As promised, here is our user guide for Gitcoin. This is for those who want to participate in the Gitcoin voting process.
We also created a LINKGitcoin guide for buildersLINK, if you wish to apply for this round, you only have one day left! If you are a builder that might be interested in applying in the future, make sure you check it out. There’s also useful information for projects looking to maximise their received donations.
If you find this article useful we would really appreciate you taking the time to check out our own funding page. We are comitted to making Metis accessible to everybody and onboarding the next wave of crypto users onto Metis. Every dollar donated will be put to great use.
What is Gitcoin and why should I care?
Gitcoin is a platform that helps facilitate early investment for projects through “quadratic funding” (more on this below). Metis has partnered with Gitcoin to introduce a new format for projects seeking their first funding.
From what we’ve learned through extensive study of the LINKMetis announcementLINK and consultation with several professors in buzzword linguistics; this will be a required step for most projects that wish to receive Metis funding of any sort.
Key data for round 1:
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- Application deadline:
13th of September, as you’ll notice this has overlap with the voting period, so getting yours in early is probably better.
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- Voting/donation dates:
Between the 10th and the 26th of September, 2024
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- Total matched funding:
Metis has stated they will make a total of $100k in Metis available; no project will be able to receive more than 10% ($10k) in matched funding.
What?! I have to donate MY money!?
Understandably some people are put off from participating because the voting is through a donation mechanism.
We totally get this.
BUT
You can still make your voice heard for as little as $1. Gitcoin uses quadratic funding to match your donation. We dive into quadratic funding below, but basically; every wallet that donates anything will increase the total grant amount that project receives.
This means that your small donation could be matched many times over.
We break down this, and all the other important information, below in the Voting alpha/FAQ section, for those who wish to maximise the impact of their votes.
What the hell is quadratic funding?
Quadratic funding is a way to make grant allocation more decentralized. Users “vote” through donating to project’s grant pools. The equation used to calculate a project’s grant amount takes into account both the money amount AND the number of wallets that donated.
We get the impression that the actual formula for calculating just how much impact each side of the equation has is a secret. Below, however, is an example provided by Gitcoin themselves (check source link for more):
“The final distribution of funds is calculated by using the quadratic funding formula, where the number of contributions matters more than the amount contributed.” – https://www.wtfisqf.com/
How to vote:
Voting is super easy. Here’s a step by step guide on how to participate.
Step 1: Go to site and connect.
Head over to https://explorer.gitcoin.co/ and find Metis Ecosystem QF
OR
Simply go to https://explorer.gitcoin.co/#/round/1088/8
Connect the wallet you wish to donate with.
Step 2:
Browse through the projects, you can click on them to read their proposal and find out what they’re about. These projects spent a lot of time putting these together; consider giving them a few minutes of your attention.
Step 3:
Any project you wish to donate to you’ll want to “add to cart”.
You can do this either on the project page itself on the top right, or alternatively, you can add a project from the Metis Ecosystem QF page by hitting the cart symbol.
Step 4:
Go to your cart. You can find it in the top right corner on both PC and mobile.
Here you can decide how much you want to donate to each of the projects in your cart. The minimum, in order to have an impact is $1 (currently 0.033 $METIS).
You can either select an amount for each separate project or, alternatively, you can enter an amount at the top and “apply to all”.
You’ll be able to see an estimation of how much matched funding your donation will receive; this is based on a number of factors. We break down everything we know about this in the Voting alpha/FAQ below.
Step 5:
Hit “submit your donation!” and sign the transaction.
Pat yourself on the back, you just help make Metis a better place.
Voting Alpha/FAQ
For those wishing to maximise the impact of their donations or projects hoping to help swing things their way, here is everything we’ve uncovered through playing with the Quadratic Funding system and attending relevant spaces.
What is the minimum I can donate?
There is technically no minimum, but in order for your donation to be “matched”, it will need to be at least a dollar.
Can I donate from multiple wallets?
Gitcoin have stated that they have very robust #sybil detection#. Our understanding is that if a project is detected trying to game the system that they may face penalties. We would recommend not doing this.
How is the matched amount worked out?
So as stated above we don’t know the exact equation. It is based on the total amount of donations, and the number of donating wallets. Therefore, smaller donations are matched at a much higher % than larger ones. How many wallets have already donated to a project and how much they’ve donated will impact how much matching your donation receives.
So, for instance:
Here is an example of three projects with their fundraising stats at the time. As you can see, even though the same amount was donated to each, it has a larger impact when the project already has a higher amount of funds raised. This, however, is much more weighted towards the bottom end; as you can see, Growthepie’s matching is not that far off the Vesta matching.
We played around with this a lot with different donation amounts to different projects. Some key takeaways were:
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- Projects with higher prior funding tend to receive lower additional matched funding for new donations. This suggests that the system prioritizes projects with less prior funding to allocate matching funds more evenly.
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- Projects with more contributors get higher matches (we knew this already).
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- There appears to be a baseline of at least 2 contributors to receive any funding at all.
Are there any other contributing factors to how much matched funding my donation receives?
One suggestion we received from Gitcoin themselves in a Twitter space was that wallets that donate to multiple projects get a higher matched amount. We couldn’t replicate this via the estimated matched funding amounts, but given that they are estimates (and that Gitcoin likely want to hide the exact formula) it is possible that factors like are added in to the actual figure, and just not the estimate.
Conclusion
We highly encourage all Metisians to take part in this process. If you want to see Metis become the best L2 (and more importantly pump your bags) then take this opportunity to have a say in its future. For as little as $1 you can help shape our network.
If you found this article useful we would really appreciate you taking the time to check out our own funding page. We are comitted to making Metis accessible to everybody and onboarding the next wave of crypto users onto Metis. Every dollar donated will be put to great use.
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