This document is version 0.1.0 + should be considered a "rough draft". The version numbers will increment to v0.2., v0.3., and so on... until an endgame plan is accepted by DAO governance (version 1.0).
Warning: This resource describes planned functionality and processes that has not been implemented and is not part of any official roadmap. Be aware that parts may be inaccurate or out of date. This document should not be relied on for financial, tax, business, or any other type of advice. This document is not legal advice, please consult your own lawyer .
Where we've been.
TLDR
The last 24 months have been spent decentralizing Gitcoin.
This decentralization happened on multiple layers: legal, governance, people, product, computation, and funding. During this time, the regen ecosystem has matured and multiple competitors have launched.
Why decentralize?
On May 25 2021, Gitcoin became a DAO.
But the decentralization rationale was sewn before that. In 2020, Kevin & Kyle decided Gitcoin was meant to be a DAO, not a company, because:
- As a public goods dapp, we didnt want to be a centralized intermediary or forever extracting from our users to pay back our investors.
- It is more Ethereum-native. The next generation of our product is for DAOs & we wanted to dogfood like a DAO would: use the product to fund the creation of the product.
- We wanted to leverage our favorite properties of DAOs (opens in a new tab):
- democratic decision making
- invite participation from anywhere
- transparency
- supermodularity
- credible neutrality
- collective value accrual
What did we decentralize?
It turns out that turning Gitcoin Grants into a DAO necessitates a multi-layered approach.
The last 24 months have been spent on the Decentralization Layer Cake 🎂:
- Legal - a foundation for the DAO that the nation-state understands.
- Governance - how decisions are made, how roadmaps are created, how legitimacy is distributed.
- People - who contributes to the DAO's mission?
- Product - what products, protocols, and experiences, does the DAO release?
- Computation - where is the computation executed & who has control of upgrade paths?
- Funding - who pays for what and where does value accrue for the work done?
This decentralization was not strictly linear. Kevin wrote about some of the tradeoffs, struggles in this journey in Q2 2023 (opens in a new tab).
From a perspective of a values landscape, where Gitcoin was trying to optimize for funding what matters, the decision to decentralize Gitcoin is kind of like descending from a local maxima to ascend a new global maxima.
A Shifting Competitive Landscape
During the last 24 months, the competitive landscape has shifted:
- In 2021, Gitcoin was one of the only ImpactDAOs out there. Now there are dozens.
- In 2021, Gitcoin was one of the only public goods / crowdfunding platforms out there. Now there are dozens.
- Vitalik last wrote a whole post about Gitcoin in 2021 (opens in a new tab) and has not done so since (though he does mention Gitcoin in more recent posts).
- In 2021, Optimism was not giving out $20m/quarter in public goods funding. In 2023, they will be doing $20m/quarter.
- In 2021, the ecosystem was excited by the possibilities of Quadratic Funding. Now, the hottest narrative is Retroactive Public Goods Funding (opens in a new tab).
- In 2021, this was before major sybil resistence providers had launched. In 2023, there are now a plurality of providers.
While Gitcoin was refactoring itself from company to DAO, the market shifted greatly. Gitcoin is not the only game in town anymore. To be successful in the future, Gitcoin must hit product adoption.
Summary
The good news is that the most important parts of the Decentralization Layer Cake have been written (in some cases, they've been built & rebuilt more than once). We are back ™️.
Gitcoin has the proper foundation to be an innovator & to be a vanguard brand.