Gitcoin Round 12 donations are coming, which projects are worth paying attention to?

Gitcoin is an open-source software development incentive platform launched in 2017, aimed at supporting various open-source projects through blockchain technology and promoting the development of the open-source movement. Projects related to blockchain can find the developers they need on this platform with certain rewards. With the development of Gitcoin, it has now expanded into different sections such as hackathons, grants, accelerator incubation, and social attributes.

Among them, Gitcoin Grants has held 11 rounds of donation activities, benefiting many high-quality projects on the platform, including Uniswap, 1inch, Zapper, etc., making a significant contribution to the prosperity of the Ethereum ecosystem. For participants, while helping to incubate Ethereum ecosystem projects, there is not only the opportunity to receive token airdrops from various projects but also to engage early in the incubation of high-quality projects and learn about Web3.

Currently, the new round of Grants Round 12 (GR12) donations has begun, running from December 1, 2021, to December 16, 2021. Next, Rhythm BlockBeats will briefly introduce Gitcoin Grants and GR12, and present 11 high-quality projects in terms of the number of donors, donation amounts, and project innovations for reference.

Overview of Gitcoin Grants and GR12

Gitcoin Grants officially launched its first round of activities in February 2019, ending with 56 participants and a total donation amount of $44,000. Subsequently, Vitalik Buterin participated in the design of Gitcoin Grants' quadratic funding model, which greatly enhanced the community impact of Gitcoin Grants. Through quadratic funding, when users donate to project parties, the project parties can also receive additional matching funds provided by sponsors.

By reviewing the data from the previous 11 rounds of Grants (GR12 has just started, so no comparison is made), it can be observed that the number of participants (crowdfundnumcontributors), donation counts (crowdfundcontributions), and matching funds (matchingpot) in each Grants Round have been continuously increasing, while the donation amount (crowdfund_amount) only saw a brief decline during GR10, followed by a significant rebound in GR11. The growth trend of Grants Round and its popularity in the industry are evident.

Among them, GR11 was the largest Gitcoin Grants event since its inception, with over 16,000 users participating, accumulating approximately 429,000 donations, averaging nearly 27 projects donated per user; the donation amount exceeded $1.5 million, with matching funds reaching $815,000, totaling $2.315 million, which is nearly 52 times the growth since the first round of donations in February 2019.

With the arrival of GR12, its popularity may continue. Additionally, the official team has received some feedback from previous rounds of funding and made some optimizations to the donation mechanism to enhance the product experience of GR12. These include: the matching pool amount exceeding $2 million, breaking all previous records; new sections such as Climate Change, Advocacy related to crypto technologies, and Longevity focusing on open science; support for payments on the Polygon network; and the release of a separate decentralized donation application called dGrants. In the future, once Grants becomes an open-source protocol, anyone will be able to fork and build on dGrants. This way, projects can use the quadratic funding algorithm and related technologies to run their own donation programs and benefit from them, while users can freely create and fund grants without censorship.

On the other hand, the continuous growth of projects on Gitcoin Grants has increased the difficulty for users to select donations. So, which projects are worth our attention in this round of GR12 donation activities?

DeFi

Li Finance

Li.Finance is a cross-chain bridge aggregator that supports DeFi projects by providing liquidity when needed. It has aggregated cross-chain liquidity networks such as Connext, Hop, and Thorchain, aiming to achieve true arbitrary exchange of cryptocurrencies.

On Gitcoin, Li.Finance has received donations from over 700 donors, with a donation amount exceeding $13,000, demonstrating a very high level of recognition.

rekt

rekt is a public platform for anonymous authors to publish information, gathering events of DeFi projects being hacked, flash loan attacks, and exploits. On Gitcoin, rekt has received donations from over 440 donors, with a donation amount also exceeding $11,000.

As interest in DeFi grows, the information from rekt is gradually being referenced by traditional media, with its content cited by Bloomberg, BBC, the World Economic Forum, and others.

Blockchain Games

Dark Forest

Dark Forest is a decentralized real-time strategy (RTS) space conquest game built on zero-knowledge proof technology zkSNARKS. The game is inspired by Liu Cixin's science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem," specifically the second part "The Dark Forest" and its namesake thought experiment. Currently, the game has received donations from 668 donors. Due to the diversity and fun of Dark Forest's gameplay, it has gained widespread recognition among players, and Vitalik Buterin has even recommended it on YouTube.

In the game, players need to expand their empires in an infinite, procedurally generated, cryptographically specific universe, engaging in diplomacy and warfare with other players to expand their survival area. The planets in the universe are divided into two types: ordinary planets and silver mine planets; the latter can continuously generate silver, while ordinary planets require silver for upgrades to enhance their attributes.

NFT

POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol)

POAP is a proof of attendance protocol that provides users attending events a way to verify their attendance by collecting digital badges, all of which are conducted on-chain. Each badge is unique, meaning that the way to obtain a badge is to receive it digitally during the event. On Gitcoin, POAP has received donations from nearly 800 donors, with a donation amount also close to $16,000.

L2

L2BEAT

L2BEAT is a data aggregator for Layer 2 networks on Ethereum, dedicated to providing research and statistical data on Ethereum Layer 2 technologies. On Gitcoin, L2BEAT has received donations from over 460 donors, with a donation amount also close to $15,000.

L2BEAT has two core functions: it compiles data on the asset locking amounts of all Ethereum L2 networks and organizes comparisons of various L2 networks in terms of risk. Additionally, users can quickly view the characteristics, risks, and trade-offs of each L2 network.

Ethereum 2.0

Lighthouse

Lighthouse is a security-focused Ethereum 2.0 client that is free and open-source, allowing users to enjoy the advantages of the sharded proof-of-stake Ethereum 2.0 platform while laying the groundwork for improvements in a distributed future.

Lighthouse is fully open-source and licensed under Apache 2.0, with a security-centric approach. Fuzzing techniques have been continuously applied, and several external security audits have been conducted. Additionally, Lighthouse is funded by various organizations, including the Ethereum Foundation and ConsenSys, and actively participates in the specification and security construction of Ethereum 2.0.

Web 3

RSS3

RSS3 is a new generation of decentralized social and content protocols that return data including relationships, content, and profiles to users through built-in mechanisms for commerce, recommendations, and storage. RSS3 aims to replace the traditional centralized distribution-centric Web2 application ecosystem, creating a more prosperous and healthy content social network. On Gitcoin, RSS3 has received donations from nearly 440 donors, with a donation amount exceeding $13,000.

In addition, the official-developed RSS3 PASS is a series of applications based on RSS3, allowing users to register for RSS3's RNS, a domain name similar to ENS, by consuming PASS tokens. It is non-transferable and does not expire. Currently, blogging frameworks like Ghost and Hexo have supported RSS3, and the decentralized microblogging platform Misskey has also integrated into the RSS3 ecosystem.

brightID

BrightID is a decentralized social identity verification system for the Web3 era, primarily developed on Ethereum, and combines off-chain meeting video and other non-private information channels for verification. Through BrightID, individuals do not need to submit sensitive information such as identity documents but can authenticate their on-chain accounts through a trust mechanism among acquaintances.

BrightID uses a series of algorithms to identify real and fake accounts, categorized into three types: already know, just met, and suspicious. If the wrong method is chosen, the user's account may be at risk, ensuring that the individuals active in the network are real in the real world through this game-theoretic approach.

Privacy

Frame

Frame is a privacy-focused native Ethereum wallet, serving as an operating system-level entry point for Ethereum, connecting users' accounts with dapps like MetaMask. However, Frame is not a browser extension but a native application. On Gitcoin, Frame has received donations from nearly 600 donors, with a donation amount exceeding $12,000.

Frame creates a system-wide Web3 interface, allowing any web application or native application on users' macOS, Linux, or Windows machines to leverage decentralized networks, and it is compatible with all Ledger, Trezor, and Grid+ hardware signers.

ZeroPool

ZeroPool is a privacy solution that allows users to hide amounts, sources of funds, and target addresses from any external observer while storing or executing exchanges of ETH and any other ERC-20 tokens. The project originated from a hackathon event at ETHBoston and received $25,000 in funding from ConsenSys.

ZeroPool consists of two parts: smart contracts that combine zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and unspent transaction outputs (UTXO), as well as a Chrome browser plugin wallet using public-private key pairs generated by the Baby JubJub elliptic curve.

DAO

BanklessDAO

BanklessDAO originated from Bankless, a media outlet founded in 2019, initially tracking developments in the crypto industry through a newsletter, later adding podcasts and other content in 2020. BanklessDAO is a product of community consensus, lacking a legal entity in traditional business society, and operates completely independently of Bankless media, with no overlap in business or legal aspects.

BanklessDAO is an open community where anyone can join the BanklessDAO server via Discord and gain access to most information and historical work documents. Currently, members in Discord have spontaneously organized 13 different guilds based on their interests and abilities, building over 200 channels.

Conclusion

The above projects are just a part of what Rhythm BlockBeats has focused on, making it difficult to provide a comprehensive overview. Some of these projects have already attracted attention in previous rounds of donations. Additionally, since Gitcoin Grants is relatively open to project applications, as long as certain information is available, projects can apply, and more often than not, a post-processing model is used, leading to the existence of several "scam donation" projects. Therefore, Rhythm BlockBeats has summarized a few points of caution and donation tips for reference.

1) After entering the project detail page, check whether the basic information is complete, such as the official website, Twitter, introduction, etc.;

2) Observe whether the Twitter account has a "check" mark; if not, it indicates that it has not been verified by Gitcoin grants regarding its Twitter ownership;

3) To maximize the possibility of meeting future airdrop thresholds, the donation amount should not be too small. In previous project retrospective airdrops, addresses with donation amounts below $1 were directly filtered out;

4) The donation method can be chosen to donate through Layer 2; GR12 also supports payments on the Polygon network, which can save a considerable amount of gas fees, or choose to donate when the network environment is better.