Gitcoin 3.0 - W/ Kevin, Rena & Mathilda

Transcript

Welcome to the Alo. Capitalap podcast. If you're just joining us, we are summoning Alo Capital, a new spin out from Gitcoin that is designed to build the capital allocation layer of the post tokenization post AI internet. There is big upside here. Capital allocation is a multi-t trillion dollar design space. VCO, VCs, governments, NOS's and Dows all have to allocate capital to solve their problems. But it's also a place where we can start small. You every time you spend money, you're allocating capital. We are threading a through line, partnering with builders, researchers, and funders to figure out what onchain post AAI capital allocation will look like and building it on chain.

You can learn more by visiting our website at alo.cap where you can download the Aloe books for free, play with some of our DAPs, join the Telegram, or participate in the protodo. All right, this episode today is about Gitcoin 3.0. For those of you who have been following my career in web 3 over the last 10 years, you know that I'm one of the co-founders of Gitcoin. And Gitcoin has been going through continuous evolution. This week, uh, Gitcoin announced some major changes, including the winding down of its software business, and we are now starting to discuss what I call Gitcoin 3.0. So, basically, Gitcoin 1.0 was from 2017 to 2021. 2.0 was from 2021 to 2025.

We are now in 2025 and we're talking about what the next four years of Gitcoin looks like. So, um, it's been a winding journey, but I'm proud that Gitcoin has always been missionoriented. Gitcoin has delivered almost $70 million worth of funding to open source software and other public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem, and Gitcoin 3.0 is our most ambitious reset yet in order to figure out how to do that in an ongoing way that uh, meets all the different constituent needs at Gitcoin. I am involved in a few different networks uh, these days. Uh there's the Green Pill Network, there's How to Dow, uh there's Alo Capital, and there's Gitcoin. And I think that one of the things that is most interesting to me is how this reset of Gitcoin 3.0 uh really, well, it first

off, nothing's official until it's ratified by Gitcoin's governance. Gitcoin is a Dow now. But my vision is basically that Gitcoin becomes a marketplace where capital allocation builders can get distribution for their software by allocating capital to Ethereum's biggest problems. And I'm going to play a Twitter space now that is myself and Matilda and Reena who are uh stewards of of Gitcoin talking about what that could look like going into GG24. If you are a mechanism builder then this is relevant to you because this is a place that you could get distribution for your software and um you know if you're a participant in the Ethereum ecosystem then you have a stake in Gitcoin because it's designed to help ETH do better. So, uh, interesting episode if you're interested in

following Gitcoin's evolution and how that affects Aloe Capital and capital allocation and I think you're going to enjoy it. Next voice you will hear will be Matilda, myself, and Reena on the Twitter space. So, we're going to be chatting about Gitcoin 3.0 today. We're going to be covering a couple of things. Just recapping the recent announcement that was posted end of last week, as well as having a look at the future of what is to come with the Getcoin Grants program as well. And this is supposed to be an

open discussion. So if you are interested in joining the discussion, sharing your thoughts as well as asking any questions, please request to speak. If you don't want to come on stage, the chat is also open. So if anyone wants to ask any questions or just drop thoughts, please pop it into the chat. This is not meant to be, you know, us just speaking at all of you. We really want this to be an open discussion with the public. So and with the community. So, we also just posted a few posts to the forum that I'm going to be sharing in the chat and that I will also pin to the jumbotron. So, my name is Matilda. I am program the grants program lead here at Gitcoin. I am going to hand it over to Delta Juliet Reena

next just to give a quick intro and then we can get started. GMGM everybody. I am Delta Juliet uh Reena O'Brien, executive director at Gitcoin um and working alongside Matilda with the Gitcoin grants program. Hey, I'm Kevin Awaki. I'm one of the original co-founders of Gitcoin, and I'm excited to talk about the next chapter of Gitcoin, where we've been, where we're going, what the next five years looks like. Let's get into it. Before we look into the future, why don't we discuss the announcement of the windown of Grants Lab? Um, that was announced on Friday. And again, I will be posting all these posts. If you haven't gotten up to speed of on the forum or these announcement, I will be

posting them in the chat and pinning them. But yeah, Reena, over to you. Thanks, Matt. Yeah, so for those who have read through the post, a little bit more context. This decision did not come lightly. It did not come swiftly. Um, it might have been a little overdue if I'm if I'm being honest. Um, but it was something that I wanted to give ultimate care to and figure out how we can best support our people, um, the community. Gitcoin's legacy um and then of course you know where we go moving forward and so myself and Awaukee and Meg who is leader of the business unit um had started this discussion a while back trying to make sure that we were doing right by all three of those things um

and as the market continued to market and we saw the work that was getting put into uh all the amazing things that we've been creating at Grant Stack um we tried to figure out which way the ship should be steering ing for lack of a better term or at the very least being guided and at the end of the day coming to the decision that um the program itself is really the the ethos of Gitcoin and where placing bets for the technology side of it and what we were looking for for revenue was just something that we would I personally personally felt that that bed itself wasn't strong enough to ensure that I could take care of um the community and

the legacy and then the people that had built everything at the same time, which is what brought us to the decision that was announced last week. Um, we don't come by it lightly. Um, I'm not going to do the whole like we're not a family. Y'all, y'all do not need to be my family and you can tell me to f off. Um, but big love to all the work that everybody has put into the grants techn technology over the last few years. And I think just the grace that everyone's handled everything and the support um the the affected uh contributors have been giving has been just phenomenal. So really really appreciate it and and and all y'all. So um anything else I should touch on Matilda or Awoki? I don't think so. Is there anything that you wanted to add to that Aoki before we go into what

the next chapter is going to look like? I really appreciate everyone who contributed to get coin in the 1.0 and 2.0 days and I know that it hasn't been an easy ride for any of us. Hasn't been an easy ride for me and I just want to say thank you to the people who poured their hearts and souls into Gitcoin and earnestly were trying to make it work. I think that uh it's been it's been painful in the last few weeks to co sort of come to grips with where we are in the market and where the market is going and uh to say goodbye to some some friends. and I'm excited about boldly going into the future and in turning this corner, but I just want to recognize the amazing work that's gone into Gitcoin so far. Thank you everyone.

Yeah, thank you so much for that sentiment as well. Definitely has not been an easy time. These shifts are never easy. But that brings us to the next point which I know a lot of the community since we announced the announcement. Uh you know a lot of people have reached out and I've just been overwhelmed by the support as well uh from the community through this transition. So um thank you you know for everyone for your support and you know following us along on this journey. One of the things as well is that what's next, you know, because we're doubling down on the Gitcoin Grass program. And for those of you who were wondering, no, GG is not going anywhere. In fact, we are doubling down on it. So, it's going

to look a little different, but um it is we are still really committed to to funding public goods within Ethereum. And um it's going to look a little like I said, it's going to look a little different as well. Um, so we just wrapped up, we are actually busy wrapping up GG23. So we're kind of in this transition as we're wrapping up GG uh 23, which is our latest round. Um, it's the first round that we went into a multi-mechanism structure as well. We are probably going to be do finalizing the round and doing all the payouts by the end of next week. But that being said, we are still going to iterate and we're still going to take a

retrospective of this round, see what worked, see what didn't, and that will still continue to inform the next round in GG24. So, a lot of people have asked, well, what's happening, you know, because Grandstack, which is the the software that the program has run on for the past few years, will also be suns setting. Um, we're going to get into a little bit of that as well and exactly what that is going to look like. But kind of at a high level, just wanted to let everyone know that we have just Awoki and I posted uh some posts on the forum about what the structure could look like moving forward. Really, this is an open discussion with the community. We want to build this out

with you. definitely expect a lot more community le spaces to, you know, to drive us and to guide us into this future. This next chapter, what we're calling Gitcoin 3.0, GJ24 will happen as planned. It is going to be pushed back slightly. So, it's going to happen a little bit later in the year to give us some more time, but in between then, we are planning on activating the community and activating our builders through a bunch of different activations, so to speak, or contests. So, we're going to get everyone to build this with us, to iterate with us, kind of like I mentioned as well. So, from a GG point of view, high level, that is what we're

looking at right now. the structure of the program is also going to shift um a little bit. But before we get into that, maybe I will throw it over to you Aoki to kind of may can you give us a a rundown of kind of like the the evolution that Gitcoin has gone through? You know, you call it Gitcoin 1.0, 2.0, and now it's 3.0. And um yeah, I know you've got this composting 2.0 metaphor as well. Would you would you like to just guide us guide us through there and your thinking there? Yeah, happy to. So I I think that Gitcoin's always had a mission or northstar around funding open source software and that's evolved into different forms. we've stated it as uh

growing open source in the early days and then we evolved it into build and fund public goods and then and then lately we've been saying the mission is fund what matters and um and so I've I'm I've always I've always been proud that Gitcoin's mission has it we've always been oriented towards the mission we've refined the articulation of it over time but it's always been about sort of funding what matters uh and and uh originally what matters to Gitcoin was open source software and so we've uh we've always been dogmatic about that mission but I think we've been very pragmatic about how we approach that mission and the early days of Gitcoin when I first launched it in 2017 it was

a bounty platform and we explored bounties and hackathons and NFTts and we even had an ad network for a couple years in 2020 we landed on grants and quadratic funding um and sort of just have always been evolving the tactics that we try to reach our mission of funding what matters and funding open source and that's been a constant evolution in the products and the tactics that we use and uh very reductionistly I think that you can you can say that there's three eras of Gitcoin the Gitcoin 1.0 era was a centralized company that was exploring this design space uh the Gitcoin 2. era uh 2.0 O era from 2021 to 2025 was all

about quadratic funding and trying to turn that centralized platform into a decentralized protocol that did quadratic funding. And the next era, Gitcoin 3.0, I think that we're sort of hitting the reset button and are setting up for the next cycle 2025 to to 2030. And so I see a lot of ongoing evolution with how Gitcoin has approached the problems and market set that it's uh that it's that it's positioned to be solved and the Ethereum space moves so fast and technology moves so fast that I think that uh a repositioning for this era is definitely necessary and um you know support I I appreciate everyone who supported us along the way to get here

but the evolution and the journey certainly isn't over. excited to uh to to learn from Gitcoin 2.0 to compost all of the different lessons and structures that we tried but didn't work and to break those down and uh use them as nutrients for the 3.0 era. There's a there's a post on the Gitcoin governance forum where I've invited everyone to take uh what you've learned and if you feel comfortable sharing it on the governance forum, check out that composting Gitcoin 2.0 know host because I think that there's a lot of great lessons that we've learned over the last couple years and they're going to inform the journey going forward. I think that about covers it. Back to you Matilda.

Yeah. So why don't we why don't we talk about the future? Why don't we talk about what Bitcoin 3.0 what we see that look look like? I pinned the two posts that Awoki and I posted to the forum this morning. It is a highle overview of you know the the the strategy and the future that we see not only with where Gitcoin is going but you know the overall kind of like what what is it going to mean for our community for our builders uh for anyone who's engaging with us from if you're a round operator running rounds if you're a software builder if you're um yeah so there's there's a lot of opportunity here why don't you give us an overview great so I think that we're we're still figuring it out is is the answer. And um

I'm about to tell you what I think it should be, but I just want to say that, you know, I'm happy to be a sense maker and to try to channel intelligence to the network to the best of my ability, but Gitcoin still is a DAO. And so none of this is official until it's ratified by governance. And we do still use Gitcoin GTC governance in the G forum is where that happens. But um in order to make it legible and accessible to people, we're doing these Twitter spaces to to sort of like explain the design trade-offs to anyone. Anyway, that preamble aside, um my vision for Gitcoin 3.0 is to uh make it into a funding festival for Ethereum's biggest problems. Uh I think in very broad strokes, uh the Bitcoin treasury, there's $1 million in the matching pool, which will be allocated to Ethereum's

biggest problems, what we what we call public goods. And then there's 11 million in the Dow. That's a combination of ETH, GTC, and stables. And uh so I think that Gitcoin has it's not an endowment in the traditional sense, but there is like a financial endowment here that I think is interesting that we can spend on uh Ethereum's biggest problems. And if you're enjoying this episode, please check out the remainder of the episode on the feed hosted at aloe.cap. You must be a capital patron NFT holder to hear the rest of the episode. Alo. Capital Patron NFTs give you access to the Aluminati, which is a private community that has access to the Aloda's evolution, novel capital allocation, intelligence, and research like this

episode, like this podcast, and also research reports that we are publishing at Alo. And early access to builds and other innovations in the Aloe community. Thanks for listening. If you want to hear the rest of the episode, check it out at aloe.cap. Peace and love.