The History of Ethereum Grant Funding, Built on Open Data

Transcript

[music] Okay. Hi everyone. Um, welcome. I like that it's a lightning round and it's also on the similar topic. I know that past two speakers also spoke on the grants and uh, I'm really happy to also share like just a brief u on Ethereum grant funding. Okay. So I'm Rashmi. I am a research engineer at Metagv. We built grant data standards, metadata standards and also uh data links, open data links to track and understand what exactly happens in the Ethereum grant ecosystem. Um so Ethereum grant ecosystem has lived

through six eras like from 2018 to 26. In the beginning, we started off with the foundation grants where Ethereum foundation, Ethereum community fund, consensus led the uh funding and then uh this was like committee level decision and then we moved on to we also included like community uh in the decision-m where uh we innovated with quadratic funding uh led by Gitcoin, Mooloko and Clear Fund and Avi Grant and then later uh in In the range of 2021 to 2023, we came up with retroactive funding where we actually understand how the grant uh ecosystem uh and the grant-f funded

projects are performing and understand and then fund them uh retroactively. And then we later saw in 2023 to 2024 where like grant uh were actually plants part part of the growth and ecosystem uh budget uh where the focus on the areas like say gaming or dev tooling were uh chosen and uh grants were used to grow these specific domains within the ecosystem. Um and in 2025 we saw a major boom of uh tracking the impacts. We've funded up till like 2018 to 2024. We want to know exactly what the impact has been and how to understand it and how to

also improve it according to the algorithms and fund it. Uh but then we also have been going through the uh different market dynamics and we saw right now in 2026 we are in we've moved from like treasury funding to yield funding. Uh it's we fund with like endowments and uh you know with octant where yield staking rewards are um used to fund the grant fund projects. Um so in the decision making we've changed food like four times it has evolved. Uh it used to be communities and then crowds and communities and then

we also included experts of the ecosystem in the decision- making and then uh 2021 to 2025 is algorithms and uh yeah uh algorithmic funding tracking impact metrics coming up with grant funding mechanisms and everything. So later um like I would like to show the brand mechanism the mechanism index. So Gitcoin re published the capital allocation book which really indexes the diff various types of grant mechanisms that exist and have been experimented with. Um so it was there have been origins of these grant uh funding mechanisms which we have taken uh

inspiration from all over the world cultures uh rel yeah so in the 2026 the it has evolved to uh some of them have evolved to become more curated from like grant direct grants have become more curated and then um we've paused some of the grant systems and then some of the uh grant programs have like shrunk to a smaller size. So at its peak up until like 2024 we funded about like a billion in uh grant projects across like up to 6,000 projects from the beginning 2018 till 2024. uh now when we see in the late

2026 um some like we are at 5.5 million in Q2 with the Ethereum Foundation grants uh Gitcoin is lean domains and coalition in GG25 um and yeah optimism retroactive uh funding has paused and also ENSO sunset uh their grants program in July 2026 so we've seen a lot of changes Um okay but there are still like it's it's it's a change it's not like completely stop of it and um we are moving towards like Ethereum being staked and the yield generated from staking that is

going towards funding um because of the uh different grant programs and the players and the amount of size that they handle uh we when one large uh funder also pauses we the whole market feels it. Uh this is a metric from like 2023 where three largest public good funders were assessed and you can see the optimism was the most uh uh valuable one. uh but yeah evolving markets why the funding shrank was like it was token denominated and then we have to prioritize runway at some point and then also track impact and then uh fund accordingly

um so I'm [music] out of time I also want to give out to stellar they also do the funding uh grant and impact metrics really well and they track it and they work with open grants which is a project that I work with Um yeah, shout out to them. And uh Open Grants is a project where we track all the grant funding systems and uh build it out in an open data lake. Um and you can see exactly what's happening in the grant ecosystem. Um there's a small thing that I want to cover which is why most funders do not publish open data. Uh which is there are m multiple reasons which is anchoring bias, competitive risk and political pressure. If if a certain foundation or

project is uh facing that uh this is one of the proof of concept that we can explore. Uh as you can see if open data especially grand metadata can be if we chart it out in a matrix uh [music] it can be like this we can open certain metadata parameter and we can shield some meta data parameter. Um this is a proof of concept where we can combine open data and private data and compute blindly. We can uh do like okay if we combine open data with some of the [music] uh data masked you could say you could ask a question like what is the average

funding uh in this quarter and you can still compute blindly and get that answer even if the data is private across all levels in this thing. This is a proof of concept that I'm working with. Uh open to contributors and supporters on this. Um and if you want to support open grants, reach out to me. This is uh me Rashmi Vig. This is my Twitter. Um we are looking for funders. We are looking for data partners and we're looking for builders who want to build with us. Um thank you everyone. I am out of time but if you have any questions come speak to me. I'll see check if um if we have any questions.

Do we have time for questions? Wonderful. Thank you very much. >> Okay. >> Round of applause. >> So, Rashmi, there are a couple of questions here. >> Okay. >> Um, so what surprised you most when you look at the at the history of Ethereum grant data? Um, surprising isn't really the word that I would use here, but I like the evolution of it and it was evolving with the mark dynamics that changed. I was uh I was happy to see that we also are constantly experimenting with different grant mechanisms with the market dynamics.

surprising thing. Um I I can't really say. Maybe I can. Yeah, I I don't think I was surprised, but I was pleased to know that it was evolving with the market. Sorry. >> Okay. Well, then the next one, if one founder could change one thing tomorrow to make grant data more open, what should it be? um standardize your data and track as much of data that uh you can um from and also follow up with the projects that you funded. That's the one thing that I would suggest.

>> Can you please share some tips for someone who's new in the Ethereum ecosystem? >> Okay. Um if you're new to the Ethereum ecosystem, learn the history. history uh is one of the important pieces to understand what exactly is happening right now and then how you can contribute to the future of it. So that's it. >> Very concise. Thank you. So isn't it ironic to see that the community funding declined a lot? Is yield farming more essential than community funding? >> Um there are many dynamics at play because it has to come with sustainability. yield farming has been has been proven it's been sustainable uh through DeFi. Um so I believe in my

understanding it's uh I don't think it's essential than community funding but it goes along with it and it works well when we combine the community funding with the uh yield farming strategies to fund the public goods ecosystem. >> Thank you so much for your research and for the insight you gave us. Yeah. >> So if you have more questions >> [music]