Gitcoin: The "Arsenal" of the Ethereum Ecosystem | Project Introduction

Written by: 0x26

I don’t know if you have used the DeFi tool Zapper.fi to query and track the traces of giant whales, in defiprime I have searched for "Wealth Code" and project introductions, or read articles in Bankless, EthHub and The Defiant, and voted on governance in Snapshot. These basic tools we have taken for granted, but you may not know that these projects have been funded by an organization. Not only that, Chainlink, Metamask (little fox), Aave, MakerDAO and other names that are already well-known in the DeFi world also need the help of this organization to make up for loopholes and improve their own development.

This is Gitcoin, which was established in 2017 and is now the "Arsenal" of Ethereum.

Everyone only Knowing that the ecological environment of Ethereum is good, there are a steady stream of developers and users, but they have never understood the Gitcoin that silently paid for it. Like domestic OKcoin and foreign Coinbase, it can be said that there are "Whampoa Military Academy" trading platforms at home and abroad, but apart from "Gitcoin", it is rare to see a platform that focuses on serving blockchain programmers.

The organization behind Ethereum

One sentence In a nutshell, Gitcoin is an open-source Ethereum bounty platform, where blockchain projects can use certain rewards to find developers who need it. With the development of the platform, it has expanded into crowdfunding, hackathon, social and educational attributes, etc. module.

As you can see from the picture above, the seventh round of Gitcoin’s GRANTS funding plan There are many well-known people in it. In addition to V God’s personal promotion, the seventh round has funding from mature DeFi projects BalancerLabs, Synthetix, iearnfinance (YFI), YAM.Finance, MEME, as well as funds from Chainlink and the Ethereum Foundation At the same time, there are funds from well-known Compound founder Leshner and developer bantg, Ethereum developer mariano.eth, EthHub founder Eric Conner, well-known community LobsterDao, and well-known investment funds Future Fund, Three Arrows and Defiance.

Successful projects, founders, well-known communities, developers and investment funds will fund the ecological The development of the project has a feeling of getting rich first and then getting rich later, and it is also one of the common methods used by successful investment institutions at home and abroad. This continuous virtuous circle of <success-feedback-success> may be one of the reasons for the vigorous development of the Ethereum ecosystem.

What can Gitcoin do today?

With the development and evolution of the platform, Gitcoin has a large number of new functions and comes with social, competition, Funding and education attributes.

Town Square

Enter After Gitcoin, the homepage is Town Square. As a comprehensive page, users can express their opinions and ideas here, or find bounty jobs that suit them. Because it is the platform closest to the code, you can learn a lot of novel ideas and ideas here, and even find like-minded programming partners.

Bounties

Bounties used to be the main body of Gitcoin. Programmers can participate in the bounty program of open source projects. The platform has refined settings for bounty tasks, such as the rewards that can be selected It is DAI or project token. Programmers can participate in rewards such as competition type (multiple members participate, take the first prize), cooperative type (multiple members participate, bonuses are divided equally) and traditional type (approved applicants complete all tasks and receive rewards) Allocation. Users can get guidance in the official wiki document, as well as guidance for the project party to release bounty tasks.

Hackathon

Hackathon, that is, hackathon, as we all know, there are many hackathons in Ethereum, such as Uniswap, which just ended ETHOnline not long ago and started the DEX boom, also came from the hackathon. Gitcoin also holds a variety of hackathons, not limited to the Ethereum space. Not long ago, Gitcoin held the Hello World! by Polkadot hackathon jointly organized by Polkadot, Phala, Acala, etc. This event attracted more than 1,000 developers and a total of more than 1,800 projects participated. It is very meaningful to attract so many blockchain developers, and to hold such a creative and innovative event. very important thing.

Grants

Gitcoin Grant It is an experiment where developers can fund their open source projects through CLR donations to benefit the public. Gitcoin's CLR fund is sponsored by donors in the Ethereum ecosystem. The core is to achieve personal short-term The balance between interests and collective long-term interests. This fund allows anyone to donate as little as 1DAI (= 1 USD) and is used to help developers get cash flow to support open source projects that add value to the ecosystem. Grants make up for many deficiencies in the ecology, so that Ethereum can help those products that do not have much interest income, but are essential.

It is worth noting that Grant's CLR design is very close to the community, and the magic of this event is that it is completely sponsored by Community driven. Projects with the most community support (in terms of number of contributors) will receive the largest portion of the matching pool. At the same time, in the Grants voting stage, the calculation parameters of CLR will make the weight of 10 people donating 1DAI higher than that of 1 person donating 10DAI or 2 people donating 5DAI. This fully reflects the significance of community decision-making, and also allows Grant-funded projects to meet the original intention of adding value to the community.

Grants Development Path

Ethereum founder Vitalik said in his speech in Shanghai Wanxiang in 2020: Gitcoin's Grants is a quadratic financing mechanism, which is used to fund public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem. I've talked about Grants many times, and I talked about it at last year's conference. Quadratic financing is a decentralized governance mechanism that enables communities to have some way of allocating funds to essential public projects, choosing the ones they deem most valuable. There were seven ballots, all very successful, and people were very happy with the results of the distribution.

Quests

Quests is a module that uses gamification to understand the Web3 ecology. Each Quest covers a topic in the Web 3 space. After successfully completing the task, you will receive the corresponding honor and points to improve the level.

Quests designed a variety of multi-level games

Like the Tower of Babel, Quests is still evolving, optimizing test content and Web3 knowledge, and users can also make proposals for Quests content on Github. At the same time, Quests also has a ranking system to encourage users to continue exploring. Gitcoin NFT badge Kudos can be obtained after completing tasks. On Gitcoin, Kudos are a great way to express gratitude and build relationships with other users, as detailed below.

Kudos obtained after completing Quests

Kudos

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Kudos are an innovative way to express gratitude and build relationships, think of them as a token of gratitude, or a sticker that marks an important job. Plus, it's a way to showcase special skills a member may have, like Python or Design. At the same time, Kudos can be bought and sold on the Kudos Marketplace (similar to the sale of items on Steam).

Kudos Marketplace

Users themselves can create Kudos to represent their personal brand, engage with the community and create rewards for desired actions. Kudos are created by providing relevant information and in SVG file format. Alternatively, submit a request to have someone create Kudos art for you.

Kudos can be given as gifts to other Gitcoin members. Kudos can also be purchased with ETH on the Kudos Marketplace. Completing Gitcoin Quests will also receive Kudos as demonstrated above. Note that each Kudos is limited and distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Kernel

Kernel is A native web3, community-focused accelerator program.

Simply speaking, the first round of KERNEL is an 8-week course, and you will learn a new learning modules. Each module consists of two parts: carefully crafted readings; and a comprehensive set of articles, videos and the occasional podcast, with regular weekly online discussion learning.

Module 2 course discusses the evolution of finance and paves the way for subsequent Web3 content

At the same time, Gitcoin is also jointly launched with Fair Launch Capital, a well-known community-based organization with the rise of DeFi KERNEL Fair Launch track to help the team explore token distribution mechanisms that allow for community engagement, maintenance, and long-term governance. The KERNEL Fair Launch track will be part of the second phase of the KERNEL Fellowship, a series of workshops dedicated to founders or enthusiasts in the cryptocurrency community with FLC's Joe Gerber (IDEO) and Reuben Bramanathan (ex-Coinbase Product/Legal).

Gitcoin makes Ethereum different

Although there are coins in Gitcoin, Gitcoin has not launched profit-making tokens. It may be because of Gitcoin, Snapshot, which is a respectable basic project that is not for profit. Ethereum is different. Issued in Ethereum, not just in Ethereum, today’s Gitcoin has gradually become the code platform for the entire blockchain industry. Binance, Polkadot, Tezos, Cosmos, Conflux and many other teams have also participated in the Gitcoin platform to contribute to the community , while accepting the huge programming resources of the community.

There is no doubt that Gitcoin has become an indispensable part of the Ethereum ecosystem. In the open source blockchain world, project codes can be easily copied, but outstanding ideas and ideas cannot be copied. Why other public chains can only passively follow the DeFi and NFT hotspots created by Ethereum, at its core, is probably because they do not have a sustainable innovation capability. This kind of continuous innovation ability is not created out of thin air, and requires an "organic soil". Gitcoin plays a key role in Ethereum to incubate and cultivate "new seedlings" for the entire ecology selflessly.

Some people always ask why the Chinese public chain has better performance and more ingenious design, but it cannot reach the height and popularity of Ethereum? Gitcoin may be one answer.

Reference reading: 

Gitcoin official website

Gitcoin Encyclopedia

《Vitalik: Gitcoin Grants Activity Review 》

《Snapshot: Community Governance Tool》

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