Detailed Explanation of Grants 2.0 Upgrade: From Social Body to Trust Body
Gitcoin was initially a social entity, gradually transforming into a modular social entity, and will ultimately evolve into a structure where the center is a trust entity and the edges are social entities.Compiled by: Kay, Gitcoin
Proofread by: Bob
Since the inception of Gitcoin Grants in January 2019, three years have passed. In the ecosystem cycle, Gitcoin has witnessed the rise of individual projects like Lootverse & Polygon, and has facilitated collaborative fundraising efforts such as ZK Tech & Open Gaming rounds. In the thematic cycle, Gitcoin has helped many projects bridge across chains to raise startup funds, becoming a gateway for project teams to enter the crypto world. At the same time, they have profoundly practiced the political economy concept of Quadratic Funding (QF), contributing to the development of radical liberalism. During this period, Gitcoin has undergone an organizational transformation from a company to a DAO, and has crystallized its thoughts in books like "Greenpill" and "Impact DAOs," always striving to pioneer with dreams as their guiding principle in the dawn of the future.
Currently, Gitcoin is attempting another significant transformation, shifting from a centralized platform to a decentralized protocol, allowing the concepts of open source and public good to permeate deeper into practice. This is not just a product iteration, but the beginning of Gitcoin's transition from socialware to trustware, building a hyperstructure for web3 brick by brick on the long journey of exploration.
Grants 1.0 to Grants 2.0
If Grant 1.0 can be likened to a centralized monolith, Grant 2.0 is a decentralized, modular, and forkable ecosystem. Gitcoin will provide the underlying substrate framework, product standards, and tools, open-sourced to support ecosystem partners' calls. During the development process, it will be guided by L2 and multi-chain worlds, storing most data in decentralized off-chain solutions. At the same time, smart contracts will be customized based on different fundraising round requirements, allowing responsible parties to deploy contracts and choose tokens according to their needs. Additionally, funds and fundraising rounds will be segmented, enabling potential grantee projects to be less constrained by fundraising round requirements when submitting applications.
In this upgrade, there are three substantial transformations:
- Fundraising tools expanded from QF to all tools
- Operating population expanded from the Gitcoin team to everyone
- Fundraising scope expanded from public goods to all fields
Imagine if any DAO or ecosystem could join Gitcoin by directly forking the Gitcoin Grants experience; what kind of flywheel effect would that bring? Anyone or any institution could freely invest their envisioned mechanisms into this experimental field, quickly iterating and advancing, ultimately selecting the best fundraising mechanism suitable for public goods through a process of survival of the fittest.
Overall Architecture
At the foundational support level is the Grants registry with ample liquidity. Above that is the ecosystem; during the Grants 1.0 period, Gitcoin only utilized the Pairwise QF mechanism, but in the Grants 2.0 period, we can open up to more diverse fundraising mechanisms, such as MACI OF, DeSoc DF, Retroactive Public Goods Funding, Dominance Assurance Contracts, etc. They can even integrate with other mechanisms, such as Optimism's RetroPGF or CLRFunds Maci QF. DAOs can provide governance for the ecosystem, such as setting fundraising round rules, helping to filter Grants, and providing joint Grants for the responsible parties of fundraising rounds to enhance defenses against witch-hunting attacks.
To achieve smooth connections between various modules, three conditions must be met: 1) clear handover interfaces 2) good documentation management 3) harmonious developer relationships. To make Gitcoin a better developer community, they are actively promoting the Moonshot Collective (Note: MC has merged into the GPC group) and hackathon competitions to provide better preconditions for modular transformation.
Node-Level Apps
The new solution consists of four node-level apps, namely:
- Decentralized personal identification (formerly dPopp, now Gitcoin passport)
- Grant searcher (Grant Explorer)
- Grant publisher (Grant Publisher)
- Round manager (Round Manager)
"dPop" provides a public record of proof against witch-hunting attacks, "Grant Explorer" offers a frontend built for funders to find projects for donations, "Grant Publisher" provides a frontend for grantees to submit project descriptions and apply for donations, and "Round Manager" provides a frontend for DAOs or other projects to manage fundraising rounds, filter grantee applications, and mobilize funding pool allocations. Unlike the unified, centralized aggregator model of Grants 1.0, Grants 2.0 envisions an end-to-end, decentralized custom experience. Round managers can freely develop and combine based on the underlying framework, exploring the best paradigms for project fundraising.
Roadmap
The current roadmap plans to start the upgrade from Gitcoin Grants Round 13, aiming to complete the full transformation before the end of Q1 2023. In Gitcoin Grants Round 15, the separation of ecosystem rounds and thematic rounds was completed. After the latest Round 16, most core functions have been transitioned, with only the bridging work on the interactive pages remaining. Gitcoin is internally discussing whether to suspend the next Gitcoin Grants round to allow personnel to focus on protocol upgrades. This discussion is still ongoing, and interested parties can cast their valuable votes on the forum.
After the upgrade, Gitcoin will still operate its own fundraising rounds, but will also dedicate part of its efforts to assist ecosystem partners in utilizing Gitcoin's underlying framework and developing their own fundraising rounds. If we liken the ecosystem to a garden, then the soil is the community, the protocol is the root system, and the Gitcoin Grants project is the fruit. Once the transformation is complete, the Gitcoin team will act as gardeners, irrigating everyone by providing consulting services and underlying technical support.
From Socialware to Trustware
Behind the protocol upgrade is Gitcoin's vision for an ideal society. Orca has created the abstract concepts of socialware and trustware, where the former refers to mechanisms built on interpersonal relationships, and the latter refers to mechanisms based on technological architecture, with the distinction being the cost of social collaboration. Gitcoin started as a socialware (2018-2021), is gradually transforming into a modular socialware (2021-2022), and will ultimately enter a structure where the center is trustware and the periphery is socialware (2023+), which is the hyperstructure described by the founder of Zora. By then, with the growth of the flywheel effect, Gitcoin will become a free and permanently existing ecosystem. The current transformation to Grants 2.0 is a leap from the second phase to the third phase.
Why is this structural transformation beneficial for Gitcoin? To explain this, we must mention the unit created by Josh Stark in the article "Atoms, Institutions, Blockchains"—Hardness, which refers to a certain certainty created by humans through their capabilities. Atoms are material hardness, forming metals, rocks, and shells that are difficult to move or change. Institutions are organizational hardness, with governments and some large enterprises lasting for hundreds of years. Now, we have blockchain as another form of hardness. If Gitcoin were merely a company or a socialware-based DAO, it would still be a low-hardness organization: its scale is limited to a centralized operating team and heavily reliant on the quality of its governors, which introduces uncontrollable risks. As Gitcoin transitions to trustware, its hardness will gradually increase, becoming more resilient to personnel changes and environmental shifts, evolving into a more certain organization. The protocol transformation reflects Gitcoin's determination to sink into decentralized public goods, reaching and delving into the broader web3 ecosystem. From the perspective of organizational vitality, a "harder" Gitcoin can resist change with intrinsic certainty, becoming an eternal foundation that belongs to the society of all humanity.
References:
[1] Knowledge Transfer: Hardness, a feature of Gitcoin: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/knowledge-transfer-hardness-a-feature-of-gitcoin/11508
[2] Knowledge Transfer: The Gitcoin Hyperstructure: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/knowledge-transfer-the-gitcoin-hyperstructure/11335
[3] Introduction to Grants Protocol: https://go.gitcoin.co/blog/introduction-to-grants-protocol
[4] The Grants 2.0 Flywheel: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-grants-2-0-flywheel/10711
[5] The Network Effects of GitcoinDAO's Protocols: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-network-effects-of-gitcoindaos-protocols/10973
[6] Future of the Grants Program: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/discussion-series-future-of-the-grants-program/11252
[7] Gitcoin Grants 2.0: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-grants-2-0/9981
