About Gitcoin (GTC)

The Gitcoin platform incentivizes collaboration on open-source software projects deemed crucial to innovation within blockchain, shared protocols and the accelerating movement toward a more decentralized internet.

"Many developers who contribute to open-source projects do so with little to no direct compensation because the software is by nature free and open,"

Cryptopedia explains. "Gitcoin was created to help compensate developers who want to contribute to meaningful open-source software applications."

Project "owners" post job details alongside "bounties" as well as "hackathons," attracting likeminded developers who are in turn get funded by a community of donors bound by GTC, Gitcoin's ERC20 governance token.

Summarizing GTC, CoinGecko describes its ongoing transition to being administered by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) that actually would strive to function eventually as "DAO of DAOs" to oversee the overseers of myriad public goods projects under the banner of Web 3.0 development.

"Grants, treasury management and dispute resolutions will be decentralized and managed by the DAO," CoinGecko said.

The key to the platform is a system known as quadratic funding, described by Messari as a democratic mechanism to fund public goods.

Funds/projects are matched according to a proprietary formula that rewards those projects garnering the most support within the community. For example, a grant that receives a huge sum from a single donor would not get as much in matched funds as, say, the grant that attracted a greater number of smaller individual donations.

Projects create grants which begin the process of connecting expertise and funding; developers seek out projects for which they are best suited; benefactors can fund projects that they deem beneficial to the Web 3.0 ecosystem. This can be described as a two-sided payment in that something needed for everybody gets built, so everyone benefits; and the builders get paid.

"Web3 technology like open source protocols and decentralized blockchains give us the ability to take that co-creation to a new scale," Gitcoin said. "The community uses this technology to fund and build digital public goods projects that serve everyone, and solve our most immediate problems."

Project-hosted hackathons not only allow builders to earn rewards but also become a way to network with best-in-class peers, Messari said.

Who created GTC?

Gitcoin was founded within ConsenSys by a Boulder, Colorado-based software engineer named Kevin Owocki who obtained early financial support from ConsenSys founder/Ethereum contributor Joe Lubin.

When was GTC created and how much was it worth?

The platform was launched in November 2017. After $12 million was raised, Gitcoin was spun out of ConsenSys. The first Gitcoin grants were distributed in 2019. Owocki introduced GTC

on May 25, 2021. The token quickly reached as high as nearly $90, according to CoinGecko. By the end of the summer, GTC was closer to $12.

How is the price of GTC determined?

Gitcoin’s native GTC has a total token supply of 100 million. Half is earmarked for eventual distribution by the Gitcoin DAO as future contributors are rewarded. When the token was released, 15 million of them (15%) were retroactively airdropped to early platform users. About one-third of the supply, meanwhile, went to stakeholders, that is, the founding team, investors, employees and strategic partners.

The GTC tokens reserved for the Gitcoin DAO are governed by a community-led treasury. They become available in equal monthly installments, until May 2023 when all 50 million of these Gitcoin DAO GTC tokens are unlocked, likely producing some near-term volatility. However, possibly, eventually, a longer-term scenario could unfold. In it, GTCs, supply maxed, become a scarcity while at the same time the Gitcoin platform gains more traction as a force within the crypto crowd funding space.

Why does GTC have value?

It’s deflationary by its nature at a time when inflation is destroying the prospects for growth and, in turn, the value of financial assets.

Gitcoin has funded some $40 million worth of projects that involved more than 300,000 developers. Its ecosystem holds increasing sway within the realm of Web 3.0 infrastructure creation. Its community-centric approach to doing public good i.e. its community itself is what undergirds the value proposition.

What are the main benefits of GTC?

• The Gitcoin platform focuses on funding “public goods” projects, which are designed to benefit everybody without necessarily competing with one another.
• Building the infrastructure for Web 3.0 requires a diverse range of approaches, technologies and networks. Gitcoin says its mission is to provide this all-encompassing creators' toolkit.
• Developers earn crypto for working on open-source projects while contributing to the build-out of a next-generation Web 3.0, one that is open-source and economically empowering for greater numbers of people, The VR Soldier said.
• Coders who want to up their game and learn new skills are attracted to what amounts to a never-ending blockchain master class available via a "hivemind.”
• "By making learning resources accessible," Gitcoin says, "we are teaming up to create the digital public infrastructure of tomorrow."
• Gitcoin is not in a position to monetize users' data as it, as well as the associated grants, are stored on the Ethereum blockchain, Messari said.