Research

Azeem Khan - head of Impact

Q: What would you change if you had a magic wand

Honestly? Pretty simple stuff.

More emphasis on improving our products (UX especially), giving more importance to the Program, commitment to being a bridge to web3, and feeling more confident knowing MMM has capacity to properly handle things. 46m

Other than this Shell deal, we've got UNICEF who wants to expand their partnership with us (call Wednesday), American Cancer Society dealing with paperwork, University of Southern California talking about wanting to use grants funding they got from Jann Tallin as a experiment in real time with students for QF, and started speaking to a16z last week about including QF with Grants Stack in Crypto Startup School 44m

Program is the top of the funnel good will creator for us in a way that nothing else in web3 does.

Things like matching estimates and just having a better user experience all around is a must to me.

Direct Grants - is it working? Charmverse is beating it in market.

GG17/GG18 critcisms of Gitcoin

0. Gitcoin on L1 / gas fees too high (GG17)

https://twitter.com/LefterisJP/status/1653119053823705089 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/1CryptoMama/status/1655912084247388160 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/jahnsson/status/1654106455253958657 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/omniharmonic/status/1654843742095048705 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/696_eth/status/1654346464028659712 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/jimjim_eth/status/1652462013757497345 (opens in a new tab)

1. Gitcoin is too woke (GG17)

https://twitter.com/LefterisJP/status/1654199422278946839 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/bantg/status/1654215978086006784 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/TheDevanshMehta/status/1654371140352245761 (opens in a new tab)

Owocki response: https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1656683662862155777 (opens in a new tab)

2. Gitcoin partnership with Shell

https://twitter.com/_franzihei/status/1691165982213992448 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/basedkarbon/status/1691115758221504512 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/hudsonjameson/status/1691242732474314753 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/hasufl/status/1691319357341609984 (opens in a new tab)

Owocki response: https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1691488210315288576 (opens in a new tab)

3. Gitcoin is too slow/expensive/doesnt have PMF/isnt moving fast enough.

https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1641796899270275072 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/dmihal/status/1696412187693105347 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1696194945772630365 (opens in a new tab) https://twitter.com/adamscochran/status/1696664556423049315?s=46&t=X0oQ26a3ezptVAZLp1QFaw (opens in a new tab)

Anonymized Feedback from insiders.

Culture

  • “Between passport, Allo, and GS, there’s just a lot of “not my job” energy.” - someone who relies on them
  • another problem is the cultural habit of ignoring the problem. sticking your head deep into something without looking around to see everyone on twitter has pitchforks out and are torching the gitcoin brand (if you do see it, meh - its not your problem). its not looking out the window to see that runway is down 95% (and other similar projects are down 20%-60%) and putting 2 and 2 together that thats your livelihood (if you do see it, meh - its not your problem). its not taking ownership or being agentic.
  • “no solid web3 ethos/education for many within + no internal shared values”
  • “quite some people turnover which erodes trust need for more / real community engagement rather than top down marketing”
  • “no real distinction in practice between what gitcoin the program, grants stack and the protocol stands for (causing pr disasters like the DEI thing)”
  • "too much bureaucracy for a small organization"
  • "The whole project needs an intervention"

Leadership problems:

  • Current leaders are a great people person/ops persons but lacks vision + community foresight + has a hard time rallying the troops. “- lets retreat into 6 weeks of strategy research” is a defense mechanism that DAO workstreams developed to avoid having to get in the trenches and do the dirty work it takes to reach product market fit and unsink the ship. this selfish (but politicallly optimal) was behaviour is optimised to give workstream leads a story to tell while they bide their time + get their shit together.
  • the fix i think is to commit to hit PMF come hell or high water. and data for accountability EVERYWHERE. id love to see marketing funnels for grants stack, allo, passport - how big are the pipelines at each stage, and how long until they each hit PMF / get token utiltiy? what would have to be true to hit it?
  • Keep falling into the “meta trap” - https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-meta-trap/10666 (opens in a new tab)
  • CSDO feels like “planning to plan” committee.

Hudson Jameson

My feedback (round over round) was ignored: Specifically on transparency about why and how decisions were made. With the DEI thing, the blog that everyone got mad about was missing some very important language that could have better made a separation between Gitcoin and the judges and the round. In this case I can't even figure out who signed off on this and there isn't a dashboard or set of documents or anything that define who owns the twitter, how does "Gitcoin" get into a brand deal, now that it happened can REDACTED talk publicly about how shell was trying to control everything?

The other thing I somewhat touched on is accountability. This all seems like a blended smoothie of decentralization attempts and DAO things that produce a lack of accountability. I have 0 idea who I should even talk to in order to say "You messed up on this one and here is why". On the Daphne thing, I thought it was Gitcoin, but REDACTED and others made public and private statements to wash their hands clean of it since it was judging a round funded by others. Also, since I know REDACTED will be seeing this. I am getting anecdotal DMs to me about Gitcoin's leadership and team being hostile to feedback about this and previous things. Someone needs to be a leader here.

anything else you think would have helpful?

Hearing familiar voices from Gitcoin's history, like you/Scott Moore etc. all come together with those from the new Gitcoin and have a plan that people can agree on would be valuable. I guess that depends on if it current leadership is going to stick around or what happens, but either way a written thing and maybe even a short video describing: 1) What Gitcoin was, 2) What Gitcoin is now, 3) Mission, 4) What to expect next

Anon

Gitcoin is a cabal of insiders. It is time for that to end. These people have all of the voting power, context, and access. They congratulate each other on the smallest things while the burn remains high, the brand gets tattered, and the products flail in market.

It was not meant to be this way. Gitcoin should be a decentralized political economy of subdaos working in their own most important things.

This will be predictably unpopular with insiders.

JonasSFT

Learn as fast as possible. Iterate as fast as possible. Thats our sole focus. We prioritize shipping products that try to be good experiences and improve the xp as much as possible. Before building sophisticated on-chain components.

Make biggest improvement on UI before immunitbability.

On mission/intents, we are using them to get more teams building useful things. Subtraction mindset means less from us.

Kyle

Focused on taking people on their "i do => we do => you do" journey.

His feedback:

  • focus more on getting our products to adoption.
  • Kevin has value to add here: in community, development, narrative you bring

Notes on Rune return to Maker

https://blockworks.co/news/makerdao-endgame-update (opens in a new tab) https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/maker-endgame-reorganizes-defi-protocol-with-big-changes/ (opens in a new tab)

  • He was the only one to see vision wide enough to articulate the endgame vision and what it would take to get there
  • In the bear market there was no correlation between spend and output.
  • DAOs are an intensely political game. You have to solve for those power games by just connecting spend to output.
  • Rune oscillated between hands off and hands on:
  • From here: And Christensen, who was once keen to watch MakerDAO governance from afar, has thrown his enormous stash of MKR, the project’s governance token, behind each proposal.
  • “He also disputed the claim that he had forced Endgame through MakerDAO.”
  • Endgame:
    • Phased approach
      • Phase 1: Rebrand, New Tokens, Farming
      • Phase 2: SubDAOs, RWA Collateral, & Tokenomics
      • PHase 3: AI
      • Phase 4 & 5 - Voting Rewards and a special purpose blockchain.
    • There might be something to learn about subDAOs as a way of scaling diff sub units.
      • Solves for ppl pulling in different directions. They can go to subdaos that gree with them.
    • AI used to make information asymmetries go away.
    • Rebrand to make it simpler to understand.
    • Eventually voter rewards & a special purpose blcokchcain
    • Rune is actually the most aligned DAO member bc his interests are completely aligned with the project. As opposed to the average DAO member that has the principle agent problem.
    • Why is MKR not valued high enough? “Crypto is an attention game

Kain from SNX

  • I just turned backup as a volunteer. I’m just a guy. I don’t get paid.
  • How do you manage the social power? Re-engage without redoing the decentralization.
  • No one in the world is going to care about Gitcoin like you do. They care about the outcome. The impact you can have with that social power plus the caring. What’s
  • Just started a new re-enagegment. I was traveling around a lot and partying, rhb. Cleaned up. Running, yoga, meditation. Chilling out.
  • Team was doing a good job. But fundamentals werent good.
  • Returning to do a moonshot.
  • I’m not touching governance stuff.
  • Where is the ideal place for you to exist? How do you create a role.
  • Maybe some DAOs need a CEO. how do you create that role that constrains the power + provides checks and balances?
  • 3 lenses; what do i feel good about? What will get social capital? What legal risk?
  • When alt-coin summer happens again, its attention. Attention is extremely valuable. Awareness of x fell down when u left. Narrative is powerful. You come back, there is a v2. Doesnt take much to get cutthrough.
  • On sycophants - The community will tell you youre wrong. But contributors wont. Push consensus out further out to the community. Communities will push back on founders, but contributors will follow leaders.
  • Rune is much more upset the applecart than me. Stani is kind of in a similar role. Robert Leshner too. Its not that lonely really.. Not idiosyncratic. Everyone is doing something at this time of the cycle.
  • In the last bear market, the thing that kept SNX together was my stubbornness. Its a death march but you just do it. 10 ppl in 2019, they started retiring sometime in 2021. We pushed fucking hard. We were all in a room together. Remote org culture thing. If we were remote first, I dont know if we would have made it through a bear market. “I dont give a fuck about COVID, were doing this.”. No remote. Remote is a joke. If you have a capacity to motivate people, dont forgo that capacity for flexibility.
  • On creating a “Gitcoin Endgame”. Narrative is important. Spartan Council, Endgame, Old Dictator Appears. Whats the meme?

TODO: insert lihnk to Kain greenpill ep

scott lewis from canto

whatd i do.

  1. fire the decision-maker who put gitcoin brand at risk by lending it to shell
  2. announce a recommitment to og gitcoin values
  3. add a new policy of only working w value-aligned sponsors
  4. never mention it again except for minimums necessary to complete contract

just basically do something quick and clean to kill the public narrative, then wait like 5 days, and use whatever new thing needs to be announced to change the topic as best you can.

suji

https://twitter.com/cryptojean27/status/1692465747606606254?s=12&t=X0oQ26a3ezptVAZLp1QFaw (opens in a new tab)

trent van epps

i think people are more likely to pile on when it's socially acceptable/encouraged (and fuels engagement for the individual accounts). and the Gitcoin public perception, for a number of reasons, has been declining over the past year.

the transition from company to DAO, hosted to onchain protocol. missteps like blueDAO, shell, challenges with infra changes, on chain gas costs, (what feels like) arbitrary grant approvals have all played a part.

feels like the org has broadened its purview quite a bit over the years, leading to some loss of effectiveness, and some loss of legitimacy

paired with the culture of calling out scams, grassroots defense against abusive institutions - sometimes people feel a righteous obligation to tap into that reordered the parts

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