Member Gathering is Full | Web3 Builders' Bull Market: Why Is Public Good Fundraising Blooming Everywhere, FAB DAO Grants is Great!

#574

GM,

The member meetup is fully booked! Yesterday morning, I sent out notifications of successful registration. Members who filled out the registration form, please check for the confirmation email. If you can't find it, feel free to reply to this email directly. If you didn't register in time, you can still fill out the registration form and I will put you on the waiting list. Additionally, some members on Discord recently inquired about bringing friends. This is a fantastic idea! For the Spring 2024 meetup, I will look for a larger venue to accommodate members and their friends.

Now, I have another event announcement. The quarterly Gitcoin Grants public goods fundraising event is here again! Gitcoin Grants Round 19 has started, and the deadline for voting is November 30th. As usual, Blocktrend has registered for two themes: Web3 Community and Education, and Global Chinese Community.

Unlike previous editions, Gitcoin Grants is now hosted on the PGN chain. PGN is a relatively obscure blockchain with almost no support from centralized exchanges. Voters must use a cross-chain bridge to transfer ETH to the PGN chain in order to participate in voting with small amounts. Before voting, you also need to check if your Gitcoin Passport score reaches 20 points. Scores reset every 3 months, so everyone needs to take some time to revalidate.

Completing the entire process isn't easy, so I will organize an online event soon to guide everyone through participating in Gitcoin Grants and share voting tips. The event will be recorded, and detailed information will be announced later. Now, let's get to the main topic.

2023 is the year Blocktrend stepped into the world of public goods fundraising. Blocktrend has a total of 12 articles related to public goods issues, covering topics such as Gitcoin Grants, Passport, RetroPGF, and Hypercerts. The public goods funding mechanism has blossomed over the past year, and Blocktrend has been deeply involved. However, most people may not realize that the bull market for Web3 builders has arrived.

Let's start from my personal experience.

The Contradiction of Giving Money

The author's happiness is quite simple. Whenever I receive positive feedback from my readers, it can make me happy for several days. The Web3 community is small, and sometimes this positive feedback even reaches the subjects of the articles. Many development teams have contacted me, hoping to share the articles or even feature them on their websites for non-technical readers.

This is a greater affirmation for me. It not only indicates that the content is simple to understand but also that its accuracy is recognized by professionals. However, whether I should consider the articles as gifts for others puzzles me. From the author's perspective, once the article is written, the more people who see it, the better. But from a business perspective, this article is supported by paid members, so giving it away for others to use commercially seems a bit odd? In any case, I feel like I can get some karma points, hoping to receive some form of feedback one day.

Many Web3 projects have content sponsorship programs to encourage the community to create original content. However, this usually requires advance application and proposal submission for the proposed topics. After approval, funds are allocated for production. This is a reasonable transaction, but it doesn't fit Blocktrend—I can't collect subscription fees and take on writing at the same time.

Therefore, I have suggested to teams approaching me that they might consider sponsoring Blocktrend's already published articles in a retrospective manner. However, you can imagine that if the article is already written and not behind a paywall, the development teams may wonder why they should pay for it. On the other hand, I believe that content is written for readers, so I don't plan to lock articles behind a paywall.

However, over the past year, perhaps due to the accumulated karma points of Blocktrend reaching a certain threshold (?), more and more projects are handing over the allocation of funds to the community, with the operational team only responsible for budget allocation.

Blooming Everywhere

The transition of decision-making power from operational teams to community participants couldn't be better for Blocktrend. A year ago, only Gitcoin Grants and Optimism's RetroPGF were willing to take such steps. However, more and more organizations are joining this trend, including Arbitrum and Polygon.

Taking Gitcoin Grants 19 as an example, Arbitrum's community organization, Arbitrum DAO, allocated 100,000 ARB to reward contributors who have made significant contributions to the ecosystem. Polygon initiated the Village Grants program, allocating up to 110 million MATIC, using a quadratic funding model to reward community builders. It inevitably raises curiosity about why there is suddenly a surge in projects adopting the quadratic funding model?

The answer can be found in a recent research report titled "Web3 Grants Landscape" published by the Gitcoin community. Taking Polygon as an example, they introduced a developer support program in 2019, allocating 2% of the total token supply to attract community builders. However, the project was prematurely closed as there were too many "grant cockroaches" at that time:

The Polygon grant program was initially intended to promote innovation and support valuable projects. However, it faced challenges in evaluating impact, especially concerning how to assess effectiveness when funds flowed into different projects. It became challenging to ensure efficient fund utilization and evaluate results... Later, Polygon shifted to providing smart contract audit service vouchers instead of direct grants. Additionally, there were instances of "grant cockroaches" applying for grants everywhere without innovation. Evaluators also found it difficult to distinguish between builders and grant cockroaches beforehand, challenging the credibility and fairness of grant programs.

A similar situation occurred with the grant program launched by the Algorand Foundation.

The cryptocurrency industry evolves rapidly, and these grant programs depend on the precise judgment of review committees. Sometimes, poor execution may not necessarily indicate a lack of contribution from those teams but rather a change in market dynamics. Moreover, grant programs were not initially designed for investment returns, so judging success or failure based on short-term results may not be appropriate. In summary, grant programs that initially provided grants from top to bottom, such as Algorand, NEAR, Polygon, and Protocol Labs, have stopped operating, and those with a bottom-up approach, like Gitcoin, are growing in scale.

While community voting is not the sole criterion, it is particularly suitable for media.

Taking Blocktrend as an example, in the last instance, I allocated 1% of the Gitcoin Grants funding, rewarding two members who created instructional documents for Gitcoin Passport. However, this approach is quite rudimentary and only suitable for small-scale experiments. In the long run, allowing readers to decide fund allocation would be better.

Surprisingly, Taiwan's Web3 autonomous organization, FAB DAO, acted swiftly and proposed the "FAB DAO Grants Program," becoming the first organization in Taiwan to distribute funds through Gitcoin Grants.

FAB DAO Grants is Great!

According to the introduction:

Since its establishment two years ago, FAB DAO has been continuously working to build the Web3 digital public domain. In September 2023, during the 18th round of Gitcoin Grants and the Global Chinese Community Beta Round, they received approximately $1,369 in grants, thanks to nearly 100 sponsors and public funds. After community discussions, it was decided that this amount should be used for a public goods experiment. Therefore, FAB DAO will launch the "Grants Program" experiment in November, allocating the entire grant to various non-profit projects, and is now openly soliciting action proposals.

Although the total funding provided by the "FAB DAO Grants Program" is only 1,369 DAI, which cannot be compared to the organizations mentioned earlier, the advantage is that the entry threshold is very low, almost free-form. Whether you are organizing a yoga class at a community activity center, cleaning the beach with friends on weekends, or publishing a public article online, you can apply. As long as you consider it as a non-profit action, you are eligible to apply.

I encourage everyone to give it a try. The goal is to participate, not necessarily to win. The more people actively participate in public fundraising, even canvassing for themselves, the more they can understand why Web3 projects are turning to the quadratic funding mechanism. Regardless of whether the future coin prices will continue to rise, the bull market for Web3 builders is already here.

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