Crypto Notebook

Gitcoin

Upfront note: the entire Gitcoin system is built on top of Github. The entire Gitcoin governance is pretty decentralized and utilized a standard DAO and governing token (GTC) model (e.g. token holders vote on issues such as approval of new Quests designed by the community)

Product

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https://gitcoin.co/⁠

You can access all products from the header under tab “Product”. Ultimately Gitcoin is trying to become a neat, trustworthy buidl+learn+earn+social community for the entire web 3 space.

Bounty: Standard bounty program. Clients post a bounty, and hackers solve the issue to claim the reward. payout can be in various tokens

Hackathons: Often, hackathons seek collaboration with Gitcoin to promote their event. Developers can team up with other devs on Gitcoin and join the Hachathons together.

Grants: famous for its Quadratic Fund, basically a grant with matching mechanism that encourages projects that do for public good — even those beyond web3. Detailed matching mechanism can be found

here⁠

, but tldr 1. projects with higher community raise with be matched with significantly more fund from Gitcoin, and 2. projects with more supporters will be matched more funds than projects with less supporters, but has equal raise in value. Money for Quadratic Funds comes primarily from raise or delegation. Up to 100x multiplier

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Quests: a learn-to-earn platform: users earn reward after learning and completing a gamified quest. Noteworthy things is 1. this is still at alpha stage, and 2. is largely a community-led effort: quests are overwhelmingly designed and deployed by the community, not Gitcoin offical.

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Kudos: A NFT gifting platform where a developer sends a neat NFT (ERC-721) as a token of appreciation for other’s help and support. This is meant to mimic the deliver celebration in-person dev teams usually does, but in a virtual environment where devs acquainted each other for the only/first time through the project they collaborated on. NFT are not expensive, and artists can engage in designing new Kudos NFT.

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Kernal: An accelerator for web3 builders. Each block (cohort) hosts 250 individuals for 8 wks. Much more chiller than, say, Alchemist or YC; beginner welcomed, and is basically a learning community. Some graduates got attention from leading crypto funds.

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Fee & Revenue

Worth noting, Gitcoin is the only few platform that delivered value non-profit-ly and sustained itself. On the official website they didn’t disclose this, but through multiple trustworthy channels we learned that Gitcoin makes money from

10% additional charge to bounty posters (basically, companies pay 110% to post a bounty, where the 10% goes to Gitcoin and 100% goes to hacker). This is the primary income source

Hackathon sponsor fee. Exact amount couldn’t be found but I suspect this could be the second-important income source

Occasional 10% charge on Kudos NFT. This is a very small income source, as not all NFTs are charged and each NFT is cheap.

Merch sells. You can find merchs about Gitcoin here

https://store.gitcoin.co/⁠

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Further worth noting, the mgmt team of Gitcoin is also the author of

this comprehensive web3 Revenue Primitive⁠

write up.

Historically, Gitcoin also did two fundraises. Details see

here⁠

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Apr 14, 2021, Venture round with 9 investors, led by Paradigm, for total of $11.3M

Nov 16, 2021, Grant round $500k with Ethereum Foundation.

Community

There is almost no need to dig out all the tiny details of its community as Gitcoin alumns has long spread into various places. It has a mature DAO management, is steadily transitioning to a fully decentralized entity, bounty program get updates on an hourly basis, grants given out exceeded $80M, featured by numerous press, employees are KOL of the space and wrote about Gitcoin. Crown it KungFu master wouldn’t be inappropriate.

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important bib

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https://medium.com/gitcoin/a-gitcoin-platform-fee-905a0507961f⁠

On bounty platform fee

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What is Gitcoin? The GTC Crypto Protocol Explained. | Gemini⁠

general intro

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https://github.com/FEMBusinessModelsRing/web3_revenue_primitives/#web2-revenue-models⁠

Revenue model write up by mgmt, meant to serve the entire crypto space

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