I want to highlight a trend in the comments I’ve seen from stewards over the last week of budgeting season. The main trend I see is a complaint about a lack of lean-ness and a lack of effectiveness.

Here are some comments:

Kyle Weiss

Treasury Diversification Working Group Updates Thread

The bear is here and it’s only going to get worse over the next 6-12mos. Crypto markets are tied closer to the US stock market than they have ever been (and global markets), and the US Fed doesn’t give a shit if they tank the stock market trying to get inflation under control. The general sentiment is that Investors across Web3 are slowing investment and feel like they can wait ~8mos to scoop up a lot of “good deals” as token prices, valuations and shitty projects are going to die out over the next 6-12mos.

This news is not all doomsday for Gitcoin though! Gitcoin has an incredible brand and deep reason for existing that is of interest to many of the folks I have had a chance to chat with. there are headwinds though as money is tightening, and scrutiny is finally being applied to most funding decisions (ie, folks are asking about longevity of projects and roadmaps again!). It’s through these conversations and conversations with other DAOs, and protocols that I have learned and deeply believe Gitcoin is not in a position to fuck around - we need to really focus on the core thesis that we are a protocol DAO with great impact (funding for public goods).

gets on soap box for impact
Season after season we have failed to really make progress on our Protocol development, but continue to grow budgets. To top it off GR13 shrank quite dramatically, likely due to market sentiment. This trend will continue and we will continue to see funding dry up where it was once bountiful. Our community needs us to survive and to thrive, web3 needs us to survive. Gitcoin is the light that fuels the ecosystem through bear markets and we can only do that with funding ourselves, and an eye towards the most important thing (advancing our protocol to make grants permissionless and pervasive).

Anonymous Steward

I was going to bring up in the call today but transparently I am concerned about dao long term funding sustainability given many $500k-$1m requests for 1 season which ends up around $5m total for the season and each season only seems to be getting larger with requests

I have not gotten permission from this Steward to quote them by name, but they are in the top 15.

Austin Griffith

Austin told me at ETHAmsterdam 2022 that he felt like we were not meeting our moment (“youre fucking it up”). Software projects at Gitcoin that he’s seen typically take too long to ship, have too much overhead, and when they come out, come out buggy or otherwise miss the market.

Gitcoin is routinely beaten to market (or otherwise out-executed) by projects with massively less resources (money, clout, people) than us.

Lefteris

My view

My view is this:

Gitcoin is unfortunately a ProtocolDAO without a Protocol.
The DAO spends millions of dollars in tokens on things that just don’t have ROI.
The DAO has a habit of starting many projects in many different directions. The DAO workstreams regularly start projects that are “a few weeks away” from shipping, but drag on for months or just never ship.
Because the workstream proposals are so large/dense, and stewards have little context, it is hard for these project owners to be held accountable.

These are precarious positions to be in at the start (middle) of a bear market.

I believe in Gitcoin’s mission. I think that stewarding an open source project is a lot like gardening. I’ve been pulling a lot of weeds in my home garden. I consider posts like this to be like weeding our garden. I believe in Gitcoin, and I believe that by pulling at these weeds, we can have our execution meet our moment.