Why does Quadratic Funding through Gitcoin Grants matter?

Gitcoin Grants gives the community an opportunity to help focus where funds are directed. This directly impacts how builder cycles are allocated. When community members send funds to a grant they are signalling their support for it, becoming a voice and a vote for its importance. Their participation determines how much of the match fund a grant receives, and because of QF, their vote has a quadratic impact.

The Round 10 Preference Map. Each Node is a project or a person, and each edge is a funding transaction.

Gitcoin Grants supports open web development, but beyond that, we view Gitcoin Grants as a vital experiment in Quadratic Funding. Testing QF is important because we believe it is the optimal way of funding public goods in a democracy, and could become a major approach to allocating public resources this decade and beyond.

Each round offers more opportunity for our community to learn and test the system together, while the stakes get increasingly higher as the rounds become more successful. That is why it’s crucial as part of our quarterly Grants Round cadence to take pause and reflect on all aspects of the round — the accomplishments and challenges. In doing so, we learn how to better support the community in improving the integrity in the system and the transparency in the process.