As the blockchain industry expands and becomes more of a fixture in everyday life, the idea of 'one chain to rule them all’ and the general ideology of blockchain maximalism is beginning to fall to the wayside and the focus on interoperability and cross-chain collaboration is coming to the forefront.
One project that is specifically designed to help advance the ecosystem as a whole and develop the future of the open internet is Gitcoin (GTC), a community of builders, creators and protocols.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of GTC has swelled 103% from a low of $4.78 on July 20 to a high at $9.71 on Aug. 11 as new participants aligned with the project and its goal of advancing the Web3 infrastructure.
GTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView
Three reasons behind the recent strength of GTC are its expanding list of partner platforms, DAO governance features that give community members control of the platform and a well-funded grant pool that can be used to help develop projects and improve protocols.
The list of partner protocols expands
The main mission of the Gitcoin protocol is to help create and support the infrastructure for Web3. This includes developing new tools, technologies and networks that can further facilitate open-source development.
As such, the Gitcoin ecosystem is open to working with a wide variety of protocols and platforms to help them develop through hosting hackathons and providing development grants.
Some of the current projects that are actively involved with the Gitcoin community include Harmony, Nervous Network, Tezos, Casper, and Arweave.
By offering attractive prizes and development grants to hackathon participants and other events hosted by Gitcoin, projects have been able to attract the developers and community members needed to continue their growth.
DAO governance capabilities
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are a significant emerging trend in the blockchain industry because they give community members the power to vote on the future direction and development of the platform.
Gitcoin has embraced this model and now has an active community that is involved with voting for proposals and helps with the governance of the project's protocol.
Community members who don’t want to be as involved with the day-to-day decisions can delegate their votes to a trusted steward who votes for proposals on their behalf in return for a percentage of the rewards offered.
There are currently five separate DAO workstreams available to the Gitcoin community including anti-fraud and collusion, public goods, dGrants, moonshot collective and 'memes, merch, marketing'.
Grants attract new developers
The Gitcoin grant pool helps attract new community members and developers to the project for the benefit of all its partner protocols as well.
The grants use community support and quadratic matching to provide the funding that open-source projects need and the funds in the grant pool are also used to reward hackathon participants as well as community members who complete any of the listed bounties.
As the next step in creating a truly decentralized and community governed protocol, the Gitcoin community is currently in the process of decentralizing the grant process.