Gitcoin Grants Round 15
Unlock Labs 2nd Gitcoin round matched $25k in UDT tokens for projects in our ecosystem and another $10k for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI).
We were happy to participate in Gitcoin's Grants Round 15 as a sponsor of a $25k pool for the greater Unlock ecosystem and another $10k added to the larger DEI pool! There are some really exciting numbers to share about what we saw this round. Gitcoin distributed $4.2 million dollars in funding and saw contributions from 39.6k community donors. Unlock Protocol doubled the number of grantees in our ecosystem going from 14 to 28.
Not only were we excited to see the number of grant applications increase in our ecosystem we were really excited to see the diversity in the types of initiatives tagging us in.
Climate Change
We're sure that launching Unlock Protocol on the Celo network is why we saw many more projects this round focused on climate change. Bloom Network continues to be the most well supported project in both climate change and in the entire ecosystem. So far they've raised more than $81k through Gitcoin Grants and we're so glad to see the progress they've made with that funding. Some other projects with great potential for climate impact are Green Academy, Plants & Pillars, dMeter and Foresta.
DeSci
Some impressive projects leveraging Unlock Protocol for decentralized science, or DeSci, tagged us in this round. Omni Analytics maintaining the top spot for community support in this category, has continued to use the funding they've recieved by adding more content to their "Learning Data Science on the Ethereum Blockchain" course. Congratulations to Active Inference Institute who caught community attention with their plans to create a first of its kind open-source package Active Blockference which aims to implement Active Inference simulations for congnitive modeling for the blockchain space, use Active Blockference to understand behavior in ETH/Web3 ecosystems and improve educational materials around use of Active Blockference.
web3 Social
We saw an increase in the number of web3 social projects taking advantage of the power of Unlock Protocol too! Nimi was a crowd favorite with a dApp that allows you to aggregate your soical profiles. Other notable projects include Cobogo for creator profiles and fundraising for the creator economy, Maven Foundation is continuing their work on building tools to empower social influencers and MeTag is creating a scannable QR tag which is also NFC enabled to help users share their web3 wallet information and social profiles. Headline a decentrailized publishing platform which got its start with a UDT Grant from Unlock Protocol jumped onto the Gitcoin platform this round to continue their work.
Education & Security
VestLab is aiming to get you all the information about a crypto project before you invest. White Hat DAO is looking to give deeper insights on blockchain projects with offerings that include smart contract audits, safety ratings along with tokenomics analysis and due-diligence. Fractionalize is implementing a first-of-its-kind public education program to teach kids about web3 and NFTs and the Decentralized Library will include Unlock NFT library cards along with reading rewards stored in Unlock NFTs for "proof of knowledge".
Unicorns
We also some projects so unique we're daring to call theme unicorns. Trust Finance is looking to solve some challenges in the traditional payroll and contractor payments space like slow posting times and by making it easier for workers to invest a portion of their paychecks. Starksheet is hoping to tackle some the largest data silos by decentralizing business intelligence with a web3 spreadsheet solution making use of Unlock NFTs.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Last but not least there were several projects both utilizing Unlock Protocol and tackling Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) in web3. We continue to be passionate about our support of these projects and we're so enthusiastic to see so many in this round. Our friends over at Blu3 DAO continue to do such impressive work educating, preparing and sponsoring hackers in the web3 space. The community seems to agree with our take on the work they do, with hundreds of supporters and thousands of dollars in community support. They were able to raise close to $60k this round with matching funds and we couldn't be happier to see that happen for them! End Domestic Violence is on a mission to create a powerful healing modality for domestic violence victims using art to process trauma and is building an art workshop platform on Unlock Protocol to deliver it. They continue to be the only grantee on the platform addressing the issue of domestic violence so we're watching closely to see how the community reacts to the progess they'll make between this round and next as they get off the ground. Another project supporting women's reproductive rights while also bringing you an innovative music experience is Beats Per Mint who will soon be releasing their first collection "Beam Me Down" and we couldn't be more delighted to be enabling a truly feminist platform.