Gitcoin Grants as a tool for decentralized development.

If you’ve been in the crypto space long enough, you must have heard about grants, accelerator/incubator programs, as well as crowdfunding exercises. These are forms of support programs that focus on helping decentralized projects raise sufficient capital and awareness to facilitate their project growth. One of such programs is Gitcoin Grants, and in this article, I’d be talking about;

• What Gitcoin grants is,
• Who needs it,
• Why it is needed,
• Grant categories, and
• How to apply.

Let’s dive in!

What are Gitcoin Grants?

Gitcoin grants is a financial support program for independent developers (and team) building open source and decentralized projects in the web3 ecosystem. Founded and organized by Gitcoin DAO, gitcoin grants facilitate the provision of financial support for projects in need of funding to continue building their products.

Operated as a crowdfunding platform, the grants bridge the gap between innovative ideas and solution based products, by connecting builders with investing communities.

Beneficiaries of Gitcoin Grants.

Funding is often a major limitation for developers who haven’t secured investment funds, and those who want to maintain unbiased products. And due to the expensive nature of building web3 products, several devs are left with ideas they couldn’t build into products. This problems makes Gitcoin grants an ideal solution, providing such developers with funding to facilitate the continued development of their product.

Thus, gitcoin grants is ideal for the following;

I. Open source project developers.

II. Project founders.

III. Startup founders.

IV. DAOs/DeFi communities.

V. Platforms offering public services.

Benefits of Gitcoin grants.

As an instrument for growth, there are several benefits that developers and project builders enjoy, thanks to Gitcoin grants program. Key benefits of these includes;

1. Project Sustainability: With the aid of Gitcoin grants, projects who may have been threatened by resources can come back above the water, and continue to build their product. The impact of this for such project is the sustainability support, provided by the funding, enabling the projects to thrive beyond growth hindering obstacles.
2. Freedom to be innovative: Before builders can partake in grant rounds, they must have submitted a proposal that details their project roadmap, aims, deliverables, etc. Then investors can view these projects, and decide who to put their money on. This encourages innovative approaches to problem solving, rather than the controlling effect of VC companies who prefer to “play safe”, hence restricting autonomy and innovativeness of builders who they have invested into.
3. Maintained Decentralization: Investor funding has always been a hurdle for the decentralized ethos of web3. But with Gitcoin Grants, communities can take away power from any centralized “VC” who make seek to tweak the projects goal for selfish interest. This is a form of democracy that empowers the community to empower, shape, and decide the future of the project they invest in.
4. Network Expansion: Involvement in Gitcoin funding rounds help expose projects beyond just potential investors, but also to other players who they could partner with to create more impact on the ecosystem. This network expansion also has an overall beneficial impact in the ecosystem as more tools, products and services can be developed, with less time spent on initial cordialities.

Grant categories.

Available grants are grouped into two major rounds/classes by priority. These classes are then further split into categories and stages. Classes and categories includes;

Class 1: Core Rounds.

Core Rounds comprise of categories where the decision-making and implementation of funding is done by the Gitcoin team itself.

Categories in this class includes;

• Open source software category
• Community and education
• Climate solutions
• Ethereum infrastructure

Class 2: Featured Rounds.

In featured rounds the responsibility of decision-making and implementation are outsourced to an external management team drafted by the core Gitcoin team.

Categories under this class includes;

• Arbitrum domain rounds
• ReFi local nodes
• Token engineering commons
• Web3 social
• Locality based categories (eg: Zuzalu, Latin America, Global Chinese community, etc)

To learn more about grants categories, visit here.

How to apply.

Applying for Gitcoin grants can be done two easy steps.

1. Create your grant proposal in Builder at the proposal builder page.

2. Apply for rounds based on project type and eligibility criteria.

For Grantee onboarding tutorial, visit here. Or you can watch this video for a step by step guide on how to apply.

Conclusion.

The goal of blockchain and web3 is to decentralize power from core centers who monopolize public data for selfish purposes. But the obstacle of funding has led the blockchain sector to simply be an extension for giant web2 firms to simply fund, and in essence, own the blockchain companies they’ve funded.

Crowdfunding, as is Gitcoin grants, is the ideal solution to this challenge, as decentralized can then only be truly decentralized, as the power of ownership and control no longer lies in the hands of a few.