/13), and we will email a reminder when funds are ready to claim. Deadline to claim funds for GR14 is 11:59pm CDT 10/12. If you don't claim your GR14 funds by then, the funds get clawed back to the Gitcoin Multisig.
Also please check this guide on “How to Claim Funds From Your Grant”
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Our product team is hard at work developing our new Grants Protocol to help us improve the Gitcoin Grant Program experience at all levels.
But what is Grants Protocol, anon?
It’s a funding infrastructure for the open web: a protocol that allows any community to run their own grants program, from doing due diligence, to approving applications, to deploying funding and payouts.
The goal for Gitcoin’s protocol future is to empower communities to fund their shared needs by decentralizing and scaling our grants program. We plan to transition our current grants program to the shiny new tech in the coming months.
Keep an eye on Twitter for updates in the next few weeks! 🎉
Building in a time of greater constraints can easily put us in a scarcity mindset. It isn’t easy and it can, at times, leave us unmotivated. A bear market can grit its teeth and intimidate, but we saw builders, supporters, and partners commit time, energy, and money to strengthening the entire ecosystem.
Thank you for being with us for another incredible grants round, and to the tens of thousands who just joined us, welcome!
We’re so happy you’ve joined us... together we'll fund the shared needs of our communities.