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Announcing

Gitcoin Grants Stack: Your Tools to Fund What Matters

  • Gitcoin is launching Gitcoin Grants Stack, a new product suite that, together, enables any community to create, manage and grow a grants program
  • Gitcoin Grants Stack allows users to run a community-driven grants round, apply for funding, vote on fund allocation, distribute those funds to projects, and enable fund transparency
  • The suite is built on Allo Protocol: a new modular, decentralized protocol that enables groups to allocate pooled funds

The Gitcoin Grants Program has grown immensely since its launch in 2019 — from one matching pool supporting open source to many concurrent pools serving interests as varied as Climate, Ethereum Infrastructure, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Over that period, we learned that there isn’t a single model that is right for every organization. Being able to tweak aspects like project eligibility criteria or donor matching settings allows the community to dial in the right program for their needs.

That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of Gitcoin Grants Stack: a protocol-enabled suite of tools that makes it easy for communities to easily and collectively allocate capital to fund their shared needs. 

Gitcoin Grants Stack Overview 

Built with Allo Protocol, Gitcoin Grants Stack is the first-ever decentralized, customizable, smart contract-enabled solution that connects grants program managers, project owners and community members to manage and participate in community-oriented grants programs.

The product suite enables a streamlined management process for grant program managers–from program setup to application management to funds allocation–making it easy to manage and grow their program. It encourages community members to discover and support new projects in their digital neighborhood. It empowers project owners to seek funding, apply to grants programs, and build their web3 reputation and beyond.

Gitcoin Grants Stack’s Core Functionality

Gitcoin Grants Stack has three main components that make it possible to manage, discover, donate to, and participate in grants programs.

Manager

Enables program managers to create and deploy a program plus track and manage grantee applications and simplify approvals processes.

  • Ability to receive and approve applications created in Builder
  • Ability to run Quadratic Funding rounds with Passport Sybil Defense
  • Ability to do bulk payouts

Explorer

Encourages donor discovery and support of different programs and projects.

  • Ability to browse and discover different grantees within a given Quadratic Funding grants round
  • Ability to donate to different applicants/projects

Builder

Empowers project owners to create a single profile where they can build reputation and manage applications, and accept direct donations.

Project Management:

  • Create a project on any supported chain
  • Edit an existing project (note: edits to a project would only be reflected in applications submitted after the change)

Application Management:

  • Apply to a grants round on any supported chain
  • View application status (Approved/Rejected/In Review, or Active)

Project Reputation Creation & Verification:

  • Verify ownership of their project credentials (currently just for Twitter & Github)
  • View project stats - See and manage grant rounds they’ve applied to and/or participated

Additionally, through an integration with Gitcoin Passport, it also helps with identifying & protecting from bad actors (Sybils) on the donor and applicant sides, preventing the draining of program funds.

Allo Protocol

Allo Protocol is the underlying tech powering Gitcoin Grants Stack. Through Allo, the smart contracts powering Grants Stack will be available for any community to integrate into their processes or funding programs. Developers will also be able to use it to build novel applications in addition to what is included in Grants Stack. 

Allo Protocol will feature:

  • Democratic Funding Mechanisms
    Launching with a customizable Quadratic Funding mechanism, Allo makes it easy for devs to experiment with and iterate on those foundational tools. More functionality such as Quadratic Voting and Direct Grants Programs will be developed in the future.
  • Builder/Project Registry
    Builders seeking funding can create a project profile that’s stored in a universal project registry. They can use this profile to apply to any grants program built with Allo.
  • Modularity
    There are a number of key decisions a community needs to make for capital allocation (who’s eligible, who can vote, how much is available, etc) and Allo is designed to be modular at each of those points. 
  • Integrations
    Web3 is constantly innovating, and Allo is designed for easy integration with a range of tools. A Sybil defense integration with Gitcoin Passport has already been built, and interfaces exist for easy use with payment protocols and more.
  • Permissionless Customization
    Open-source and decentralized, any dev can permissionlessly compose upon and extend its functionality.

Allo Protocol’s ambitions

The first wave of crypto tooling has led to an unprecedented ability for communities to accumulate and govern a shared pool of resources. We’ve seen treasuries worth millions come together in as little as one week. But there’s a piece missing: distributing that treasury back into projects that serve the community. Allo is the protocol for communities to fund their own public goods.

“We believe that positive global change starts with empowered communities,” said Nate Gosselin, Allo Protocol Product Lead. “Whether physical communities or digitally local communities, Allo exists to empower them with technology that allows them to allocate pooled funds to support their collective goals.” 

Funding What Matters. Together.

The Gitcoin community has a rich history of empowering builders and setting them up to thrive. We want to decentralize, democratize, and scale that superpower.

Gitcoin Grants Stack will provide any community with the tools it needs to foster a thriving ecosystem by tapping into their community’s intelligence and democratically funding their most promising builders.

Now that we’ve tested our stack during the Alpha rounds with UNICEF, Fantom, and the Gitcoin Grants Program, we can feel confident that we can begin to permissionlessly ramp up usage of this tool in Q2!

For the next few months, we’ll be focusing on partnering with EVM-compatible organizations. We’ll also be rolling out upgrades to our smart contracts - check this space or Twitter for the latest product announcements.

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