The two-week flurry that was Gitcoin Grants 21 (GG21) wrapped up this week. Nearly US$190,000 donated by 7,700 unique donors across 11 grants rounds and 517 projects. US$742,000 in matching funds will be distributed over the next few weeks.
CARBON Copy participated in two of the rounds: Climate Solutions and Asia. A huge thank-you to those that contributed!
While undoubtedly positive, the numbers are down across the board compared to GG20: a fifth of the unique donors, a quarter of the total donations, and half the matching pool funds.
Grants Program Lead at Gitcoin, @mathildawrites, made an interesting point on the matter in an X post:
Firstly, GG21 is a vastly different round than GG20, specifically due to the absence of an OSS round. GG21 is the first fully community-led round, signaling a major evolution for Gitcoin as we aspire to enable communities to fund what matters to them.
Even still If we look at the Climate Solutions round in particular, the reality is that there isn't enough to meet the needs of all the grassroots projects doing real-world impact work. We need to unlock other, larger sources of funding.
Where will that funding come from? We can't help but think that the door is wide open for development finance to start taking platforms like Gitcoin Grants seriously as funding distribution mechanisms. They are the solution to chopping up US$10 million into US$10,000 tranches without the associated costs, to getting funds to the people on the ground without the wastage.
The onus is on us in the ReFi space, however. As we stare at development finance from across the chasm, it's time we start focusing on building the bridge.
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Impact Stat of the Week
US$3,506.31
Total amount donated by philanthrophic USD stablecoin Glo Dollar. Unlike Tether and Circle, Glo Dollar allocates a majority of its reserve revenue to fund poverty reduction and public goods.
Want to learn more?
Visit us at https://carboncopy.news to get more news, analysis, and data from the Web3 regenerative finance (ReFi) space.
