Top 5 Gitcoin grants to support for #GR15
There’s a ton of grants, heres 5 that stood out to me for long-term impact
Disclaimer: I wrote one of the grant proposals,
Ethereum for Environmental Intelligence
by curvelabs.eu
Through this grant, Curve Labs seeks to answer the following research questions:
🐸 Who are the industry players at the different layers of the blockchain ‘environmental intelligence stack,’ and which use cases are they most interested in? That is, who is actively pursuing solutions in cyber-physical blockchain systems, who is pursuing adaptive governance and regenerative finance solutions, and which actors are interested in financing further research and/or funding pilot experiments?
🦋 What is the minimum viable embedded sensor network or EI protocol we can use to monitor and valuate the health of a forest or bioregion as a complementary currency? Which system inputs offer the most leverage for translating economic interventions into meaningful ecological state change?
🍃 Finally, we believe now is the time to begin to build a network of EI-blockchain experts and enthusiasts, and will steer/cultivate this discourse within the broader Token Engineering community.
Curve Labs is a team of design and development interventionists architecting distributed solutions for the future economy. We tackle systemic challenges of the Anthropocene by creating, combining, and integrating modular open-source technologies to form organizations more than the sum of their parts ➰
Why I Picked it
Good looks, and a serious concept. While I personally would choose a cheaper chain for this medium, the idea of tracking state changes off-chain is interesting, and could be shared through a public API.
Provable Democracy
Provable Democracy is a way to explore technical and social solutions to enable verified human participation in any collective, in web3 and beyond. I thank you for your support as we continue discovering + working on solutions.
tldr: Help fund the publication + distribution of Provable Democracy, a free ebook. We’ll also keep producing open-source code to make concepts come to life.
Problem: How can we evolve Democracy through Web3?
Problem Narrative
When we think of the algorithms running web3, we think of PoW, PoS, DPoS. These are what keeps us in enough agreement over network state that we place trust in our financial transactions. But are these algorithms applicable to a social perspective?
I would say no, not really. And they don’t have to be. Producing blocks that secure a state across a network is different than deciding on legal policy that secures the life, liberty and property of a nation. They show the technology is here + accepted, but who will develop the social systems that will affect our grandkids? What groups will implement them? And what is a social system anyway?
The shining social system is Democracy, a concept that has changed with the times from clay pots to representation systems. We are no longer bound by time in communication, or distance in representation, so it stands to reason that we’re already going through a revolution in democracy, from Gitcoin, to DPoS, to DAOs.
Democracy is often linked to politics and governance, but today, some of the most impactful decisions are our interactions that drive the algorithms that determine what content is shown to hungry minds scrolling their phones. If only we knew how these algorithms made their decisions.
Solution: Define key primitives + functions needed for democratic systems to develop in unique ways.
Hibiscus DAO — Fashion DAO
Enabling Profit Redistribution + Community Ownership
Hibiscus recently created the first ever on-chain profit redistribution contract for garment production — redistributing profits from FWB merch sales to supply chain participants.
Hibiscus is looking to build on this by onboarding sewers, pattern makers, printers & other workers from the garment industry who are “stuck” working for a factory with no access to profit redistribution — giving them ownership over the value they create.
Building cryptographic profit sharing into our tooling enables the creator economy for apparel production by retaining and redistributing the value created in making and wearing apparel.
Building a Transparent Supply Chain
Create open source, end-to-end apparel production supply chain + tech infrastructure that allows creators to easily create new garments on existing bases — via on chain portfolios that can forked, remixed, and recombined.
Creating “Proof of Ethical Production” Oracles
Eventually, we want to create a system of producing clothes that uses consensus-driven blockchain technology to verify products are being made ethically.
Why I picked it
This one was personal. I teach about selling clothes you designed on the internet through Print on Demand, so I think it’s important that we know where these clothes come from. Also, I really want a web3 solution that would enable me to design something, upload the files, and have a third party (perhaps organized through this grant) facilitate the printing and shipping of the product in the most transparent way possible.
Jolocom — Self Soverign Identity
by jolocom.io
Some of you already know us from around the ‘decentralized’ block. Jolocom has been supporting and driving the mission of Self-sovereign Identity since 2014. We are a founding member of DWeb, INATBA, Bundesblock and also long-time supporters and active members of DIF, the IIW and W3C. We joined the Gitcoin-Community in early 2022, together with our friends from DWeb and the Internet Archive.
Jolocom is committed to upholding the principles of SSI and has developed a fully open-source tech stack to that end, consisting of a library, an SDK and Smart Wallet for end users. During the infancy of digital identity, this has brought us to the forefront of development houses in Germany and Europe and also to the attention of regulators and lawmakers. Among other things, we are the chosen tech providers in three quarters of the German government’s Secure Digital Identity showcase projects.
Now, though, we are seeing the mature phase of digital identity approaching: by end of 2023, every EU citizen will be asked to hold an “identity wallet.” But will that identity be Self-Sovereign? In other words, will citizens and users finally be in control of their own identity data or will it be under the control of a monopolistic centralized authorities or oligopolistic federated actors?
Why I Picked It
If the EU is implementing digital identities, the work of Jolcom is an important check in the balance of power.
Proof of Humanity
Proof of Humanity
We are distributing the $UBI
A common problem on the internet is the lack of sybil-resistant identity systems. Users can generally create multiple accounts using different pseudonyms (or address in the case of crypto-networks) to receive rewards multiple times, bias votes, write multiple fake reviews, etc.
Proof of Humanity, a system combining webs of trust, with reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans.
Why I Picked it
First off, this project has raised a lot more than the others, so keep that in mind. I chose POH because I’ve been aware of it for years, and went through the process back in 2020. At the time, it seemed the best implementation of social verification. They are still going, and it looks like Growing.
In closing, there’s always a lot of clutter in the grant space. I encourage you to support the grants that represent the change you wish to see in the world. Also consider whether you want to support a project that is just starting out, or a well-established project. Look at the work they have already done, in papers, apps, code, and users. And consider what projects already have received funds, and what they need to complete their mission.
If you want to see more democratic solutions on-chain, I think that’s great, and I invite you to support my Provable Democracy grant proposal.
Note: Main texts were pulled from the github proposal pages, be sure to click through to see the latest update to each Grant proposal
