Recently, the Gitcoin 18th round of crowdfunding matching donation event is underway. Let's take a look back at the donation details.
This issue's bounty: $102
Class representative | Han Ya
Review | cube
Typesetting | Wingo
Introduction#
Gitcoin is an open-source software platform based on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Their mission is to build an ideal "global village" by establishing a global open collaboration platform, where villagers living during this period can participate in the interaction of the open-source community, thereby driving the multidimensional growth of decentralized technology.
"Build and Fund the Open Web Together." is Gitcoin's vision. The mission of GitcoinDAO is to build and fund digital public goods through quadratic funding and Gitcoin Grants. Gitcoin Grants conducts crowdfunding matching donation activities on a quarterly basis.
In this quarter's meeting, Kevin Owocki invited core contributors leading some business lines in GitcoinDAO to discuss the details of Grants Round 14 (now in GR18), the decentralization of Gitcoin, and the significance of GR14 to Gitcoin and the entire crypto market.
Guests in this issue:
Scott Moore - Gitcoin Co-Founder
Lindsey Thrift - VP of Product at Gitcoin
Kevin Olsen - VP of Engineering at Gitcoin
Annika Lewis - Lead at GitcoinDAO Public Goods Funding Workstream
Austin Griffith - Steward of GitcoinDAO, BuidlGuidl
TL; DR#
Background
· Core modules of the Grants 2.0 protocol (Passport, Conviction Voting) are being launched.
· The crypto market is entering a bear market, but it also prompts people to return to the "basis".
GR14:
· Expanding to more local ecosystems.
· Expanding to web2 or off-chain social domains.
Grants 2.0:
· Passport: Building SSI (Self-Sovereign Identity) by aggregating web2 and web3 social identities.
· Conviction Voting: Funding proposals by continuously aggregating community members' preferences expressed through staked tokens.
Ecosystem:
· The modularity and permissionless nature of the protocol's codebase contribute to unleashing innovation.
· Advancing the ecosystem's modularity and permissionlessness helps achieve trust neutrality.
Background of GR14#
Internally, the modular part of the Grants 2.0 protocol is being launched.
Externally, the crypto market is declining, and the bull market is gradually fading. However, as of June 23rd, GR14 has received matching donations worth $3 million for public goods, which has given Owocki great confidence.
Regarding the significance of the bear market, Owocki believes that if this is a historical replay, then this bear market will help push some projects that can define trends and set benchmarks to the forefront. Scott believes that the bear market actually allows us to see more people returning to the "basis" in some way.
Recent Trends in Grants (Scott)#
Scott first explained the positioning of Grants. Through this project, you can donate to public goods that you care about and serve your local community.
Secondly, Scott revealed the expansion trend of Grants: this round of Grants is expanding to more local ecosystems and collaborating with them to fund more projects.
For example, collaborating with Polygon's The Graph (a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying on-chain data) and projects in other related fields that these communities care about, including climate and crypto advocacy in emerging regulatory environments.
This expansion of Grants helps promote the following thinking: when we talk about public goods, who do we care about? Usually, it refers to something in our community that is "local" to us, something that we can see, touch, and feel.
Therefore, the goal of this expansion is actually to figure out what different types of common needs people have, and how we can find ways to get signals from these different groups, and then figure out what broader global public goods we need to fund.
Details of GR14 (Annika)#
The overall structure of GR14 is similar to the previous round, divided into Main Round, Ecosystem Round, and Cause Round (see: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gr14-round-structure-future-of-the-main-round/10391) -
Main Round
Similar to the situation before GR13, in GR14, every sponsorship on the platform with an Ethereum address is eligible to receive matching funds in the Main Round, which is $1 million in this round.
(Note: As GitcoinDAO moves towards Grants 2.0 in the future, anyone can create their own ecosystem or domain round and fund any type of project they like, which raises the question of whether Gitcoin should define its own main round to fund specific domain projects instead of being a comprehensive round for everything on the protocol.)
Ecosystem Round
The Ecosystem Round helps specific communities with $1 million to build and fund their common needs.
Cause Round
The Cause Round focuses on not only the web3 ecosystem but also expands more into off-chain social causes and projects that are not typically funded with cryptocurrencies. In this round, the Cause Round includes climate, blockchain advocacy, and new rounds focusing on diversity, fairness, and inclusivity in the web3 space.
Institutional Funding in GR14
Coinbase previously announced a commitment of $1 million to Gitcoin Grants, and they are funding the Ethereum infrastructure round. Gitcoin has received funding from Kimbal Musk (Big Green) in the climate round. More philanthropists from Web2 are starting to consider how to use cryptocurrencies for good.
Passport (Olsen)#
Identity is a part of the reputation system in the community. Passport, developed for the Grants 2.0 protocol, is a new module for identity building in the Gitcoin network. Passport is an independent application that links web2 social media accounts (such as Twitter and Facebook) with other web3 protocols.
Olsen uses stamps as a metaphor for these elements of identity. Unlike centralized user profiles, this personal information is stored on the Ceramic network and controlled by individual wallets.
Passport is a Money Lego for preventing Sybil attacks, which is an important condition for ensuring Quadratic Funding (QF) functionality. Although it does not directly defend against Sybil attacks, it integrates other tools that do.
In the future, it will help transition Gitcoin's ecosystem from "one token, one vote" to "one person, one vote," which is something Owocki is happy to see.
As an independent application, Passport is also expected to be used by more communities for their own Sybil attack prevention.
(For more information on Money Lego, see https://bounties.gitcoin.co/hackathon/moneylegos/onboard)
Recent Trends in Grants (Scott)#
When it comes to building voting applications on the Gitcoin network, Austin mentioned the core issue of "horse race problem" - in previous Gitcoin grant rounds, there was competition between projects, and those that performed well in the early stages usually received more funding.
Therefore, the team is looking for a different signal and sorting mechanism, and "Conviction Voting" is the solution they propose. Conviction Voting is a decision-making process based on the continuous expression of community members' preferences, and it funds proposals by continuously aggregating preferences.
Users can stake their GTC tokens to vote for their favorite projects. The longer the staked time, the greater the voting weight. This voting weight is used to rank grant projects before the Gitcoin round starts.
(For more information on Conviction Voting, see https://blog.giveth.io/conviction-voting-a-novel-continuous-decision-making-alternative-to-governance-aa746cfb9475)
The most important feature of "Conviction Voting" is that the amount staked is not important, but the signal released through staking is important, similar to the situation of quadratic matching. Someone who stakes a large number of tokens has almost the same influence on ranking belief-based projects as someone who stakes a small amount of tokens. Therefore, community members should use most of their GTC for voting, delegation, and governance, and only stake a small portion to retain and accumulate.
Gitcoin ranks grant projects based on the signals released through staking, rather than using a horse race-like approach for sorting.
Under such a mechanism, what will happen if someone stakes for two months? What will the conviction curve look like if someone stakes continuously for several months? How big will the multiplier be? Austin believes that these questions are still pending, and the community will remain open-minded.
Modularity (Lindsey)#
The ecosystem being built by Gitcoin Grants 2.0 has many features, and the modularity within the DAO is one of them.
In the traditional world, if someone wants to change anything in the Gitcoin ecosystem, they have to find Owocki and submit a request for changes. However, when a system that only uses open-source code and is completely permissionless is built, it unleashes a lot of innovation.
Gitcoin is expected to become a modular Money Lego ecosystem in the future. The currently advancing Passport, GTC, and Conviction Voting are the core elements of this future system. In addition, the round manager is also an important modular product and part of the core protocol.
External project teams can set their own parameters and use the mechanisms they want. Starting from GR14, the community will launch the Grant Hub. People can create their own projects on the Grant Hub through this round manager and run them on a decentralized registry in the future.
Currently, Lindsey's team is looking for partners who are willing to become the first adopters of the core protocol and run independent rounds (they often have their own funding plans or want to run independent funding plans).
Partners need to share what their mission is, what they want to achieve, what the unique parameters of their projects are, and work together in the construction process for prototype exploration and testing, interact with Lindsey's team for 2 to 3 hours per month, and participate in user interviews according to the needs of the ecosystem.
Based on the funding experience of the previous 14 rounds, Gitcoin knows how to run a round, but also discovered a lot of innovation. As each community gradually understands their needs and how to govern in their rounds, unique elements will emerge. Lindsey's team hopes to design for this and ensure modularity and scalability.
Owocki and Austin summarized that modularity will bring the platform closer to "trust neutrality," and the modularity's permissionlessness will also encourage builders and developers' innovative practices.
Please continue to pay attention to the donation round of the friendly community GCC: https://gccofficial.org/
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