Gitcoin and Championing Public Goods on the Open Web

Public goods in the physical world are rights to clean air, drinking water, free education, and law enforcement––goods and services that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Typically, public goods receive funding from taxpayers and government grants as they aim to benefit every person that resides in that jurisdiction. Translating the idea of funding public goods to the internet is a much more difficult task as there is not one single entity to rule them all, especially with a decentralized, open-source web. Closed source projects are private goods since they are rivalrous and excludable. Web3 is encouraging a massive shift towards open-source projects and Gitcoin is a crucial piece in getting those off the ground in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Gitcoin: A Brief Introduction

Founded in 2017 by Kevin Owocki, Vivek Singh, and Scott Moore, Gitcoin launched as a Consensys portfolio project focused on creating a platform to pay open-source software programmers. After years of development, Gitcoin raised a $11.3 million funding round led by Paradigm which enabled the company to independently spinout from ConsenSys as an independent entity.

Gitcoin is a platform focused on providing funding and grants to the development of the open web and empowering developers to build public goods for the internet. In the digital space, this means products on public technology, public blockchains (e.g. Ethereum), free education, newsletters, services, and privacy. Gitcoin has four major ways that it tackles this initiative as it empowers the web3 community (especially developers) to earn, learn, connect, and fund:

Earn: Get paid while contributing to open-source projects

Learn: Participate in hackathons and other projects to build web3 knowledge

Connect: Get involved with the broader web3 developer community