TLDR

  1. Gitcoin’s target market is evolving.

  2. In response, Gitcoin is evolving too. Gitcoin’s 3 evolutions are :

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Market Evolution

Crypto moves FAST. We are in a rapidly changing ecosystem.

My high level read on the changing market (at least the parts that affect Gitcoin) is:

  1. The markets we are in (public goods funding, capital allocation, sybil resistance) are newly crowded/competitive.
  2. QF doesn’t solve for every public goods or capital allocation problem, it is only 1 tool in the toolbox.
  3. The markets that Gitcoin is in (public goods funding, capital allocation, sybil resistance) require credible neutrality + democratic decision making. As those things can only be provided by DAOs 3, Gitcoin is evolving from a company to a DAO.
  4. The Ethereum ecosystem is evolving towards a modular architecture. Within the broader Ethereum ecosystem there are now many different categories of sub-ecosystems (layer 1s, layer 2s, NFT ecosystems, infrastructure DAOs, DeFi ecosystems) + many of these EVM based communities have billion $$ treasuries.

In this post, I would like to articulate 3 transitions that Gitcoin is undergoing which are meant to address the changing landscape.

Gitcoin Evolution

I think these transitions are:

Gitcoin 1.0 Gitcoin 2.0
1. Architecture centralized product decentralized/modular protocols
2. Mechanisms just QF many mechanisms (QF/QV/direct grants/many mechanisms)
3. Customer for Ethereum for any EVM based community

1. Centralized Product => Decentralized / Modular Protocols

The old platform was a centralized monolith that was unforkable + unmaintainable bc it was so large.

The new platform is a suite of decentralized protocols that follow the unix philosophy of doing one thing thing + doing it well. And each protocol has a well designed interface that allows inputs from unforeseen programs.

Module One Thing It Does Well
Passport Sybil Resistence
Grants Explorer Browsing Grants
Grants Builder Building Grants
Round Manager Managing QF Rounds
Allo Protocol QF Strategy Quadratic Funding
Allo Protocol QV Strategy Quadratic Voting
Allo Protocol x Strategy Capital Allocation Mechanism x

If designed well, this ecosystem of tools are “supermodular” - meaning that they produce more value than the sum of their parts. Each new modular added to the ecosystem adds value to rest of the ecosystem.

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