Post Updated August 2022.
Other onboarding resources:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://primer.gitcoindao.com/">GitcoinDAO Primer 198</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/search?q=digest%20order%3Alatest">Gitcoin Digest</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/future-history-of-the-open-internet-book/10324">Lore book 83</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
Hi frens,
This document is an overview of the Gitcoin ecosystem and what we are coordinating &amp; building towards. It’s jam-packed with information and links to make it easier for contributors, stewards, delgators and community members to get up to speed and learn about our mission. The document is updated on a monthly basis as the DAO evolves and was last updated by <a href="/u/fred">@Fred</a> in August 2022.
For weekly updates make sure to check out the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/search?q=digest%20order%3Alatest">Gitcoin Digest</a>!
<h1>
<a name="tldr-1" href="#tldr-1"></a>TLDR</h1>
The Purpose of Gitcoin is to empower communities to fund their shared needs.
So far we’ve facilitated over $64mm of funding for public goods &amp; are currently facilitating about $6mm/quarter. And we are just getting started!
<h1>
<a name="the-essential-intents-of-gitcoin-2" href="#the-essential-intents-of-gitcoin-2"></a>The Essential Intents of Gitcoin</h1>
1. Protocol Adoption
<ul>
<li>Build a widely adopted, modular Grants protocol that creates a flourishing ecosystem of funding mechanisms.</li>
<li>Build a widely adopted, modular Pluralism Passport protocol that creates a flourishing ecosystem of network effects around Decentralized Society.</li>
</ul>
2. Financial Sustainability
<ul>
<li>Have a comprehensive, diversified strategy for financial stability of the DAO in order to effectively achieve our mission.</li>
</ul>
3. DAO Organization
<ul>
<li>Create and promote clear and engaging rituals, communication channels, and messaging that build emergent shared context among GitcoinDAO’s contributors, stewards, and supporters.</li>
</ul>
4. Grants Program Success
<ul>
<li>Enable a successful grants protocol launch by dogfooding it internally and supporting ecosystems in adopting it.</li>
<li>Continue to support the Ethereum ecosystem and public goods in web3 and beyond through Gitcoin-led rounds.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3>
<a name="we-believe-that-3" href="#we-believe-that-3"></a>We believe that;</h3>
<ol>
<li>Open Source Software is a digital public good that creates $400bn/year in value,</li>
<li>but the creators of OSS don’t have great ways to monetize their work on digital infrastructure.</li>
<li>
Our goal is to correct this asymmetry.</li>
</ol>
<h3>
<a name="we-are-missionaries-4" href="#we-are-missionaries-4"></a>We are missionaries.</h3>
We believe that<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpXPym_m_wA"> it’s all coordination 110</a>. Public goods failures are coordination failures, and we see an opportunity to solve coordination failures with blockchains - a new supertool for solving<a href="https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/know-thy-enemy-coordination-failures"> coordination failures 48</a>.
<h3>
<a name="we-know-our-edge-5" href="#we-know-our-edge-5"></a>We know our edge.</h3>
Blockchains are our super power. They give us a novel, immutable, global, programmable, transparent substrate for coordination to build upon.
Our weapon of choice is novel mechanism designs deployed to decentralized blockchains.
<h3>
<a name="we-have-momentum-6" href="#we-have-momentum-6"></a>We have momentum</h3>
We are creating $6mm/quarter in funding for public goods and OSS devs.
Vitalik Buterin<a href="https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/04/30/round5.html"> once said 25</a> “Gitcoin Grants is establishing itself as a significant pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem that more and more projects are relying on for some or all of their support.”
<h3>
<a name="we-are-still-emerging-7" href="#we-are-still-emerging-7"></a>We are still emerging.</h3>
We are still discovering new &amp; innovative ways to solve coordination problems in a DAO-era world. We systematically discover or invent these mechanisms, and if we’re lucky + good, we scale them.
We are the EVM whispers, the DAO cartographers, the internet citizens, and the chaos magicians of the internet of money. We are the homesteaders of the metaverse.<a href="https://twitter.com/TrustlessState/status/1418156116282904578"> We are the schelling point for the hopeful 57</a>.
<h3>
<a name="we-build-for-human-thriving-8" href="#we-build-for-human-thriving-8"></a>We build for human thriving.</h3>
Our vision is to establish an empowering, open and collaborative space where individuals and communities can access resources in proportion to their value creation independent of their geographic location, education, background or offline identity.
By creating collaborative, decentralized funding mechanisms, Gitcoin has become the natural choice for seeding and supporting digital public goods. Gitcoin enables building for the public, by the public by helping individuals and communities start, fund, and scale open source projects.
<h2>
<a name="we-convene-the-people-9" href="#we-convene-the-people-9"></a>We convene the people</h2>
We have been hosting virtual &amp; physical events at the heart of Regenerative web3. Checkout our quarterly<a href="https://schellingpoint.gitcoin.co/"> Schelling Point 47</a> events, or our weekly DAO Vibes (hosted on Discord), or “Public Goods are Good” twitter spaces.
By convening the people, we hope to build an<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/lessons-about-impact-networks/10305"> Impact Network 12</a> of people focusing on using Web3 for positive impact. We call those projects ImpactDAOS, and by<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-impactdao-poster-book-is-here/10323"> studying ImpactDAOs 8</a> we can build a<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/a-vision-for-a-pluralistic-civilizational-scale-infrastructure-for-funding-public-goods/9503"> webscale infrastructure for regeneration 7</a>.
<h2>
<a name="how-we-achieve-our-mission-10" href="#how-we-achieve-our-mission-10"></a>How we achieve our mission.</h2>
Gitcoin is a mission, a community, and a product suite.
If our mission is our focal point, our community is our lifeblood. Our a product - a double sided marketplace that connects digital creatives to the people who want to fund their work. And visa versa.
So far<a href="https://gitcoin.co/results"> we’ve created $64mm worth of funding 56</a> for public goods and OSS devs. Specifically, the way we do that is:
<ol>
<li>Giving members opportunities to<a href="https://gitcoin.co/earn"> earn 184</a>.</li>
<li>Giving members opportunities to<a href="https://gitcoin.co/learn"> learn 87</a>.</li>
<li>Giving members opportunities to<a href="https://gitcoin.co/connect"> connect with one another &amp; prospective career opportunities 53</a>.</li>
</ol>
<h3>
<a name="how-do-we-do-that-11" href="#how-do-we-do-that-11"></a>How do we do that?</h3>
Product-wise, we are building coordination tools for a DAO based world. We do that with
<ol>
<li>
<a href="https://gitcoin.co/bounties/contributor">Bounties 101</a> - Gig-based work for web3 projects.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://gitcoin.co/hackathons">Hackathons 43</a> - Build with the coolest web3 projects.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://gitcoin.co/grants">Grants 74</a> - Crowdfunding for Open Source.</li>
</ol>
Community-wise, we do that by being mission-first, producing results, by creating vibes + cultivating a positively-self-referential internal culture.
<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/how-we-achieve-our-mission/8760">More on how we achieve our mission here 27</a>.
<h2>
<a name="the-dao-that-governs-gitcoin-12" href="#the-dao-that-governs-gitcoin-12"></a>The DAO that governs Gitcoin</h2>
We believe that the consent of the governed is the only legitimate basis for government.
This is why Gitcoin is governed by the community. (In order to make sure that Gitcoin is serving its community + founding mission first &amp; foremost)
In May 2021,<a href="https://gitcoin.co/blog/introducing-gtc-gitcoins-governance-token/"> GTC was released 89</a>. GTC is a governance token with no economic value that governs Gitcoin.
<h2>
<a name="what-is-gitcoin-13" href="#what-is-gitcoin-13"></a>What is Gitcoin?</h2>
<ol>
<li>Gitcoin is an<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-impactdao-protocoldao-sandwich/8944/2"> ImpactDAO/ProtocolDAO hybrid 81</a>.</li>
<li>On a human layer, Gitcoin is an<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-gitcoin-gitcoindao-egregore-is-emerging/8200"> egregore 89</a> - a group of humans who coordinate to achieve our mission.</li>
<li>From a product perspective, we are building a suite of tools for DAO-era coordination of<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoindao-meta-coordination-of-culture-capital/8437"> capital &amp; culture 26</a>.</li>
<li>From a governance perspective, we are governed by GTC.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/how-might-we-decentralize-gitcoin/8734">We are progressively decentralizing Gitcoin 36</a> from a company to a DAO.</li>
</ol>
There are 3 important concepts to know to understand how to interact with Gitcoin;
<ol>
<li>Most of the action happens on<a href="https://gitcoin.co/discord"> Discord 85</a>,<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co"> Discourse 54</a>, or on<a href="https://twitter.com/gitcoin"> Twitter 59</a>.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://gitcoin.co/blog/introducing-the-community-stewards-program/">Stewards 60</a> are ultimately responsible for governing Gitcoin.</li>
<li>
<a href="http://gitcoindao.com/">Workstreams 47</a> are the primary mechanism through which work is organized in the DAO.</li>
</ol>
<h3>
<a name="workstreams-14" href="#workstreams-14"></a>Workstreams</h3>
Workstreams are the way work is organized at Gitcoin. Workstreams have their own budget, leadership structure, tools, and processes on a per-workstream basis. Anyone can propose a workstream by following the<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-dao-governance-process-v2-updated/7860"> proposal process 17</a>. The current active workstreams are:
<ol>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Moonshot-Collective-ffa78f44a0de412cb607f9b69d3a376f">Moonshot Collective 64</a> is the DAO rapid prototyping workstream</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Public-Goods-80a3202a3a244c65b3fda08c0f7c7d60">Public Goods 39</a> is focused on our mission of funding public goods.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Fraud-Detection-Defense-f1a2969a9f324f57a02ef69a60b25cae">Fraud Detection &amp; Defense 13</a> is in charge of preventing fraud on Gitcoin Grants.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Merch-Memes-Marketing-c1bd89fac8ab4569bf2a676df28025d8">Memes, Merch, &amp; Marketing 32</a> is the DAO marketing division.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://gitcoin.notion.site/DAO-Ops-84f425e281ae49579a2b4acf0bad5dd5">DAO Operations 4</a> supports critical operation functions like accounting, hiring, and tooling</li>
<li>
<a href="https://gitcoin.notion.site/Gitcoin-Product-Collective-f2860138cbb24505b5cb2d8576119a78">Gitcoin Product Collective 8</a> is the home of product development for Grants 2.0</li>
</ol>
If you want to learn more about Gitcoin, read this post<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-gitcoin-gitcoindao-egregore-is-emerging/8200"> here 89</a>.
<h3>
<a name="gitcoins-quarterly-cadence-15" href="#gitcoins-quarterly-cadence-15"></a>Gitcoin’s Quarterly Cadence</h3>
Gitcoin operates in a quarterly cadence.<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-grants-is-our-metronome/9310"> Quarterly Gitcoin Grants Rounds are our Metronome 6</a>
Every quarter, the Gitcoin ecosystem revolves around a quarterly stacked event - a combination (1) Gitcoin Grants round, (2) Hackathon, (3) KERNEL block, and (4) Governance activity
During each quarter, we achieve our mission by deploying millions of $$$ of funding to the community. Typically a quarter looks like this:
<ol>
<li>Plan for quarterly stacked event.</li>
<li>Execute quarterly stacked event.</li>
<li>Learn from the quarterly stacked event.</li>
<li>Repeat</li>
</ol>
Our last quarterly event was GR14 (short for Grants Round 14), it started June 8th and ended June 23th. The next round will be GR15 and it starts Septemer 7th and goes until Septemer 22th.
<h2>
<a name="gitcoin-is-a-vessel-for-humanity-to-get-to-the-quadratic-lands-16" href="#gitcoin-is-a-vessel-for-humanity-to-get-to-the-quadratic-lands-16"></a>Gitcoin is a vessel for humanity to get to the Quadratic Lands!</h2>
Gitcoin is a vessel that we would like to take us to the Quadratic Lands - a place where open source software (and other public goods) are well maintained + healthy.
In the quadratic lands, public goods are funded by quadratic funding + other web3 native funding mechanisms.
The quadratic lands is a north star, we are still discovering where exactly it is and how to get there
Help us find the quadratic lands by telling its story. Members of our community have created<a href="https://twitter.com/songadaymann/status/1397206547420356611"> this song about the Quadratic Lands 19</a> or<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTU6J4WTPtk"> and this visionary video 42</a>.
<h2>
<a name="how-to-git-involved-17" href="#how-to-git-involved-17"></a>How to GIT involved.</h2>
As of September 2022, here is the way you can get involved in Gitcoin.
<ol>
<li>Read the weekly <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/search?q=digest%20order%3Alatest">Gitcoin Digest</a> updates (<a href="https://form.typeform.com/to/ttNCMt8w">email sign-up 8</a>).</li>
<li>Get engaged on<a href="https://gitcoin.co/discord"> Discord 85</a>,<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co"> Discourse 54</a> or on<a href="https://twitter.com/gitcoin"> Twitter 59</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://form.typeform.com/to/DiMdHaWe">Apply as a Contributor 84</a> and explore our workstreams</li>
<li>Use <a href="https://gitcoin.co/">Gitcoin 11</a> to earn, learn, or fund. (use links above)</li>
<li>Follow<a href="https://twitter.com/i/lists/1512065573026697218"> the list 8</a> of GitcoinDAO contributors on Twitter</li>
<li>Attend our conference series<a href="https://schellingpoint.gitcoin.co/"> Schelling Point 47</a>
</li>
<li>Explore further through the links below;
<ul>
<li><a href="https://gitcoin.co">Gitcoin.co 38</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gitcoin.co/jobs">Gitcoin Jobs 63</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.withtally.com/governance/gitcoin">Gitcoin Tally 25</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gitcoindao.com">Gitcoin Notion 6</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/gitcoin">Gitcoin Twitter 59</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gitcoin.co/discord">Gitcoin Discord 85</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gitcoin.co/support">Gitcoin Support 13</a></li>
<li><a href="https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/">Gitcoin Snapshot 39</a></li>
<li><a href="https://store.gitcoin.co">Gitcoin Schwag Store 31</a></li>
<li><a href="https://etherscan.io/token/0xde30da39c46104798bb5aa3fe8b9e0e1f348163f">Gitcoin GTC Governance token 66</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<hr />
<h1>
<a name="testimonials-18" href="#testimonials-18"></a>Testimonials</h1>
Gitcoin Grants is establishing itself as a significant pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem that more and more projects are relying on for some or all of their support. ~<a href="https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/04/30/round5.html">Vitalik Buterin 25</a>
I LOVE IT…The community has been outstanding. I have made contact outside of slack w a couple of people. William Schwab was kind enough to ZOOM w me for an hour and tell me his story, letme pick his brain, and as he shared some valuable resources with me. - John Wilkinson
KERNEL is the greatest thing to ever happen to my crypto/business/personal life. I have made plenty of new friends, connected with people who believe in me and want to work together on other projects, and of course learned a lot from other seedlings, mentors and speakers. - Ethan Chiasson
Gitcoin gave me the first break into Ethereum and the crypto space. It helped me find bounties that I could work on and get paid in crypto. After my first ever bounty I got paid a lot and I felt euphoric. - Sebastian TF
I am amazed on a daily basis at the incredible projects and communities in this space. The Gitcoin team and quadratic funding is an invaluable catalyst to bring it all to fruition. Thank you! - Hishamaru Konkon
Gitcoin grants quadratic funding is not just for funds allocation, it’s also a great signaling tool! For the last few rounds, going to<a href="https://gitcoin.co/grants/"> Grants | Gitcoin 12</a> has led me to discover a lot of really cool Ethereum projects I previously did not know about. - Vitalik Buterin
What Gitcoin is doing with public goods funding is absolutely incredible. Nothing but respect to the team and the larger community for the contributions made. - Frobo
Thanks to gitcoin it has helped us to discover our earliest talent and supercharged @KodaDot development. - Matej
People ask me all the time how I got into Solidity and NFT dev. The answer is gitcoin! Beginning of the year I just started doing bounties for a bunch of different projects (@synthetix_io @akashnet_ @SovrynBTC etc) and found the NFT ones were my fave. Such a good way to learn! - sarasioux.et

TLDR - What is Gitcoin?  [Aug 2022] Post Updated August 2022. 
 Other onboarding resources: 
 
  GitcoinDAO Primer

TLDR - What is Gitcoin?  [Aug 2022]

Things are evolving fast at GitcoinDAO and our <a href="http://gitcoin.co/results">impact is growing 7</a>. You love to see it.
Gitcoin has a <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/a-brief-history-of-gitcoin-from-2017-2022/9431">long history 5</a> by crypto standards - having been around since 2017. Gitcoin Grants has been around since Jan 2019 and has run 12 rounds so far. GitcoinDAO has been around since May 2021. As we go through the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-grants-is-our-metronome/9310">Build/Measure/Learn Loop every Quarter 8</a>, we learn more about our environment, ourselves, and how to accomplish our mission &amp; live by our values. Every Grants Round I learn something new (sometimes the hard way ).
One thing that I’m continually sensing &amp; internalizing over time is that my role has evolved as Gitcoin Holdings (the legal entity that launched the DAO) has evolved &amp; as the DAO has grown.
My role on May 24th 2021 was to be CEO/Founder of Gitcoin. After May 25 2021, as the DAO began to take shape and Gitcoin Holdings “parent”ed the DAO for the first few months, a separation occurred - I remained CEO/Founder of Gitcoin Holdings, but only a participant in the DAO.
In all sincerity, I have always imagined that I’d ultimately be but one stakeholder of the DAO – with no root access. There are contradictions in this,
<ol>
<li>I’ve wanted to do so as soon as possible, but also not until it is responsible to do so.</li>
<li>Gitcoin Grants is still run on the centralized platform I foolishly built centralized in 2017-2020. Whereas the DAO intends to build a completely decentralized Grants experience.</li>
</ol>
Im a big believer that part of the art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings, and so I am trying to embrace this change. In navigating this specific case, I seek to “<a href="https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1459903812135579655">build in public 9</a>” - which is why you might see my research notes appear on <a href="http://gov.gitcoin.co">gov.gitcoin.co 3</a> (or <a href="https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1459577744476585992">wacky ideas 5</a> on twitter) - to share this context.
In this case - As I’ve studied how <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/building-gitcoindaos-legitimacy/9649">GitcoinDAO builds legitimac 7</a>y and <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/consent-of-the-governed-and-legitimacy-by-process-in-gitcoindao/9778">how that legitimacy is distributed to actors who act on behalf of the DAO 5</a>, and as the DAO has gone through its own growth, the following thought is starting to crystalize: GitcoinDAO was created by Gitcoin Holdings, but it is not Gitcoin Holdings – in seeking decentralization of governance, computation, development, and economics - we should seek to separate the two as much as possible.
As soon as I accept this extremely inconvenient truth, it starts to force several other hard downstream implications &amp; questions:
<ol>
<li>
DAOs don’t have CEOs. There is <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/consent-of-the-governed-and-legitimacy-by-process-in-gitcoindao/9778/3">no legitimacy in authority 21</a>, and control (or perception of control) <a href="https://vitalik.ca/general/2019/05/09/control_as_liability.html">is a liability 8</a> if we are to go <a href="https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1463000229033111557">where I think we are going 27</a>.
</li>
<li>
I of course remain completely committed to GitcoinDAO &amp; it’s mission, but in what ways does tactical retreat from being involved in operations/decision making of the DAO serve the greater strategic direction of the DAO? How can I (and the others at Gitcoin Holdings) begin to separate ourselves from the DAO, such that we create space that allows the next generation of Leaders to emerge within &amp; around GitcoinDAO?
</li>
<li>
How can we do so in such a way that if they fail, we are there to pick them up &amp; reorient things? I can’t help but have the parent in me when I ask “How can we give them the psychological safety to try &amp; experiment &amp; learn, but also not make them complacent?”
</li>
<li>
How can we do these things without entrenching those new leaders over the long term? How do we create a culture where we always seek to decentralize power? Where we always seek to hire someone smarter than us &amp; empower them to be the next generation of leadership in a beautiful decentralized fractal of growth &amp; impact.
</li>
<li>
How can we do so in such a way that is otherwise responsible to our stakeholders?
</li>
<li>
What are the biggest areas of centralization debt &amp; how can we pay them down as quickly &amp; responsibly as possible? Of course there is the centralized platform, but what else?
</li>
</ol>
I do not have answers to these questions yet, but I would like to find them. C G Jung once said “To ask the right question is already half of the solution of a problem.”
Two bits of context I might add:
<ol>
<li>Some of these questions are extremely hard not only professionally (there is no playbook for this) but personally. It is not an overstatement to say that Gitcoin’s mission has been my a large part of my waking life since 2017, and I must admit that Gitcoin is a big part of my identity - The last time I left a project I cofounded &amp; scaled to millions of users I got <a href="https://owocki.com/on-identity/">extremely emo 35</a> about it, and I’m trying not to do the same this time. TLDR - this transition is hard for me!</li>
<li>I’m not going anywhere. I love this mission &amp; this DAO - and I’ll be here (in the role of Founder, but without wearing any CEO hat) as much as the DAO needs me.</li>
</ol>
Open to thoughts, either reply publicly below or DM me to share privately.

A DAO has no CEO Things are evolving fast at GitcoinDAO and our  impact is

A DAO has no CEO

Last edit: 7/2/2022
<h2>
<a name="tldr-1" href="#tldr-1"></a>TLDR</h2>
After discussing and incorporating <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/proposal-community-input-on-gitcoindao-s-draft-purpose-essential-intents/10662">community feedback 18</a>, this post confirms GitcoinDAO’s adopted Purpose and Essential Intent statements as ratified by CSDO on Tuesday June 14, 2022. Thanks to everyone who took the share their thoughts on these artifacts.
After the community feedback period ended on June 3rd, I summarized the feedback received and met with several CSDO representatives to discuss what should be incorporated. S/o to <a href="/u/gtchase">@GTChase</a>, <a href="/u/viriya">@Viriya</a>, <a href="/u/krrisis">@krrisis</a>, and <a href="/u/seanmac">@seanmac</a> for working through the feedback with me and supporting the editing process. Below you’ll find a summary of that feedback with justifications for and against editing language.
Our current Purpose &amp; Essential Intents statements are summarized below:
The Purpose of Gitcoin 
To empower communities to fund their shared needs.
The Essential Intents of Gitcoin
<ol>
<li>
Protocol Adoption
<ul>
<li>Build a widely adopted, modular Grants protocol that creates a flourishing ecosystem of funding mechanisms.</li>
<li>Build a widely adopted, modular Pluralism Passport protocol that creates a flourishing ecosystem of network effects around Decentralized Society.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Financial Sustainability
<ul>
<li>Have a comprehensive, diversified strategy for financial stability of the DAO in order to effectively achieve our mission.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
DAO Organization
<ul>
<li>Create and promote clear and engaging rituals, communication channels, and messaging that build emergent shared context among GitcoinDAO’s contributors, stewards, and supporters.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Grants Program Success
<ul>
<li>Enable a successful grants protocol launch by dogfooding it internally and supporting ecosystems in adopting it.</li>
<li>Continue to support the Ethereum ecosystem and public goods in web3 and beyond through Gitcoin-led rounds.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h2>
<a name="community-feedback-and-adopted-statements-2" href="#community-feedback-and-adopted-statements-2"></a>Community Feedback and Adopted Statements</h2>
<h3>
<a name="purpose-3" href="#purpose-3"></a>Purpose
</h3>
Community Feedback &amp; Summary of Changes: 
Feedback from the community contained the following major themes and questions:
<ol>
<li>Statement is too vague, broad, or uninspiring;</li>
<li>Should our values imbue the statement?</li>
<li>Should the DAO’s purpose center on supporting shared needs or creating impact?</li>
</ol>
CSDO adopted a simplified version of the DAO’s purpose statement that left in “shared needs”, but removed the reference to “build”. This statement is meant to guide the DAO’S direction over the course of the next 100 years, and though broad, there are plenty ways the DAO will evolve in that time. This statement gives the organization room to grow while acknowledging that our work enables communities to create impact for themselves. Finally, we think that by focusing on one active verb, the statement as a whole is clearer.
We think that the edit also addresses some contributor feedback that the purpose statement felt uninspiring, but recognize that some feedback is simply subjective. Either way, MMM is putting finishing touches on draft mission and vision statements that are the more appropriate artifacts to memorialize our aspirations as a DAO. Sean previewed some of that work <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/proposal-community-input-on-gitcoindao-s-draft-purpose-essential-intents/10662/7">here 22</a>.
<h3>
<a name="essential-intent-for-protocol-adoption-4" href="#essential-intent-for-protocol-adoption-4"></a>Essential Intent for Protocol Adoption
</h3>
Community Feedback &amp; Summary of Changes: 
The one comment we received focused on making explicit who should use GitcoinDAOs Grants protocol. We decided to leave the language the same because the protocol work is intended to be credibly neutral. The ethics or values that we wish to signal to the broader web3 community are more accurately captured in the work of our Grants Program (see essential intents below).
Another statement emerged in the comment section that sought to acknowledge Gitcoin Passport as a Grants Protocol essential intent. That protocol development is currently underway and a statement confirming that is included below.
<h3>
<a name="essential-intent-for-financial-sustainability-5" href="#essential-intent-for-financial-sustainability-5"></a>Essential Intent for Financial Sustainability
</h3>
Community Feedback &amp; Summary of Changes: 
Feedback on this essential intent called for a more explicit description of our financial strategy and a specific call out for the statement to include a commitment to more ‘effective spending’. Here again, CSDO decided to not change the language. Effective or focused spending is part of a diversified strategy and one of several strategies the workstream leads will engage over the next 12-18 months to support the DAO treasury.
<h3>
<a name="essential-intent-for-dao-organization-6" href="#essential-intent-for-dao-organization-6"></a>Essential Intent for DAO Organization
</h3>
Community Feedback &amp; Summary of Changes: 
Based on the feedback received, this intent was updated to signal the emergent (or bottoms-up) nature of our internal context sharing and how we would like our internal communications, rituals and messaging to develop.
Other comments to this essential intent focused on whether:
<ol>
<li>Our community should focus on influencing the ecosystem or improving our internal context sharing, and</li>
<li>This essential intent was an end in itself or in service of the other intentions listed.</li>
</ol>
We opted out of making additional changes to the language since we believe the intent stands on its own as important internal work we should push forward over the next year.
<h3>
<a name="essential-intent-for-grants-program-success-7" href="#essential-intent-for-grants-program-success-7"></a>Essential Intent for Grants Program Success
</h3>
Community Feedback &amp; Summary of Changes: 
After reviewing the comments, these statements were left as-is. The only feedback received for the here was that CSDO should include the definition of public goods in one of the statements. CSDO decided against this since the discourse around what qualifies as a public good is often a distraction from the important work of educating and growing the ecosystem while running successful grants rounds. My hope is that demonstrating why funding public goods is important will have the same (if not greater) influence on the ecosystem.
<h2>
<a name="finally-8" href="#finally-8"></a>Finally…</h2>
It’s really important to state here that this is a beginning, not an end. As GitcoinDAO grows, the essential work will change with it. With that said, we hope the statements provide all contributors a clear sense of the direction we’re all building toward.

Update: GitcoinDAO’s Adopted Purpose and Essential Intents  Last edit: 7/2/2022  
 
  TLDR 
 After discussing and incorporating

Update: GitcoinDAO’s Adopted Purpose and Essential Intents

hey all,
i’ve been giving an oral history of gitcoin to several new members of the DAO, and this post is meant to write it up once + for all - to share context at scale. 
here goes:
<h1>
<a name="an-incomplete-subjective-and-high-level-history-of-gitcoin-1" href="#an-incomplete-subjective-and-high-level-history-of-gitcoin-1"></a>an incomplete, subjective, and high level history of gitcoin</h1>
<h2>
<a name="pre-history-genesis-2008-2017-2" href="#pre-history-genesis-2008-2017-2"></a>pre-history &amp;&amp; genesis (2008 - 2017)</h2>
i went through <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VnlcosPZ94">techstars in 2008 24</a>. since then, i had been a cto, vp engineering, or generally a lead engineer at several startups in the <a href="https://www.techstars.com/">techstars 5</a> portfolio from 2008 - 2017.
during that time, i hired about 40 software engineers, and from that experience i had observed two things
<ol>
<li>everything i (or my colleagues) built was derived from open source software.</li>
<li><a href="https://owocki.com/recruiting/">recruiters add very little value, or are often negative value-add 28</a></li>
</ol>
during that time, i was an organizer of <a href="https://boulderdowntown.com/events/boulder-startup-week">Boulder Startup Week 4</a> - a one week celebration of entrepreneurship &amp; technology every May in Boulder Colorado. i ran the dev track in 2014, data science track in 2015, and then the “future of tech” track thereafter - mostly a hodgepodge of personal interests in frontier tech AI, virtual reality, machine learning, blockchain.
during that time, i was also experimenting with creating side projects in the "future of tech space. some of those projects are
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfA0n5BjiUg">a VR meditation app 6</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Uk3A8F6EU">a VR hunting app 4</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/owocki/pytrader">an AI-driven crypto trading app 6</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/Boulder-Blockchain/">the boulder blockchain meetup 3</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.wired.com/2015/12/kevin-owocki-adblock-to-bitcoin/">a tool called adblock-to-bitcoin 6</a></li>
<li>a tool called <a href="https://github.com/owocki/youvegoteth.github.io">youvegoteth 8</a>
</li>
<li>a brief stint with a blockchain-hedge fund</li>
<li>a <a href="https://github.com/owocki?tab=repositories">smattering of other projects 7</a>
</li>
<li><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/09/25/gitcoin-launches-today-pushing-open-source-forward-with-cryptocurrency-bounties/?sh=782d9e5e9853">the MVP of Gitcoin 30</a></li>
</ol>
by meticulously trying things (and failing) i stumbled upon the genesis of gitcoin - which would go on to be the most meaningful project of my career.
<h2>
<a name="h-2017-the-gitcoin-mvp-3" href="#h-2017-the-gitcoin-mvp-3"></a>2017 - the Gitcoin MVP</h2>
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/09/25/gitcoin-launches-today-pushing-open-source-forward-with-cryptocurrency-bounties/?sh=782d9e5e9853">the MVP of Gitcoin 30</a> was a bounties product that i self funded during this time of experimentation.
it was a tool that i (perhaps naively) felt could possibly solve these two problems i’d seen during my time as an engineering leader:
<ol>
<li>removing recruiters as an intermediary</li>
<li>funding Open Source Software.</li>
</ol>
i launched the MVP of gitcoin in the autumn of 2017, and i was able to convince <a href="https://media.consensys.net/gitcoin-joins-consensys-announces-pilot-projects-f5a0955de9d6">consensys to fund the project 19</a>.
i went to Devcon 3 in cancun, and started at Consensys in Autumn 2017.
<h2>
<a name="h-2018-experimentation-growth-4" href="#h-2018-experimentation-growth-4"></a>2018 - experimentation &amp; growth</h2>
joining Consensys was a point of stepwise growth for Gitcoin. we went from a project that me &amp; my friends in Colorado barely used to a project that had access to the top projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, and we went from a1 part-time team member to several full time members.
the acceleration provided to gitcoin by joining consensys was essential in <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/how-we-achieve-our-mission/8760">kickstarting the network effects 5</a> of our marketplace &amp; our community. i think, had i not joined consensys, gitcoin would have likely failed.
i’m extremely proud that our mission <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180812014855/https://gitcoin.co/mission">from the start 5</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/unicorn/status/994972927870357510">[1]</a> has remained consistent through the years to <a href="https://gitcoin.co/mission">today 2</a>. our mission is to grow &amp; sustain open source.
in 2017, we realized that bounties were not going to fully accomplish our mission. bounties resembled gig work, they were too transactional and not recurring so they offered no stability. they didnt match the way that many open source contributors worked. it was too transactional. we started experimenting with several different product areas - ethical ads (codefund), gitcoin labs, kudos, and gitcoin grants.
<h2>
<a name="the-beginning-of-the-bear-december-2018-march-2019-5" href="#the-beginning-of-the-bear-december-2018-march-2019-5"></a>the beginning of the bear (december 2018 - march 2019)</h2>
in december 2018, ETH had gone down 95% from $1.4k to $80.
consensys, which is rumoured to be funded by ETH holdings, began to tighten it’s belt. it was december 2018 that the <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2018/12/06/consensys-confirms-layoffs-projecting-13-of-staff-at-startups-to-be-cut/">reorganizations at consensys started 4</a>.
through the following 2 years, this introduced several existential questions about focus, business models, &amp; resources at consensys, gitcoin, and the broader ethereum ecosystem.
luckily - we were ahead of a lot of the other projects in the ethereum space. we had worked really hard looking for product market fit through the previous year, and luckily we were well positioned for the downmarket.
we are also really lucky that everyone in the ecosystem needed developers (even in a down market), and serving developers had been a core focus for Gitcoin for years.
we launched <a href="https://medium.com/gitcoin/the-ethereal-hackathon-4f5dc2eb56d6">gitcoin hackathons 9</a> which allowed us to show revenue &amp; growth at a time in which both of those things were really important at Consensys.
gitcoin grants, which had hereunto been a <a href="https://gitcoin.co/blog/eip-1337-subscriptions-launches/">subscriptoin service for funding public goods 5</a> and had seen 0 traction, pivoted to make <a href="https://wtfisqf.com/">Quadratic Funding 9</a> the centerpiece of gitcoin grants.
<a href="https://medium.com/gitcoin/gitcoin-grants-clr-matching-ecbc87b10038">gitcoin grants round 1 launched with a $25k matching pool 11</a> and was a <a href="https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1252807334570516484">resounding success 5</a>.
from there, we began focusing on growing gitcoin hackathons + gitcoin grants.
<h2>
<a name="the-long-bear-market-march-2019-january-2021-6" href="#the-long-bear-market-march-2019-january-2021-6"></a>the long bear market - (march 2019 - january 2021)</h2>
the next several years were a tooth &amp; nail fight for growth &amp; budget. we were like cockroaches, refusing to be exterminated by the long hard bear market.
these years were years of <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2012/06/14/the-struggle/">The Struggle 15</a>.
we made several hard decisions, including saying goodbye to people who didnt have the risk appetite for the bear market. and shutting down projects that we didnt see a future for (labs, codefund).
we promoted <a href="https://twitter.com/notscottmoore">scott moore 14</a> to cofounder &amp; partnerships lead. scott was an absolutely essential part of our success during this time + continues to be an essential part of our success today.
we focused relentlessly on growing gitcoin hackathons + gitcoin grants, and started to see a lot of success in doing so, with 30% growth Quarter over Quarter for much of this period.
during this time, my cofounder vivek singh <a href="https://defirate.com/gitcoin-kernel/">conceived of and launched KERNEL 7</a> - a web3 native accelerator &amp; university - a very successful new venture that continues to create dividends today.
during this time, we saw massive growth. and we survived. but we made several short term decisions driven by just wanting to survive.
we exited this period with a lot of technical debt + org debt. i know that i personally still have PTSD from this period.
<h2>
<a name="the-new-dawn-january-2021-april-2021-7" href="#the-new-dawn-january-2021-april-2021-7"></a>the new dawn (january 2021 - april 2021)</h2>
when the market turned from bearish to bullish, and our growth continued – things really turned around.
<a href="https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/04/30/round5.html">people in the know 3</a> had called us “establishing itself as a significant pillar of the Ethereum ecosystem” for a while, but i had failed to raise money for gitcoin during the long bear.
when janaury 2021 rolled around, all of a sudden, it seemed investors were actually really interested. we were able to <a href="https://decrypt.co/66541/ethereum-gitcoin-raises-11-million-spins-out-consensys">raise $11m from one of the top funds in the space 11</a> and spin out of Consensys to become an independent company called gitcoin holdings. in particular, i felt that <a href="https://www.paradigm.xyz/">paradigm 1</a> would be the most mission aligned funder that we could possibly work with - and that is why we chose them.
i will forever be thankful to the Mesh, especially Joe Lubin &amp; Michael Kriak for keeping us alive through the long bear, but it was now time to become independent &amp; pursue a new chapter for gitcoin.
it was now time to start making investments in paying down our debt from the long bear, and building towards realizing gitcoin’s ultimate potential.
<ul>
<li>we <a href="https://avc.com/2013/08/mba-mondays-turning-your-team/">turned the team 10</a> + exited a few people who were not a fit for this next chapter of our journey.</li>
<li>we hired a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylebweiss/">new leader 13</a> to run gitcoin’s operations, to enable vivek to focus more on KERNEL.</li>
<li>we brought on several new contributors who could help us transition from a scrappy <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_to_One">0 to 1 startup 1</a>, to one that was growing from 1 to 10</li>
<li>we quietly laid plans to turn Gitcoin into a DAO that was going to be governed by it’s community.</li>
</ul>
<h2>
<a name="just-dao-it-may-25-2021-8" href="#just-dao-it-may-25-2021-8"></a>just DAO it (May 25 2021)</h2>
May 25 2021 was a day that would change Gitcoin forever. It was the day that <a href="https://gitcoin.co/blog/introducing-gtc-gitcoins-governance-token/">we retroactively airdropped GTC to the community and launched GitcoinDAO 10</a>.
We believe “a government’s legitimacy and moral right to use state power is only justified and lawful when consented to by the people or society over which that political power is exercised.” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed#:~:text=In%20political%20philosophy%2C%20the%20phrase,that%20political%20power%20is%20exercised.">wikipedia 1</a>
We didnt want to build another web2 startup. The big idea behind launching the DAO was to make Gitcoin governed by its community.
The dream was to build GitcoinDAO into the vessel that could take us to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTU6J4WTPtk">Quadratic Lands 4</a>: a better world for public goods and digital democracy. A world where we’ve rewritten the laws of economic gravity to align value creation &amp; value capture, to solve <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpXPym_m_wA">coordination failures 3</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-sJSJecBbs">slay Moloch - the god of coordination failure 5</a>.
More on the Quadratic Lands vision here:<div><div><div></div></div><div><div><div><a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTU6J4WTPtk">Quadratic Lands | Proof of Knowledge</a></div></div></div></div>

<h2>
<a name="double-daown-on-the-dao-it-may-25-2021-present-9" href="#double-daown-on-the-dao-it-may-25-2021-present-9"></a>double DAOwn on the DAO it (May 25 2021 - present)</h2>
In the wake of the GTC launch, there were many many things that happened. A few notable ones:
We launched <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/">https://gov.gitcoin.co/ 13</a> and began the long path towards decentralizing Gitcoin.
During this time, several workstreams were proposed by the community &amp; subsequently launched.
Workstreams are the way work is organized in the DAO. Workstreams have their own budget, leadership structure, tools, and processes on a per-workstream basis. Anyone can propose a workstream by following the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-dao-governance-process-v2-updated/7860">proposal process 2</a>. The current active workstreams are:
<ol>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Moonshot-Collective-ffa78f44a0de412cb607f9b69d3a376f">Moonshot Collective 3</a> is the DAO rapid prototyping workstream</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Public-Goods-80a3202a3a244c65b3fda08c0f7c7d60">Public Goods 3</a> is focused on our mission of funding public goods.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Fraud-Detection-Defense-f1a2969a9f324f57a02ef69a60b25cae">Fraud Detection &amp; Defense 2</a> is in charge of preventing fraud on Gitcoin Grants.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/dGrants-c3197f918bf640bc9809cd26d56c93f3">Decentralize-gitcoin 4</a> is the mechanism through which Gitcoin is progressively decentralizing.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.notion.so/Merch-Memes-Marketing-c1bd89fac8ab4569bf2a676df28025d8">Memes, Merch, &amp; Marketing 4</a> is the DAO marketing division.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/proposal-integrate-dcompass-within-dgitcoin-to-build-dquests-dknowledge/8836">dCompass 5</a> - building DAO native orientation tool.</li>
</ol>
I wrote a post entitled the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-gitcoin-gitcoindao-egregore-is-emerging/8200">The GitcoinDAO Egregore is emerging 7</a>, all about the way thing were coming together.
New tools like <a href="https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1469283258617630723">decentralized Grants Alpha 4</a> and the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/introducing-steward-report-cards/8712">Steward Report Cards 3</a> launched.
Through this time, the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoins-orbit/8812">orbit 4</a> of Gitcoin remained <a href="https://gitcoin.co/mission">our mission 2</a>, but the DAO began to be a primary place for contributors to contribute to the mission.
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We began to really hit our stride in creating <a href="https://gitcoin.co/results">results</a> towards our mission.
Stats as of 12/15/2021:
<blockquote>
Since its <a href="https://media.consensys.net/gitcoin-joins-consensys-announces-pilot-projects-f5a0955de9d6">launch 19</a> in November 2017 , Gitcoin has helped 59,956 funders reach an audience of 262,688 earners. Gitcoin has facilitated 1,572,067 complete transactions to 9,700 unique earners.
</blockquote>
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<h2>
<a name="to-be-continued-2022-10" href="#to-be-continued-2022-10"></a>To be continued (2022+)</h2>
GitcoinDAO is still evolving &amp; emerging.
The future, <a href="https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1470081538981183488">in my opinion 4</a>, should continue our path towards more scale &amp; more decentralization.
We have gotten from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296">0 to 1 5</a>, and are turning the corner to go from 1 to 10 – and are beginning to set our sites on going from 10 to 100.
If you want to follow along with the latest, I invite you to read the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/search?q=gitcoindao%20digest">weekly GitcoinDAO Digests</a> or read the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/tldr-what-is-gitcoin-updated-dec-2021/8694">What is Gitcoin</a> post which I have been updating on a monthly basis.
<h2>
<a name="our-the-north-star-11" href="#our-the-north-star-11"></a>Our the north star.</h2>
while you’re here, you should checkout our latest discussion about the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-mission-vision/9421">Gitcoin Mission &amp; Vision 15</a>, especially this excellent proposed north star vision statement by <a href="/u/pop">@Pop</a> &amp; company.
<blockquote>
Gitcoin DAO builds for human thriving.
Gitcoin’s vision is to establish an empowering, open and collaborative space where individuals and communities can access resources in proportion to their value creation independent of their geographic location, education, background or offline identity.
By creating collaborative, decentralized funding mechanisms, Gitcoin has become the natural choice for seeding and supporting digital public goods. The DAO enables building for the public, by the public by helping individuals and communities start, fund, and scale open source projects.
</blockquote>

A brief history of Gitcoin from 2017 - 2022 hey all, 
 i’ve been giving an oral

A brief history of Gitcoin from 2017 - 2022

We have hit a point where we have five workstreams. I could probably put a qualifier on the front like, “main” or “core” workstreams as these workstreams have now come to include, at times, several smaller sub-workstreams from within them. I have a hypothesis that multi-sub-workstream structure is actually bad for governance, outcomes and accountability across the DAO as a whole. I would love to open the discussion on how others feels and if they have relevant experience from other DAOs (or opinions from those DAOs) on if my hypothesis is true or false.
Here is a quick breakdown for those less familiar. Within the five workstreams, there are potential “sub-workstreams” from my perspective:
<ol>
<li>DAO Ops has two potential sub-workstreams: community experience and operations</li>
<li>FDD has three potential sub-workstreams: sybil, ground control, Grants Investigation Agency</li>
<li>dGitcoin has two named sub-workstreams: dCompass and dGrants</li>
<li>MSC has two (likely more) sub-workstreams: prototypes and products</li>
<li>MMM has potentially four sub-workstreams: marketing, in-person events, Merch, Design/Memes</li>
</ol>
Here are some of the problems of this:
<ul>
<li>Workstreams have very large budgets that are hard to disambiguate which part of a workstream is being effective and which isn’t. For example, if the Operations crew in the DAO Ops workstream is not doing well, as a steward I can advocate to change that budget, but while we debate another sub-workstream is left in limbo with their fate tied to whole proposal.</li>
<li>Paying for areas of duplication is wasteful and often leads to a lack of shared learning and context</li>
<li>Workstreams may feel like defecting is cheaper and easier (ie, I don’t have to really work with the marketing group already in MMM or their design guidelines, I will just hire my own people and do my own thing and fragment the Gitcoin brand!)</li>
<li>Teams in workstreams become so large and exclusionary, they are difficult to enter as a new comer and even more difficult to work with as their norms and culture has become their own.</li>
</ul>
I see a natural solution to this is to try and maintain smaller workstreams such that their tasks and goals are straight forward, their funding is not tied to outcomes of others and that we focus on creating a culture of coordination and shared vision and shared reliance, with peer to peer accountability.
Right now, the Gitcoin DAO sometimes feels like Microsoft in this analogy (h/t <a href="/u/owocki">@owocki</a> for sharing this) 
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I see Future Gitcoin as being the better model here, with a mesh network and deep coordination. With smaller workstreams, each workstream is forced to coordinate, they are forced to ensure their peers are delivering and offer feedback when they are not (ie, if one group doesn’t deliver, we stop funding them and replace them instead of just creating a duplicative one to serve that need).
Smaller workstreams offer more clarity into funding and the outcomes being delivered without tying incentives together. As a steward, smaller workstreams will make budget reviews easier to go into and digest. Asking questions and digging in wont stop funding from flowing to other workstreams that are delivering.
Smaller workstreams create a culture of sharing and collaboration instead of silo`d information or empire building. They also bring about accountability through peer reviews. they are often more approachable (joining a large group as an outside is often smaller than joining a small group)
Workstreams become experts in specific areas and are relied on by many who need that service/support.
I would love thoughts from others. How do large/thick versus small/thin workstreams sound to you?

[Discussion] A hypothesis: Thin workstreams lead to better outcomes We have hit a point where

[Discussion] A hypothesis: Thin workstreams lead to better outcomes

Big change is upon us and the momentum is exciting. The DAO is working on <a href="https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0xd7e430bdbff261f3b32738e44f91efe85512f9a3359e38fa3c4c3c86f380b47e">formalizing structure</a> to take the charitable assets from Gitcoin Holdings, <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-grants-2-0/9981/13">Grants 2.0 1</a> vision and strategy are getting feedback and the first stage of execution has begun with dPopp development underway, and Gitcoin Product Group is working more closely with Moonshot Collective forming <a href="https://i.imgflip.com/66ckr5.jpg">Gitcoin Product Collective 6</a>.
We are in a critical phase of <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/grants-2-0-is-how-we-scale-our-impact/10015">building our muscle as an impact protocol DAO 2</a> and we need to form protocol product development teams that are aligned, resilient, empowered, and self-organizing. There is experience to be drawn from that’s both positive and <a href="https://thedefiant.io/joseph-delong-sushiswap-postmortem/">negative 3</a> while still very much being on a frontier.
Here are some early thoughts on where we might start to build the foundation for these teams:
<ul>
<li>Launch each core component of Grants 2.0 with cross-functional teams (minimum developers, UX/UI design, product management)</li>
<li>Partner with strategic partner, Focused Labs, who brings years of experience building high performing, self organizing software teams to accelerate greenfield development of Grants 2.0 and set teams up for success to scale</li>
<li>Take learnings from the early days of Moonshot Collective and iterate towards being able to scale the impacts of rapid prototyping by having an explicit <a href="https://medium.com/the-ready/the-operating-system-canvas-420b8b4df062">organizational operating system 4</a>
</li>
<li>Partner with DAOops to chart the tactical path for contributors to go from Holdings employees to DAO contributors without disruption to roadmap execution</li>
<li>Set OKRs for Szn 14 alongside all other workstreams </li>
<li>Start to run the Gitcoin Product Collective as a DAO workstream.</li>
</ul>
We think this might be a potential starting structure for this group:
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In which Gitcoin Product Collective becomes a meta-workstream that supports holding continuity across highly dependent teams while allowing for smaller, self-organizing groups oriented around deep protocol domains. The meta-workstream facilitates technology specific support in service of the small, agile teams: architecture leadership, unified product strategy, DAO steward communication (single, holistic budgeting), DevRel, generative research…… The meta-workstream also serves as the entry point for new ideas (that don’t have a clear home within an existing product domain) such that they can be incubated and given a soft-landing upon finding product-ecosystem fit.
This is potential near-future state:
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There are a number of remaining open questions/considerations:
<ul>
<li>Where does product marketing fit, meta or product team? Supported by MMM?</li>
<li>We need to make developers a first class citizen in the future, to enable people to build on top of Grants 2.0 - Tech writer for each team and/or a shared resource like DevRel?</li>
<li>dPopp is likely more of a utility we provide to the ecosystem and we desire it to be grown through open source contributions - should it become a workstream of it’s own or just get light, on-going support from the GPC?</li>
</ul>
Would love to hear thoughts and feedback on all of the above. Anyone particularly invested in the direction we take and interested in more real-time conversation, let us know in the comments.

Gitcoin Product Collective - how to map software teams to workstreams Big change is upon us

Gitcoin Product Collective - how to map software teams to workstreams

As we’ve taken a more intentional approach in figuring out sustainable engagement in governance, we’ve come across a few clarifying questions recently about what is in fact expected of Stewards, and so this post is designed to canonically answer that.
On the surface, Stewards are in charge of listening to their constituents, evaluating and 
voting on proposals. But the level of responsibility tends to go much deeper - Stewards are where the buck stops for GitcoinDAO. They are the protectors of the legitimacy of the DAO, they are responsible for keeping the DAO on track to accomplish its mission, and they are final enforcers of responsibility for everyone working on the GitcoinDAO’s mission"
Tangibly - a minimum threshold of steward duties are:
<ol>
<li>actively listening to their constituents (continuously - through own means/via the gov forum)</li>
<li>follow what’s going on <a href="http://gov.gitcoin.co">gov.gitcoin.co 2</a> (~1x/week to keep on top of current events)</li>
<li>attend the monthly stewards call (1x/month) - <a href="https://www.addevent.com/calendar/pz351122">you can add the GD event calendar here 4</a>
</li>
<li>participate in the steward council once it gets ratified and if you are part of it (reviewed and renewed every quarter) + take actions outlined in the council meeting (1x/month) - <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/introducing-the-steward-council/9485">more info here 5</a>
</li>
<li>should stewards come across conversations relevant to the GD mission/or where GD could help, bring the DAO into the conversation</li>
</ol>
As stewards’ duties evolve over time, the plan is to update this post so it will always be a canonical source of truth for stewards to understand their responsibilities and more importantly, encourage newcomers in GD to engage in the governance process.
Please feel free to comment, acknowledge or discuss the range of duties and add any other relevant ones that you may have taken on or observed as beneficial within the ecosystem.

GD Steward Roles & Duties As we’ve taken a more intentional approach in figuring out sustainable

GD Steward Roles & Duties

Hey all,
Did you know that Gitcoin’s been focused on funding open source since it’s start in 2017?
Here is a fun little visual overview of how we’ve represented that mission.
(Many of these can be <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211201000000*/gitcoin.co/mission">independently viewed on archive.org 4</a> or <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=gitcoin&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiLtpS3ksH2AhUoFzQIHUcjC3UQ_AUoA3oECAEQBQ&amp;biw=1309&amp;bih=602&amp;dpr=2.2">google images</a>.)
<h1>
<a name="h-2017-1" href="#h-2017-1"></a>2017</h1>
In 2017, we stated our mission as Push Open Source Forward. 
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Checkout our launch video from 2017!
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJartWzDn0E"> 5</a>
And also this launch article that I somehow got published in Forbes (today we get free press because of our <a href="https://gitcoin.co/results">impact 1</a> - back then no one was writing about us unless i worked hard to get their attention!): 
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtissilver/2017/09/25/gitcoin-launches-today-pushing-open-source-forward-with-cryptocurrency-bounties/?sh=7e51b6449853"></a>
<h1>
<a name="h-2018-2" href="#h-2018-2"></a>2018</h1>

In 2018, we evolved it to focus more on Open Source. This was a recognition that open source didnt need a “push”. It needed to grown - cultivated, like a garden. 
You start to see more tree/plant based iconography during this era. (<a href="https://store.gitcoin.co/collections/classic-tees">hey btw did you know that classic gitcoin tees are still for sale??!?</a>)
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<h1>
<a name="h-2019-3" href="#h-2019-3"></a>2019</h1>
In 2019, during the <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/the-great-bear-the-great-reset-the-great-revival/9855/2">great bear</a>, we focused on articulating our view of the world + what web3 could do.
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<h1>
<a name="h-2020-4" href="#h-2020-4"></a>2020</h1>
A further articulation of our values (or… probably more likely… what I as founder/CEO wanted our values to be - in hindsight, we never did a good job of building consensus around them)
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<h1>
<a name="h-2021-5" href="#h-2021-5"></a>2021</h1>
In 2021, we revamped <a href="http://gitcoin.co/mission">gitcoin.co/mission</a> to look like this:
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These values were pulled out of our heads (the Gitcoin Holdings team) by the great minds at <a href="https://otherinter.net/">Other Internet 2</a> (thanks <a href="/u/toby">@Toby</a> !). Take a look at how they helped us arrive at this position <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uoEQusN2hUBpfqMtua_DqYkr_VUhtsUjVOIzDioRngs/edit#slide=id.p">here 3</a>.
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<h1>
<a name="h-2022-dao-articulation-of-mission-6" href="#h-2022-dao-articulation-of-mission-6"></a>2022 / DAO articulation of mission</h1>
As of late 2021 and 2022, as the DAO has grown legs of it’s own, it has started to build consensus about what it’s mission is. <a href="https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-mission-vision/9421">Checkout this post to see a draft of that mission statement 4</a>
Here is how <a href="https://primer.gitcoindao.com/">https://primer.gitcoindao.com/ 2</a> (a tool built by the MMM workstream) visualizes those values/mission
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<h1>
<a name="weve-always-been-mission-first-7" href="#weve-always-been-mission-first-7"></a>We’ve always been Mission-first</h1>
I am very proud that Gitcoin through all of the years &amp; all of the changes to tactics, has always been focused on the same north star. As our momentum has grown, we’ve cartographied the territory more, &amp; our hearts have opened further, it has even expanded from Open Source to other public goods.
This is a progression I see: 
From Open Source Funding &gt; Open Source Funding &amp; Public Goods Funding &gt; Funding Public Goods as a means to create Human Thriving
I also see a progression from 
Kevin aritculates our mission/values =&gt; Other Internet helps us articulate our mission/values with Gitcoin Holdings =&gt; GitcoinDAO articulates its mission/values through its own means.
I’d be curious how else the community would like to see this mission articulated into the future.a

TLDR - What is Gitcoin? [Aug 2022]