ETHWarsaw 2023: Atris, GitcoinDAO - Gitcoin Grants Stack - tools for communities to fund their needs

okay awesome so welcome hello um I hope you've been enjoying if Wars so so far I personally think it's been great can't wait for the heckadon entries so I'm atress I'm an engineer at gitcoin I work on the gr stack which is what we're going to be diving deep into today and um this these are my socials so if you want to ask any questions afterwards um or during then you can add me on any of those um um any of those uh sites or apps and uh you can also catch me around the conference after the talk and uh yeah let's get started so first uh brief history um who here has actually heard of gitcoin have you ever heard of gitcoin okay some people have heard of gitcoin awesome uh is there anybody here who has donated uh during a gitcoin round also a few people awesome uh so for those of you who have never heard of gitcoin uh some brief history so in 2017 gitcoin was founded um mainly to support development of Open Source projects um through what we called bounties which was basically a way to attach a financial incentive to completing some sort of issue in a open source repository and uh a year later the seminal qf paper was published and another year later we actually integrated the ideas from that legendary paper into the gitcoin grants program and uh for 4 years later uh we have distributed over $50 million of funding and uh we have contributed to the creation through this funding to many influential projects that you most likely already know like optimism Unis swap um poop or Pope and uh tornado cash also and more and uh here we are in 2023 um you know 50 million to date but we're not stopping there um this is actually a snapshot from our impact report page so you can find it at impact gitcoin or impact. gitcoin doco I highly recommend that you check it out I personally find it very inspiring to see um what we can achieve when we come together as people uh with a common goal of funding public goods and so this is all great but what's next uh how do we maximize gitcoin impact so one of the issues of our grants program uh I'm just going to adjust this awesome um one of the issues of our grants program that also makes scaling harder is that it's highly centralized right so all the applications are reviewed by us by gitcoin folks uh we coordinate the funding we get the sponsors basically uh we coordinate the marketing and everything so we have scaled our impact thanks to our partners which is basically that a lot of our rounds are no longer funded from our treasury but they are funded through our partners which contribute around um contribute the funds and also do a part of the marketing um and uh so those are the partner rounds or or sponsor rounds for example the ens ecosystem round but that's not enough we just find that it's not enough to do these rounds we want to scale more we want to decentralize more so which is why we um which is why we invented or thought of the grand stack which basically those are tools for communities to fund their shared needs an important thing to notice here that we are no longer constraining ourselves to public goods so we are broadening the scope into any shared needs that the community might have so our vision with grand stag was to take our vast experience of running the gitcoin grants program and develop a suit of applications and contracts a whole protocol so that anybody can run their own gitcoin grants permissionless um this solves many of the problems we had with our previous grants program namely namely centralization right so uh we are a down so you can each and every one of you can engage in governance by posting on the governance for taking votes holding GDC and voting for it or delegating it to your favorite delegate um but that's not enough because the issue with um basically us as a DA is that there is a main grant program right we do not want there to be one main gitcoin grants program we want there to be many Grant programs running in parallel so it's not enough that we have once a quarter gitcoin grants program we want there to be like 10 20 50 100 rounds running at the same time from many different people completely permissionless without relying on us uh for help or for organizing and running the rounds um with their own funds with their own requirements with their own gating donors grantees uh their own values and Visions so uh we try to be um kind of apolitical or focus on the core values of the web free ecosystem and of the ethereum ecosystem um but obviously you know coordination is hard and we can't uh cater to everyone so we want people we want other communities who might have different values to also run their own grants programs um and to be able to to do that so we don't want to be the gate Gatekeepers to Public Funding uh which is why we're creating the gr stack um another problem that this also SES is our scaling problem so by allowing anyone to run a grants program we are no longer the choke point of um of the the programs um because right now basically we have to approve or reject all the applications right and there are thousands and thousands of applications each quarter um which is very hard we have a team working basically like 24/7 during the application Phase just uh approving or rejecting grants getting feedback coordinating and everything um which is very hard and if you want to scale this to millions of application and obviously like we would need a I don't know like 5,000 people just doing this fulltime which is not really possible uh it also allows new ideas and mechanisms and use cases to thrive so rstack is designed from from the ground up to be modular um unlike our old platform which is basically a humongous uh Jango monolith but it has serves us well um and so we want it to be modular because that then anybody can develop and use their own strategies for example anybody can use develop and use their own front ends um maybe you want to donate from a CLI from a terminal maybe you just don't want to use our front ends maybe you want to just directly interact from the chain um maybe you want to run data analysis maybe you want a different fronted maybe your cering to a community of uh visually impaired people that need some sort of other interface um so it's all modular so that you can plug and play basically anything you want from the system and make it your own for kid um any of that can be removed adapted at well so how do we achieve this vision of decentralization and scaling um we have a software suit that has everything communities need to run a successful grants program uh consists of a few parts uh first is the contracts which we call the Alo protocol uh currently V1 but also V2 incoming um then manager which is used by round operators to create rounds manage them monitor them while they are running uh and then finally choose to um export the data Maybe run some Cil analysis or maybe not um finalize the round and then paid out um then we have Builder which allows project owners to build their own chain profile and and apply to rounds manage their applications U we also have what we call Project registry which is basically a a contract on chain um where project owners can build up their reputation over many different rounds through many different um communities and then basically when they apply to a round they can leverage this registry to show hey I've already received this much funding from other rounds I already have credibility I already have reputation um and then there's Explorer which is used by donors to both both explore available rounds explore available projects and finally donate to them check out and also getcoin passport which can optionally be used to PR resistance so it's not um it's not kind of hardcoded you don't have to use it if you don't want to um but it is a one-click integration so if you want to with one click you can uh very easily add in siar resistance to your uh grants program so that they don't get gamed they don't get boted um but this list is actually not complete and fortunately it never will be because we want this stack to keep evolving and we want people to keep building on this and adding into it so if you have a novel use case uh we love to see you extend Grand stack to fit your needs so all of the grand stack Parts have some com traits and standards that we strive for everything is open source and uh not just open source but Libra software we have seen some um we have seen some people and companies in daos release software that is open source but it's not actually free as in Freedom uh so so there might be like business source license or something like that um everything we do is released either under new GPL or under MIT or very similar licenses so no restrictions on use you can remix it you can Fork it no licensing fees no hindrance to doing anything you want basically um everything is on chain so access to contracts and data can be censored so for example in the old platform um a lot of the data that was for example needed for analytics was basically just stored in a database all the votes were still on chain but it was hard to get to them uh right now we store everything but the largest data on chain so anybody can basically go to our Singleton um round Factory from there all track all the rounds that were ever created and from there track all the votes that were ever cast all the projects that ever applied their application status everything so it's all freely available basically to anyone who has access to an ethereum RPC or the RPC of the chain that we're currently running on and um for large data we store the data on ipfs um and commit to the Hason chain but again we are not limited to ipfs you can use basically anything you want any kind of data availability let's say backend um you can use rwe if you want to shout out to rwe it's a great project um or other storage protocols and of course we encourage you to actually do so um and Implement other storage backends this is mostly used for example for text of the applications descriptions of the grants so um we also use the we try to use the latest and greatest tools so in Alo V2 we are using fundry for testing which we love we are also using uh VM on the front end which is really awesome software huge shout out to the VM authors absolute Delight to use and we also develop our own tooling where necessary such as the loo indexer which we use to index all the relevant info we need both from the chain from ipfs and from other apis for example for prices and also from passport um shout out to my colleague Mo for leading the development and uh deployment of that beautiful system so in terms of the actual system let's start with the contracts as they are the core of the whole stack so we built them on the battle tested open Zeppelin base um we have completed an audit way back by shellock with actually no high impact vulnerabilities found and only a few low impacts which uh if you do auditing or if you've ever had your protocol audited it's like very weird um I was almost scared that we missed something but luckily it's okay and uh the voting and payout strategies are also modular which is very important so you are not locked into quadratic funding if you want to you can plug in your own strategy like quadratic voting you can also do direct grants in fact we do have a direct grants um self- serve integration uh coming in shortly so if you want to can literally like change up the contract that is used for voting and for example you can gate it maybe you have a community an nft community and you want to do a grants program but you want to gate it so that only people with the nft of your community can actually vote um you can also do that nobody's nobody's stopping you and uh yeah so it's very modular then we have manager so moving to the front end apps mostly manager lets you create um rounds as a round operator lets you review appr approve or reject applications that come in um also monitor in progress round so we have a stats page that lets you see um how much people are donating a few different stats that you would maybe like like to monitor when your round is running to gauge for example for marketing impact that you're doing for your round um you can also download all the data from chain kind of pre-processed for you for you to do Cil analysis for you to do some final counting on the vote some final results again marketing and then when you're ready uh you can finalize the round and then you can pay out the granes that you choose for Builder um this is sced toward project owners so you can create a project profile that lives on chain you can apply to rounds you can see the rounds that are cently open for applications and you can also there's also stats for your current and pass rounds then we have Explorer um where as the name suggests you can explore active rounds uh you can pick projects to support and you can check out and uh I don't know if there are any people who donated during a last round that ended I think like through three or four days ago but uh we actually developed a new experience what we call MRC multi round checkout actually it's not just multi but it's multichain checkout so that um we have this flow where we basically guide you through donating two different rounds on one chain and also two different rounds on other chains and you basically just click like confirm confirm sign confirm in your wallet uh we have also integrated uh permits so you no longer need to do approves you can save some guas and just send us a message permitting us to use your money and then cast the actual vote um it's all integrated and we're also exploring um other new avenues for how to make voting even more seamless uh so we are currently in the process of exploring gasless voting um oneclick voting and also Fiat onramps and also can't fail to mention passport this is actually their old logo because they updated their logo like three days ago their whole branding um but can't fail to mention passport which is a very useful tool if want to defend your rounds against civil attacks so civil attacks are obviously very common not just in air dropes but also in Grants because the incentive in quadratic funding make it such that Cil attacking a round is very profitable if you can do it luckily we have passport which requires users or optionally if you turn it on for your round requires users to prove that to some degree that they're human um using things like you have an ens um you have some poops you stake GTC you have a Twitter profile all of this is done uh in a privacy preserving way so you're are not actually associating your Twitter profile let's say with your address on chain um but you are just attesting to us basically that you actually own a Twitter profile and with this you build up your password score and then um we have like some sort of confidence that you are not a civil you are indeed a human and we can actually match your donations um we offer this an API that you can integrate easily if you're using Grand St then it's literally just like a radio button that you can tick yes I want to use passport and voila you're using passport uh but it's also open source so you can for it you can host it yourself uh you don't need to rely on us for the API or the data um so what's next Grand stack has already been used to power the gitcoin alpha beta and now gg8 rounds um a UNICEF round and uh other partner rounds and we are not done we have Alo protocol V2 coming in it's currently finishing up the design phase so we have some latest or last U proposals coming in to change the design then once the design is locked in uh we're going to do an audit again to make sure that everything is secure and uh we are shooting to run gg20 on it so not the next round but the round after that um so very exciting personally for that and we're also in the process of overhauling the whole entire user experience of all the gr stack apps so manager Builder Explorer all of that is going to be overhauled um lots of great UI things coming that way that I'm again personally very excited about we're going to make donating easier than ever and uh finally we invite all of you hackers Builders to go and explore rstack on GitHub uh Tinker with it forkit develop new tools develop analytics uh submit an allow Improvement proposal so if you want to change something about the underlying protocol maybe you want to uh have your strategy kind of audited and uh checked by us to make sure that that it's all okay and uh make it kind of an official strategy submit an allo Improvement proposal and obviously have fun doing all of that um and obviously if you are part of a community or if you are a community leader that is exploring ways to fund their shared needs then get in touch with us because we'd love to make that happen so that's a wrap I actually finished quite early we have 10 minutes for question this has been Grand St by gitcoin thank you very much uh I hope you're as excited for the future of public goods funding as I am um and yeah thank [Music] you I see multiple questions already GM GM this is go from Idis first of all thank you so much for all the amazing work you guys are doing at gitcoin we've been fortunate to be a grantee in the open source round four times in the last one last one great now question um there's been a lot of improvement around the ux already but the feedback I'm seeing from frequently is what can be done further to the gitcoin passport to make this 10x Improvement around verifying your for passport specifically for passport specifically yeah yes so I am not personally on the passport team so I can't speak U much to the actual behind the scenes improvements um one Improvement that I personally found really helpful was the um I don't know exactly what they call the flow but there's this like button that you can click when you sub when you sign into passport that basically lets you just refresh your stamp so you don't need to go through and click like yes I have ens blah blah blah you can just say refresh my stamps it will find all of your stamps and basically in like one transaction you will refresh all of that uh I know that they had the they just rebranded and I think as part of the rebranding announcement they also announced some ux uh improvements are coming your way but if you have any ideas then open a open an issue on the on the repo and we'd love to see uh see your feedbacks your ideas for how to improve it thank you yes um thanks for taking us to to the Grand stack um from my experience with gitcoin mostly as a donor like it's mostly geared towards um retro retroactive funding like at least from my experience what I'm seeing is like already existing projects while if you have ever uh participated into let's say proposing a grant um not R actively but something yet to be built for example in a protocol or a network the pro is a bit of a pain there's usually a governance Forum then they it would go to something like snapshot and then finally it gets voted and there like three different user experiences and processes and stuff like that um can we expect something along those lines from gitcoin in terms of like grants that are yet to be built or apps that are yet to be built to to be funded through gitcoin and what I mean by this is that usually the hardest thing to build there and to coordinate is the discussion around that cuz there's an initial proposal then the community gives feedback there's like numerous iterations of The Proposal until it gets to its final form mhm okay thank you for the feedback sorry it was a question like sorry for not formulating it better but um have you explored that gitcoin like um basically providing an interface for public goods that are yet to be built and not funding already existing public goods for funding already existing protocols or not existing sorry the audio is quite quite bad so I can't exactly hear your question um so gitcoin works great for funding already existing public goods uh but often times um let's say if I want to get a gr from optimism it has to go to like multiple iterations to uh The Forum stuff like that um have you explored the idea of um enabling uh funding of public goods that are yet to be built so there is nothing stopping you from if you have a project that is just an idea right right maybe you have an idea um for anything basically uh there is nothing stopping you from applying to getcoin Grants there is no specific rule that would uh forbid you or reason why we would reject you uh in fact like this is um I agree that Bitcoin is great for funding existing projects I also like personally believe that it's good for funding projects that are yet to be realized that are basically just an idea um in terms of what you can do as a project owner uh to make sure that your Grant is successful um other than en marketing advice which I can't really give you is we have uh what we call like Shilling spaces uh which is basically just a Twitter space where you can come and talk about your project talk about your Grant uh and make people excited about donating to it um and yeah so I mean a lot of the projects that are U that were in the current rounds were projects that were basically at the idea stage or prototyping stage but again if you have any ideas of how to make that process even smoother uh how to make sure that we help new granes even better then um I'm all for it please come to the either the Discord or the GitHub or the governance forums we'd love to hear it thank you anymore yeah in at the [Music] front okay thank you I will read to uh make my question more coherent I understand the presentation and focus were more uh technical but my question is how would you raise effectively funds for your project could you share your perspective as a person from gitcoin how would I raise money for my project yes for your project like for my project yes yes you are focus on gitcoin you know uh well many projects so you're asking for like Insider info of I mean no whatever you are comfortable no just kidding just kidding of course uh so again disclaimer I'm not a marketing person uh I think there's definitely better people who actually do marketing as their job that you can talk to um me personally I have participate in uh gitcoin beta round as a as a grantee as a project owner I think that for me personally what has helped the most is just get people extremely excited about your project so it's not enough to just shill it it's not enough to just like let people know but just make the project something or at least um sell the project as something that is deeply exciting to people that people like really care about uh make it personal basically make it even like emotional so for example revoke cash they are already really known um I'm sure like many of you know revoke cash where you can basically monitor all the approvals that you have and then revoke them um if I was the owner of revoke cash it was a completely new project maybe it was just an idea and I would like to Market it I personally would just appeal to people that have already lost money basically due to some protocol being hacked and them having an approval um there I would just I would just do that but disclaimer this is all like marketing advice for an engineer so um do your own research we have thank yeah one more thanks um could you go a little bit more into differences between Alo version one and two contracts sure sure so Alo V1 um what we found is that we were kind of biased toward what what gitcoin was doing right so we started basically with thinking okay we have this grants program this is how we run it uh so here's how we architect the contracts and that works for us uh but it doesn't necessarily work as well for other people you know so there are lots of communities for example who don't care at all about qf they just have a pot of money they have granes and they want to distribute that pot of money to granes they don't care about quadratic anything they just want to distribute the money and so us arting the contracts around the specific gitcoin use case even though we didn't want to do that uh but the kind of intrinsic bias was there uh made it a little bit more difficult for other strategies like this to be implemented and to be effectively used so with V2 we made everything a lot of a lot simpler um went with I believe the single tone pattern I'm not on the like directly involved in the contracts anymore but I believe we made it uh into like a single tone pattern so there a single contract deployed on a chain through which you do almost all of the actions um we merged the allocation strategy and the voting strategy so previously that was or the the payout strategy and the votic strategy previously that was um that was basically split in two so that's not one and we already have many more strategies than just qf we have QV we have qf we have direct grants uh we have uh gating by nfts we have gating by token balance I believe and then some more are incoming and I know that we have already community members who are um who are coming up with new strategies and implementing them so I would say to recap main diff difference is Simplicity the other difference is even more proper modularity so that other people who are do don't do not share our specific use case makes it just even simpler to do that and also Foundry okay thank you thank you atress that was the last question so okay um let's thank our speaker thank you