A 2024 Retrospective & Vision Forward: Gitcoin x Arbitrum

General
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Key Takeaways:

  • Gitcoin has deployed $4.75M in funding on Arbitrum in 2024, with $3.67M from our matching fund: gitcoin.eth
  • Received ~350K ARB across two grants, fully reallocated or used for active governance
  • Expanding beyond QF with milestone-based grants, retro funding, and custom builds
  • Actively seeking community input on pilot programs and specialized grants

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Hello Arbitrum Community,

I’m the Head of Grants at Gitcoin. I’d like to review our relationship with Arbitrum throughout 2024—clarifying our contributions to the ecosystem and outlining our vision for continued collaboration.

Why this post?

Numerous discussions have revealed some confusion about Gitcoin’s role and contributions. We hope this post provides clarity and a roadmap for the future.

Our Investment in the Arbitrum Ecosystem

At ETHDenver 2024, following the sunsetting of PGN (Gitcoin’s previous L2 initiative), we had to choose where to anchor our future grant operations, particularly for GG20, a landmark round for our renewed focus on open source software. We chose Arbitrum as both a network and a long-term strategic partner. Our shared ethos—a commitment to Ethereum infrastructure, scaling solutions, and public goods—made this a natural fit.

Early engagement with Arbitrum occurred through intermediaries like Thrive (formerly Plurality Labs). While this arrangement yielded positive outcomes, it also introduced complexity in communication and accountability, leading to misunderstandings in recent conversations with DAO stakeholders.

Throughout 2024, we demonstrated our commitment by making all OSS Gitcoin Grants rounds run on Arbitrum, and, more importantly, we encouraged our ecosystem partners and community rounds to deploy on Arbitrum.

2024 Impact: A Picture of Contributions

From January through December 2024, we facilitated 372,846 transactions on Arbitrum, with a total ecosystem impact of $4.75 million distributed through two main channels:

Primary Distribution Channels

The link below shows you the data for all grant rounds Gitcoin ran in 2024 for all chains. The link is from RegenData, and you must register for an account to access it.

https://app.regendata.xyz/dashboard/9-allo-usage-in-2024-indexer

Community Participation Breakdown

  • $277K USDC equivalent in direct community donations across all Gitcoin Grants rounds on Arbitrum, including main program OSS rounds (GG20, GG21, GG22) and partner ecosystem rounds

Arbitrum Support Recognition

The Arbitrum ecosystem did provide some funding directly to Gitcoin via Thrive. For our work in GG20, we received 200K in ARB tokens, which we’ve used to participate actively in governance through delegation.

Looking Forward

As we enter 2025, we aim to build scalable funding infrastructure for Arbitrum beyond quadratic funding. Based on discussions with delegates and community members, this infrastructure would include:

  • Direct Grants: Targeted support for infrastructure, protocols, or community-driven initiatives
  • Retro Funding: Rewarding impact, such as successful launches or developer tooling that benefits the ecosystem
  • Novel Mechanisms: Building custom allocation frameworks that meld into Arbitrum’s data and governance infrastructure and promote data-driven decision-making

We have closely followed the incentives detox discussions and understand the landscape as Arbitrum moves into its next phase of ecosystem programs – specifically in facilitating efficient and data-driven decision-making and accountability. As an allocation partner, we can provide value through:

  • Products: Building integrated tools for Arbitrum to launch and manage a variety of distribution strategies
  • Best Practices: Sharing our experience and collaborating with experts to design the next generation of programs suited to Arbitrum’s mission and goals.
  • Collaboration: We want to work directly with Arbitrum stakeholders to build tools that deliver real value for your ecosystem. While we bring experience from other ecosystem programs, we believe the best solutions will come from partnerships with the community

Continued Commitment to Growth

While we’re excited about these new avenues for collaboration, our core commitment to supporting builders through Gitcoin Grants remains strong through a new multi-mechanism future. Heading into 2025, $4M+ is already allocated for Gitcoin Grants rounds on Arbitrum, underscoring our long-term investment in the ecosystem.

While these numbers demonstrate our commitment to Arbitrum, this is just the beginning. Share your thoughts or reach out directly to discuss how we can help address your ecosystem’s needs.

Thank you for your continued engagement as we work to build a stronger, more direct partnership with the Arbitrum community.

6 Likes
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Thank you, Sov, for creating this post. A Gitcoin partnership has definitely boosted Arbitrum’s reputation. Gitcoin is a gateway to web3 for many builders, including myself. :wink:

It’s great to hear that funds are already being allocated on Arbitrum for this year’s rounds, but I’d like to know more about your ideas on how the DAO could support you. At the DAO, we don’t actively consider expanding partnerships with Gitcoin unless something concrete is posted on the forum, like a proposal. Do you have some concrete ideas already?

If you’d like to brainstorm ideas with delegates, I suggest joining one of our governance calls to open up the discussion. I’m sure many delegates would have ideas and opinions on strengthening our partnership or some concrete ideas that we could do together. What do you think?

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Thank you for the response!

The primary purpose of this post was to provide clarity around our contributions to date and highlight our commitment to the Arbitrum ecosystem. I’ve been having productive conversations with several delegates about how we might support Arbitrum’s ecosystem funding programs with our tooling expertise.

For the immediate future, we’re focused on being considered as an allocation partner for the proposals that will be forthcoming from the incentives detox.

I’d be happy to join an upcoming governance call and do plan to attend more of these moving forward as my availability permits!

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Thanks for sharing this detailed overview of Gitcoin’s work on Arbitrum @Sov! Really helpful and encouraging to see the specific numbers to understand the impact Gitcoin has had on the ecosystem.

Particularly excited about the new funding mechanisms you’re exploring beyond quadratic funding, as outlined in your 2025 strategy, and looking forward to seeing what you accomplish this year!

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Thank you for sharing this retrospective on the impact of the Gitcoin x Arbitrum collaboration in 2024. Gitcoin is an incredible tool, and it’s clear from these numbers that the collaboration has significantly benefited the Arbitrum ecosystem.

I’m happy to see this collaboration continuing into 2025, and I’m particularly interested in the plans for retroactive funding and novel mechanisms to promote data-driven decision-making. These approaches hold a lot of potential for ensuring impactful and efficient resource allocation.

As for direct grants with a specific focus on infrastructure, protocols, or community-driven initiatives, I believe this is a worthwhile direction. However, it’s worth noting that there might be some overlap with other grants-related initiatives within the Arbitrum ecosystem, such as the Arbitrum D.A.O. and the Arbitrum Foundation grants program. Ideally, we’d want these complementary initiatives to work together to maximize impact and avoid redundancy.

Could you share more about how this initiative differs from or complements the other efforts? It would be helpful to understand how coordination between these programs can drive even greater value for the ecosystem.

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Thank you for this feedback.

We want to focus on providing infrastructure and tooling to support and enhance all of Arbitrum’s funding initiatives. Rather than running a separate grants program, we aim to build tools to help the DAO and (maybe) the Foundation make better decisions and manage their distributions more effectively.

For example, analytics (like Open Source Observer) could help track impact across all Arbitrum ecosystem programs, while our distribution tools could support various funding mechanisms - from milestone-based grants to retroactive funding.

We see ourselves as potential infrastructure providers rather than a competing grants program. This visual from a recent proposal from @Entropy sums it up nicely!

image
image982×550 96.3 KB

1 Like