# Gitcoin Grants Round 18 - Takeaways

## Context

I've been hesitant to participate in this Gitcoin Grants round as I have participated in many others before and since I always walked away underwhelmed - regretting putting that much time into campaigning, I'm writing down my thoughts here as to warn future Tim from spending too much time on other rounds.

Disclaimer: Not everything that I say will be considered 100% factual. It is my view of the world and this document is written mostly to protect me from wasting my time. You have been warned.

## The What

- We've participated in GG18 with Kiwi News and we added a banner on our frequently-trafficed website asking people to donate to our project.
- We've asked on Farcaster and in our group chat for people to donate.
- With embracing Gitcoin Grants, my understanding is and was that we're contributing to the Gitcoin software platforms. We're sending over users, we're asking them to convert into their Passport product. In some cases we even play support for them.

## The Process

- A few users that we pushed into donating via Gitcoin Grants gave us explicitly feedback that their user experience is abysmal and very frustrating.
- We've pointed out to Gitcoin that it is very hard to submit or even use their app. From what I understand, none of these issues have been addressed. It's mostly lip-service.
- During no time was it possible to actually see what level of matching we'd receive, creating a false believe in me that we should spent more time campaigning (don't do it!).
- All Gitcoin software is barely usable and full of bugs. It's not easy to get support for errors and the user experience walking away from the software makes one feel frustrated and awful. At no time did I like filling out the Gitcoin Grants application

## The Result

- We have received roughly $1000 in Donations from 100 people. During the entire process until Gitcoin revealed their matching results, my assumption was that we did pretty well. E.g. we always showed up as a notable project in their charts.
- We ended up being number 80 in matching results with a total of $75 in matching (underwhelming).
- Independent of the rhetoric/marketing that Gitcoin has, e.g. that "Quadratic funding" is a net-good for society, that they're implementing policy proposals from well-respected authors like Glen Weyl (which I like too), etc., the results do not reflect meritocratic ideals. Many notable Open Source projects in the crypto currency space are receiving underwhelmingly small portions of funds for outsized contribitions to the ecosystem. To me it is clear that a project like rotki which is helping to preserve privacy during tax-filing should most likely have a meaningful result in Gitcoin Grants, whereas Aave's Lenster should not (because they have enough money anyways).

## The Opportunity Costs

- I have received amazingly sized donations from other grant processes like the Optimism Retro active public goods funding. Their software was much better, their process was more mainstreamed and I ended up making returns that make me happy to this day. Looking at the distributions for Optimism's RAPGF, I've also walked away thinking that they are fair to my project.
- Gitcoin Grants is asking for users to send donations to an address. However, e.g. at Kiwi News we make money by selling our NFT and onboarding contributors to our link aggregator. So converting a new users into spending money on Gitcoin is actually unaligned with our project's goals as they're not becoming a user and they don't have a chance to become a brand embassador of ours.
- Given that the submission website is very broken, as is the entire process, it takes a significant amount of time participating in Gitcoin. Additionally, Gitcoin mandates sending users away from our product's site to their's, which is an opportunity cost for us too.

## The Good Parts

- Gitcoin Grants can make a project appear to be part of the Ethereum space and create brand recognition. We can't really attribute it to the Gitcoin Grants round, but throughout the round we saw more traffic to our site.
- If the Grants process was zero-friction, getting 500$ in donations would actually be a really interesting value proposition, meaning if we didn't have to do much for it.

## The System

- It's not clear to me what the privacy assumptions of using the Gitcoin Passport are. If we push users to donate, then are we indirectly asking them to give away their PII or other personal data? I see a brand risk here as I'm against Gitcoin monetizing our user's data (and also not paying us appropriately for it, lol)
- Gitcoin's matching pools are suboptimally funded. E.g. many influencers and borderline-scamy projects (my opinion) end up receiving outsized donations in categories like "Climate" and "Community." E.g. a project with (in my opinion) very questionable outreach called "web3beach" received $10k while rotki (very clear value proposition) received $800. This also ends up being a long-term brand risk for our project.
- Gitcoin has a history of not being capable of building software. I have used Gitcoin pretty much since they launched and they've always had a quality assurance issues with software, similar to Consensys software. At this point this issue is so lindy, that dear future Tim, don't assume they have this figured out the next time you want to apply.

## Conclusion

We spent more time working on our grant than we have earned in donations+matching. Participating in Gitcoin Grants was not economically viable for our project and had we spent the same amount of time on user acquisition, then I can say with certainty that we would have been better off.

Dear future Tim, here is what I suggest when wanting to participate in the next GG round:

- Minimize time to get a grant up.
- Don't get fooled into trying to improve the Gitcoin system. Don't file issues, no wasting of time. It is buggy and broken, you won't change that or be rewarded for it.
- Don't gamble to get matching funds. Gitcoin matching is calculated in a power law distribution and you won't get outsized returns as a mid project. Projects with big social media accounts will get all the matching and donations.
- Generally keep expectations very low.
- Consider that our user base will not be able to compete on the sybil-resistance algorithm. E.g. 90% of contributors had a Gitcoin Passport score over 20 (which was hard to get).
- Don't push users or paying customers into donating via Gitcoin Grants. Consider the opportunity costs of that action and rather work on more effectively converting users into our platform or doing sales.
- Generally keep expectations extremely low.