Grants Partnerships TL;DR
What is Gitcoin Grants?
Our mission is to build and fund digital public goods. Gitcoin Grants does this by allowing anyone to crowdfund their public goods, historically in web3 but increasingly in web2 open source software and beyond. Recently Kyle Weiss wrote a great overview here on where we've been and where we're going.
What are Matching Partners (aka The Funder's League)
Matching partners are the donors who make quadratic funding possible. As the name suggests, they provide the pool of funds that donations from individual contributors are matched from. Since quadratic funding is all about signaling community preference (after all it is the public that decides what is good), these partners are essentially delegating their donation impact to the community, which is in and of itself a somewhat selfless act when they could instead have focused on using a grants program to pick their own select group of recipients.
Categories of Matching Partners
- For those who have never donated
- Donate to main pool
- For those who have donated small amounts
- Donate to main pool; OR
- Request new category (general ecosystem categories)
- Example: Advocacy, Climate change rounds
- Tradeoff: Expands scope beyond crypto?
- Those who have donated significantly in the past
- Donate to main pool; OR
- Request new category; OR
- Request new side round (must donate 50% of funds to main)
- Funds go to specific category benefiting specific token-holders
- Example: Uniswap specific projects in a Uniswap round
- Tradeoff: Less funds to main pool, potential to create large scale programs that flow funding back to main
The Funder's League
[TODO: Funder's League Table]
What are Side Rounds
Side rounds are pools of capital dedicated to specific ecosystem causes. They can be focused on a theme (e.g. "DeFi", "Advocacy") or a specific project (e.g. "Uniswap").
The goal of side rounds is twofold:
- For themed rounds, we want to expand the scope of what we consider public goods as discussed in Seeking a New Kind of Public Good
- For ecosystem rounds, we want to create incentives for a tax model while helping individual projects that are known "good actors" find success
To date, we have done one major round with Uniswap, in the future, we want this to be a default part of how we grow the impact of Gitcoin Grants.
Themed Round Goals for GR12
- Targeting 2-3 total side rounds
- Side round participants
- Min $300k across 10 projects; stretch $1M per pool
- Priority determined by level of interest / team capacity
Whats required to run a Thematic/Ecosytem Round:
- Main round considerations:
- Press kit for round details (light weight) to ensure we can share the details early with folks.
- Marketing of side round (who, why, when, etc.) — How might we combine these to effective
- Promotion video with the partner (to market the event), perhaps as a Blog Post
- Clear direction on how to sign up, how I can contribute (as a funder), and the goals of the side round
- Tweet Thread and announcement details (linking to the blog post?)
- Craft messaging for the partner to use and advertise their event
- Grants Eligibility Policy (Uniswap example)
- Need to make sure there are enough Grants on Gitcoin that are eligible
- Currently, there is no gating mechanism on updating Tags (for eligibility)
- Setting up TG with key actors
- Making sure TG has key actors (decision maker, and execution focused folks)
- Setup on Gitcoin Platform
- CLR Round creation in backend
- Design banners created and thematically match
- Coordination with FDD to make sure they are aware the eligibility policy and can evaluate/approve grants that match (Joe is current POC)
- Details on payout token that needs to be planned for (default to DAI if we can)
- Define timeline to custody funds to ensure it is paid out in a timely manner
- Wrap up content piece (explaining the round results and details)
- Gitcoin has the data to seed these, but we could encourage partnered articles/pieces
Default view
Thematic (side) Rounds
Theme
Priority
Confirmed Funders
Point of Contact
Proposed Round Participation
Side Round size
Confirmed Grantees
Round Owner
Description
Comments
Network
Current Status
Gitcoin Ask - $50k
$500,000.00
This round will focus on projects combatting climate change. Organizations are set to be chosen by the "All for Climate" DAO run by Xavier Damman and Primavera de Filippe in partnership with DAO members.
Currently evaluating GR11 results, then will review for GR12.
Gitcoin Ask - $50k
Anon - $500k
Forefront - $50k
This round will focus on helping to fund advocacy organizations like Fight for the Future who sit at the intersection of tech and crypto activism. The round participants will be chosen by Holmes Wilson, Rainey Reitman and a wide range of tech activists.
Gitcoin Ask - $50k
VitaDAO Ask - $65K (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qthLejHQNto-zBPiG7VsIMsWrSL6kpGG1BDZdNkucMQ/edit)
VitaDAO candidates:
Vitalik, BalajiThis round will focus on open science in the context of longevity. Projects will be chosen by VitaDAO and others interested in how to push forward longevity research.
Keith is main POC at VitaDAO.
They have the full list of Grants defined.
Project Round Goals for GR12
- Targeting 6-10 total side rounds (trying to hit $1M in funding)
- Side round should be "closed" by Nov 15th for the round to be successful.
- Side round participants contribute >50% of funds to main round
- $50k min, avg. size $100k-$150k, stretch $300k+
- Priority determined by ecosystem impact & contribution level to main round
Default view
Project Ecosystem (side) Rounds
Partner
Priority
Matching Pool Requirement
Account Exec
Point of Contact
Proposed Round Participation
Side Round size
BD
Comments
Network
Current Status
100% of Round Size
Ken, Boris (TG)
$50,000.00
Currently evaluating GR11 results, then will review for GR12.
100% of round size
Jihad (Discord)
$50,000.00
Also donating $50k to climate; working on specifying grantees, no call on books
TBD
Susannah
$50,000.00
Trying to do a "privacy Tech, or a ZeroKnowledge Round
They can also ping other zk teams to see if they can grow the round to $50k
$50k committed between 4 total donors (tooling, emerging teams, not about community).
50% of round size
Kain (TG)
Kyle chatted with rubber duck and TG from Synthetix Grants program
Kevin: no luck talking with stani from aave. anjit seems interested in doing something together at ethdenver tho
Kevin had a convo with Yaniv at ETHLisbon, they'd be interested in dGrants. Said to talk to Eva.
Wagmi (TG)
Was eager for a side round GR11, however agrees that it would be best to integrate LUNA natively first.
Kevin: Owocki (Gitcoin) — 11/17/2021
ENS is interested in doing a side round in GR12 or GR13. would we have room for them?
on a twitter spaces call rn with brantly. he mentioned he'd be interested in doing it (but also sounds like he's hoping that the donation they already did could fund a side round or two)
Kyle | Gitcoin — 11/17/2021
We haven’t chatted about their $700k would be spent, but this is the third round for it (I think) and we treated them as if they were a $250k sponsor (on par with Badger) for the last two rounds. I assumed we would use up their donation this round ($200k).
Happy to adjust that though.
As for GR12, we are pretty full, we can’t handle another ecosystem round. But GR13 should be 💯 if we can do that with them in March.
Helpful Links
- Shareable link to this page:
- What are Gitcoin Grants and how can they fund the world:
- What is QF / What is our mission (Gitcoin PGF)
- Why should you be part of it (pitch deck):
- How to construct your side-round eligibility policy (Uniswap example):
- How to construct your side-round eligibility policy (General template):