The Gitcoin Program Alpha Round: Results & Recap

Quick links:

Climate Solutions Results

Open Source Software Results

ETH Infrastructure Results

Wen Payouts?

TL;DR

• The Gitcoin Program Alpha Round ran on our new protocol from January 17-31, 2023
• It consisted of three curated rounds each with their own matching pool: Web3 Open Source Software, Ethereum Infrastructure, and Climate Solutions
• There were 159 returning grants split between the rounds invited based on funding criteria from GR14 and GR15
• A total of $667k was donated from 30,893 unique wallets

The first step in testing our Gitcoin Grants Stack

We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you that took a step with us toward our exciting evolution during this period of testing our Grants Stack. Last year, we announced that we were beginning to transition to a protocol future to decentralize funding using a new suite of tools, recently announced Grants Stack. We kicked off this evolution with the Alpha Test Season, concluding with the Gitcoin Program Alpha Round.

The Gitcoin Program Alpha Round was the first round integrating Gitcoin Passport and the first large-scale round on Allo Protocol. This round was a significant milestone for the Gitcoin platform as it aimed to test new features further and gather feedback from our community.

Alpha Round Results

Climate Solutions

The Climate Solutions Round featured 40 climate projects from GR15 that were invited because they received the most support based on the number of unique contributors, and ten bundled use cases for the remaining GR15 projects working 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.

Open Source Software

The Open Source Software Round featured 88 grantees invited based on previous funding criteria from GR14 and GR15 outlined in this governance post. In addition, grants must have met these requirements:

- Be an open-source project with meaningful Github activity in the prior three months demonstrating work completed towards the project's mission.

- 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.

Ethereum Infrastructure

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.

None of this could have been possible without our incredible funders. Thank you for supporting our evolution.

Wen Payouts?

For a detailed runthrough on the payout process and schedule, please visit this gov post.

What we learned from the Gitcoin Alpha Round

This round proved to be an excellent opportunity to test out the protocol, highlighting potential blind spots to see what needed to be fixed or added.

For example:

• On the operational side, our team created and managed three rounds on the protocol and was able to distinguish the gaps in processes. This process allowed us to identify what functionality we’d like added to the Grants Stack products to run rounds more efficiently.
• The Gitcoin Passport infrastructure got significantly overloaded. The Passport team worked hard to get this under control and eventually migrated Gitcoin Passport to its database to make it more robust as we advance. Although this was a tough challenge to overcome and affected many donors, it allowed us to learn from a real stress test and be better prepared for future rounds. For more details, check out the full post-mortem 3 from the product team.
• We also conducted research through surveys that were sent to grantees. They anonymously responded about the difficulty of creating a grant, the ease of checking out other grants and donating on the protocol, etc. Overall, most grantees were happy with the round. Issues that surfaced have been communicated to our product team, and they have either already resolved the issues or are being addressed.

For a detailed overview on the above learnings, please visit this gov post, from which this information was pulled.

If you were a grantee or donor and have feedback for product/protocol improvements, please share it here: https://forms.gle/um3JbjCuReTectcj7

Looking ahead

We thank everyone again for your patience and participation in the Alpha Rounds. We're excited for the Beta Round launching the last week of April (details coming soon) as we reignite the Gitcoin Program on Allo protocol and support many other organizations to host their own programs and rounds.

The feedback from this Alpha Round helped us further refine our features and improve our user experience. Overall, the Gitcoin Program Alpha Round was a critical step in advancing Gitcoin's evolution to Fund What Matters in a decentralized and collaborative manner.

For a detailed view on the results, including matching caps, please visit the gov post.