Hi @annaalexa, thanks for the detailed questions - happy to elaborate further.
To start off, it’s relevant to highlight the transformation that Gitcoin is going through, the past successes we’ve had with them, and the large opportunity of progressing our strategic collaboration.
- Gitcoin is the largest funder of public goods on Ethereum with over Over $60 million USD in cumulative funding since inception in 2017. It has had two iterations, in which it developed and leveraged open-source software to help fund what matters. Now, they are in the process of relaunching as Gitcoin 3.0 with a mandate to solve Ethereum’s biggest problems, such as funding the app layer and adoption of the Ethereum ecosystem (including its L2s). Gitcoin has nearly $30M USD/ETH in treasury resources they aim to spend in the next 5-7 years to accomplish its goal.
- The priorities of Gitcoin have had and continue to have incredible overlap with Celo’s mission and intents. Over the past 18 months, CeloPG has supported or operated 13 rounds as part of GG (1,2,3) with a total amount of over 850K USD flowing to projects on Celo with less then 300K USD of those funds being provided by Celo (over 2,75x ROI on each dollar spent) across domains including Real World solutions, Climate Tech, and DeSci. These programs have funded some of Celo’s key projects, including Grassroots Economics, GainForest, and GoodDollar. Now, Gitcoin is shifting it’s focus to solving challenges that drive onchain revenue and measurable growth & impact, comparable to Season 1 intents of Celo.
- The programs have also (re-established) Celo’s leadership position as the EVM blockchain for real world impact and sustainable development, which is already resulting in the next wave of impact/climate solutions deciding to build on Celo due to it’s ecosystem, values and opportunities.
- By being a leading player and strategic partner of Gitcoin, Celo(PG) has the ability to position Celo and its ecosystem as a key part of solving the largest (and most rewarding) problems of Ethereum and the world - a huge opportunity, with Gitcoin as a strong and well-resourced partner.
Now, to answer your Qs:
- We aim to design, fund and operate programs (Domains) which provide the required resources for projects to make meaningful (onchain) progress in priority areas. Regional actors like CeLatam, Celo Africa, and Creciemento can be allies for sourcing co-funding, attracting builders, and nurturing solutions as part of those programs. The domains do not aim to provide “generalized” or “marketing” funding to these or any communities, but will instead prioritize accelerating the development of products and services that generate value and increase onchain usage.
- The marketing and operating costs of GG rounds have historically been a small fraction of the program budget, ranging from 0-5% of the budget. In our specific case, we don’t intend to charge any fees for usage of marketing tools and platform - however, we do aim to reward the domain operators with a small (2-4%) share of round budget.
- Great question, what we propose if for someone from the Celo Ecosystem team (could for example be you or Sophia) to join us in the exploration on which Domains to fund and how to structure the programs for maximum overlap with Season 1 intents. We aim for a match of about 3x (so 200% on top of what we provide) and only backing Domains that have strategic and value alignment with Celo’s vision and Season 1 intents. Any amount of budget unspent will be returned to the Celo Ecosystem Treasury (as we have done in the past), without taking any operational fees.
While some of Gitcoin’s previous round had mixed results (which they recognize and is part of the reason they are relaunching now) - being a strategic partner for the next phase of Gitcoin is a key opportunity for Celo to 1. accelerate it’s builder ecosystem in priorities areas, 2. continue to position as a leading blockchain for real world impact and Ethereum / PG innovation and 3. have milions of dollars in co-matching flow on Celo to projects in it’s ecosystem.
We’re convinced the budget requested is a good investment, and hope you to have convinced you and other stakeholders of the merit with the above answers. Happy to expand further in the forum and in the Governance calls!