Gitcoin, an open source software financing platform, has announced that it will shift its focus from financing public goods to improving the grant infrastructure designed for the Ethereum ecosystem.
Since its launch in May 2021, Gitcoin’s organizational hierarchy has been relatively flat, with no CEO calling the shots. Workstreams, or focused groups dedicated to specific tasks or projects within the organization, always require budgets to be approved through community votes – an often time-consuming process.
However, as the DAO evolved, it shifted from an impact-oriented organization to something more technology-focused. Gitcoin director Kyle Weiss told Blockworks in an interview that this did not fit well with the existing DAO structure.
“It was too disjointed,” Weiss said. “In a DAO environment where everyone is completely remote, we have people contributing from almost every continent – stability, operations and software development are very important, you need a core group of individuals who have context.”
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As part of the new restructuring plan, two business units have been formed within Gitcoin. One unit will focus on coordinating product-specific work, while a subDAO will manage community and governance matters.
Weiss noted that the company has experimented with different products over the years. He said some of these were distractions, while others were valuable for its growth.
“A large part of 2024 will be dominated by subsidies. We want Gitcoin to be much more associated with subsidies, whereas our story right now is about financing public goods, and that shift comes because we have evolved from an impact organization to a technology organization,” Weiss said.
For this reason, Weiss explained that the DAO will move from independent workflows to a structure more akin to a “Labs” structure. This is something that is common among existing protocol development teams, similar to how Uniswap has Uniswap Labs or how Optimism partners with OP Labs.
“We want to ensure that there is stability on the software development side and then give the DAO material areas of work,” he said.
Weiss says that by giving software development teams more leadership and more defined decision-making authority, the community can stay focused on achieving results through the grant programs via token voting.
“I don’t know if the token holders are the right people to decide multi-year roadmap decisions on the technology side,” Weiss said.
Gitcoin co-founder Kevin Owocki shared this sentiment.
“DAOs have not been proven to be able to develop software, so the Labs team is designed to recognize that in our organizational structure and ensure we are building world-class software.”