Gitcoin Grants

The Gitcoin Grants Program is a quarterly initiative run by Gitcoin DAO that empowers everyday believers in web3 to drive funding toward what they believe matters, with the impact of individual donations being magnified by the use of the Quadratic Funding (QF) distribution mechanism. QF was introduced in a paper published in 2018 by Vitalik Buterin, Zoe Hitzig, and Glen Weyl.

Gitcoin’s mission began in 2017 by creating better incentives to support and fund open-source software developers. The mission eventually solidified to building and sustaining digital public goods. GR1, in 2019, saw 200 contributors and $38k raised. Since then, we have run two-week rounds once per quarter, with the most recent being GR15, which saw a total of $4.4M distributed to grantees. Across the first 15 grant rounds, $50.82M has been distributed in total.

During a QF round, the community contributes to the project they feel should be funded and supported; a matching partner offers funds to match the community’s contributions, but not in a 1:1 match. Instead, the fund matching is more aligned with the sentiment of the community as opposed to the sheer dollar value amount raised by any grantee. The number of contributions matters more than the amount funded.