Gitcoin, an Ethereum-focused crowdfunding platform that has distributed $38MM in funding to date, plans to wind down its centralized grants (cGrants) platform and fully transition to a decentralized one, starting with "Alpha test season". Alpha test season was launched in partnership with UNICEF and the L1 blockchain Fantom. The new protocol enables (1) funders to set up a grants program anytime; (2) grantees to apply across different rounds; and (3) donors to provide micro-funding.
The Alpha Round, which will run from January 17 to January 31, is a quadratic funding round that will support 200 grantees working on open source, Ethereum infrastructure, and climate solutions with a $1MM total matching pool. Quadratic funding uses a collection of assets to match donations from the community. The funds mobilized to match donations diminish as donations increase, boosting the impact of smaller donors.
Decentralized funding, especially via a dedicated protocol, is an evolution of the crowdfunding ideas built over the last decade. In Web3, investment DAOs raise funds from its members and invest them on behalf of the members in different projects. For example, (1) take DAO.vc, which has created a marketplace of crypto startups for investors to fund, or (2) BitDAO, which supports a broad range of DeFi projects.
Ethereum software company Consensys has launched a private testnet of its EVM-compatible rollup powered by zero-knowledge proofs (i.e., zkEVM), implying a potential public launch later this year. The point of a zero-knowledge proof is to transmit knowledge without revealing the content of that knowledge — e.g., counterparties signal to one another that their transactions are not fraudulent without revealing any additional details.
In November, Consensys announced it had opened testnet registrations for its own zkEVM project and launched a private beta testnet for its zkEVM in mid-December. The company has now started to onboard users to a private testnet of its zkEVM for those on its whitelist. After transitioning to a PoS consensus mechanism, the Ethereum community is shifting its focus to scaling performance and lowering fees via rollups. Rollups compress transaction data through sequencers, which bundle transactions into a rollup batch and then submit a proof to the base layer of Ethereum.
