# Gitcoin GG24 Dedicated Domain Proposal: Advancing DAO Maturity & Coordination Infrastructure

## I. Domain Overview

This Dedicated Domain Allocation (DDA) proposal focuses on a critical and underdeveloped layer of the web3 ecosystem: the structural, financial, and governance maturity of mid-sized DAOs. While early-stage DAOs benefit from bootstrapping enthusiasm and late-stage DAOs enjoy protocol-level revenue, **mid-sized DAOs operate in a fragile transitional zone**—often underfunded, overextended, and structurally incoherent.

We propose defining a Gitcoin Grants GG24 domain centered on **DAO Maturity & Coordination Infrastructure**, with the goal of catalyzing long-term sustainability for public goods organizations transitioning from small, centralized teams to community-driven governance models.

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## II. Core Problem Domains

### 1. Lack of Sustainable Models for Mid-to-Late Stage OSS and DAO Growth

Despite their contributions to open infrastructure and digital public goods, most mid-stage DAOs lack repeatable models for financial sustainability. Common problems include:

- Over-reliance on grants and retroactive funding with no treasury replenishment mechanism.
- Contributor fatigue due to unpaid or underpaid labor.
- Difficulty in transitioning from episodic funding (e.g. Gitcoin rounds) to ongoing operational capital.

**Implication**: Funding without coordination infrastructure leads to temporary execution capacity but not systemic growth.

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### 2. Insufficient Capital Formation Mechanisms

DAO ecosystems frequently allocate capital via quadratic funding or delegate-based voting, yet rarely develop mechanisms to **form or sustain capital** beyond the short-term.

Key issues include:

- Fragmented treasury strategies and minimal treasury diversification.
- Lack of interoperability between funding sources and DAO tooling (e.g. conviction voting, streaming, Allo integrations).
- Little support for capital aggregation from community contributors or external partners.

**Implication**: Without healthy capital formation, allocation mechanisms are brittle and unsustainable.

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### 3. Absence of Proven Decentralization Transition Models

The progressive decentralization narrative has become central to DAO storytelling, but in practice, most DAOs struggle to transition beyond their founding teams.

Challenges include:

- Lack of effective power-transfer structures (e.g. elections, rotating stewards, modular subDAOs).
- Difficulty building legitimacy and trust in new governance layers.
- Social and operational risk in distributing ownership prematurely.

**Implication**: The absence of tested, low-friction decentralization pathways creates institutional stagnation and undermines community ownership goals.

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### 4. Limited Use of Feedback and Governance Health Metrics

As DAOs scale, they lack standardized ways to monitor or adjust their internal health. Unlike traditional institutions that employ strategic planning, HR audits, and performance evaluations, DAOs often operate without:

- Feedback mechanisms to track contributor satisfaction, role clarity, or power imbalances.
- Governance observability tooling (e.g. participation rates, proposal lifecycle metrics).
- Meaningful, community-defined definitions of “success” beyond token price or round funding totals.

**Implication**: Without feedback infrastructure, DAOs can’t learn from themselves or course-correct effectively.

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## III. Rationale for Dedicated Round Focus

This DDA round is not designed to produce tooling alone. Instead, it prioritizes the funding of **organizational experiments** and **governance structures** that contribute real-world data to the question: *How do DAOs mature sustainably?*

A focused round enables Gitcoin to:

- **Position itself as a research-aligned allocator** of public goods capital in DAO infrastructure.
- **Support high-context grantees** working in the trenches of DAO transition and coordination design.
- **Generate reusable knowledge assets** such as frameworks, metrics, process patterns, and grant archetypes.
- **Pilot new governance integrations** through Gardens v2 or Allo-compatible platforms.

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## IV. Summary of Strategic Fit

| Challenge | Gitcoin’s Leverage | GG24 Opportunity |
|----------|--------------------|------------------|
| DAO sustainability | Funding + round structuring | Fund cohort-level experiments with shared learning architecture |
| Capital formation | Matching fund partners + Allo protocol | Pilot DAO-to-DAO treasury coordination |
| Governance transitions | Round design + proposal formats | Support DAOs running elections, modularization, or re-orgs |
| Data + feedback gaps | Application templates + retro formats | Generate cross-DAO comparables on structure and health |

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## V. Final Note

DAO maturity is not just a question of tools or governance. It is an infrastructural layer of the decentralized internet—analogous to roads, utilities, and budgeting frameworks in traditional civic systems.

This DDA round is an opportunity to transform funding into **institutional prototyping**, where mid-sized DAOs can generate public knowledge and define the next era of coordination.