Case Studies
Analysis of a funding experiment
All Case Studies
1inch: The Unstoppable Journey from Hackathon Dream to Decentralized Exchange Powerhouse
How a $50k Gitcoin grant helped 1inch's co-founders go from sleeping at hackathon venues to building a DEX aggregator with $250B+ in trading volume.
Austin Griffith: The Quadratic Freelancer Onboarding Thousands of Developers
How Gitcoin Grants enabled Austin Griffith to leave his job and build open-source tools that brought thousands of developers into Ethereum.
Celo Easy RPGF — Lightweight Retroactive Funding
Celo's implementation of simplified retroactive public goods funding, demonstrating how smaller ecosystems can adopt RetroPGF with minimal overhead.
Coin Center: Defending Cryptocurrency Rights Through Community-Funded Advocacy
How quadratic funding built community-backed support for crypto policy advocacy and litigation.
EIP-1559: How Quadratic Funding Legitimized Ethereum's Most Important Fee Market Reform
How a Gitcoin grant funded EIP-1559 implementation and signaled community demand for the upgrade.
Filecoin RetroPGF — Retroactive Funding Beyond Optimism
How the Filecoin ecosystem adopted retroactive public goods funding using Drips infrastructure, distributing over 580,000 FIL across multiple rounds.
GG24 — The First Funding Round of Gitcoin 3.0
The landmark first funding round under Gitcoin's 3.0 architecture, demonstrating the evolution from protocol-operated to community-operated grants.
Gitcoin Citizens Round 1: Retroactive Quadratic Funding for Community Contributions
Gitcoin's first retroactive quadratic funding round, achieving a record 4× matching multiplier.
GreenPill Hypercerts Experiment — Impact Certificates in Practice
An early real-world experiment using hypercerts to represent and fund impact from GreenPill Network chapter activities.
Optimism: From Plasma Group Research to a $2B+ Layer 2 Ecosystem
How quadratic funding sustained early Optimism research that became a leading Ethereum L2.
Pocket Network Retroactive Funding — Ecosystem-Specific RetroPGF
How Pocket Network implemented retroactive funding for its middleware infrastructure ecosystem, adapting RetroPGF patterns for a specialized community.
QuadraticLenster: Replacing Likes with Quadratic Funding on Social Media
How QuadraticLenster.xyz piloted quadratic funding embedded in Lens Protocol's social network, turning tips into matched contributions that incentivize prosocial behavior.
Shamba Network: Equipping Smallholder Farmers to Conserve Ecosystems
How Gitcoin Grants funded a D-MRV platform that enables smallholder farmers in the global south to receive fair compensation for carbon removal.
Tornado Cash: How Quadratic Funding Sustained Ethereum's Most Important Privacy Tool
How quadratic funding sustained Ethereum's leading privacy protocol before OFAC sanctions.
UNICEF Alpha Round: A Partnership Driving Fairness, Collaboration and Impact
How UNICEF's Office of Innovation partnered with Gitcoin to run a Quadratic Funding pilot for digital public goods, reaching 15,500+ donors.
Zuzalu and Pop-Up Cities — Temporary Coordination Experiments
How Zuzalu and subsequent pop-up cities demonstrated that temporary physical gatherings can seed lasting digital coordination networks.
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