The CARBON Copy Team recently took a look at the results of the recent GG20 Climate Round operated by Climate Coordination Network. Our goals were to get a sense of how the funding was being allocated and which categories were generating the most interest. We also hope to use this data as a means of comparison for the next climate round.
You can read Climate Coordination Network's round retro here.
Key Macro Stats
- The total number of unique contributors was 2,262, a 33% decrease from GG19 (3,377).
- The total donated was $58,010.54, a 64% increase from GG19 ($35,329.98).
- 30 projects considered Non-Web3 in scope (just using Web3 for funding) received a total of $21,503.74.
- 97 projects considered as Web3 in scope received a total of $156,185.32.
Category Representation
The round's 127 projects were distributed across 25 categories as follows:
It should come as no surprise that network societies, like ReFi DAO and Green Pill, and their nodes were the best represented, with a total of 23 projects submitting applications for funding. The nodes, in particular, operate at the grassroots level and rely on public goods funding for scaling their impact.
The number of recycling & waste projects should also be noted. The category is a natural fit for crypto-based incentives, community building, and the potential for immediate impact. The project with the most contributors overall, WEB3BEACH (444), is one such project. We should continue to see an increase in those projects applying for funding during GG21 and beyond.
In the same vein, solutions development has emerged as an important area of work in ReFi. These are the companies building the tools that ReFi projects can use to maximise their impact. The project with the most received, Astral, is developing tools and infrastructure for Web3 projects to build location-based dapps.
On the other end, ecological credit, impact verification, and data projects were less represented, with only 8 projects between them.
Funding distribution
The $58,010.54 in donations and $125,000 in QF matching funds was distributed as follows:
While the education category was represented by only 7 projects, it took home the 3rd most funding. This is welcome news for the ReFi, Web3, and climate sectors, where education is proving an important barrier for lasting behavioural change.
Reforestation and project financing projects also received healthy sums. This should go a long way to creating the kind of long-term community impact on natural ecosystems and communities that we critically need.
Perhaps surprising is the lack of funding for investment instruments, impact NFTs, and impact DePIN, especially when you consider the tangible use cases and opportunities for grassroots impact.
For impact NFT and impact DePIN projects in particular, the issue seems to be the lack of proof for their claims. For instance, if someone buys an impact NFT that promises to plant ten trees, the project will plant those trees but tend not to provide the kind of verification people are looking for, such as a post on social media with photographic evidence and confirmation that a specific address funded the planting. Or, a step further, integration with a protocol such as Silvi.
From an average received per project perspective, it breaks down like this:
One thing to note is that network society nodes received less than $1,000 on average despite, or perhaps a result of, having 14 projects represented. The same can be said for regenerative agriculture projects.
We also see that tangential categories, like AI, gamification, architecture & construction, and content & research have yet to really take hold in terms of community interest.
Donations vs. matching
Drilling down into the amounts received, we can see the split between donations and QF matching funds:
Matching was particularly friendly to projects in the ecological currency, education, network society & collective, and project financing categories. It was decidedly less advantageous for projects in the ecological accounting, invest instrument, recycling & waste, and reforestation categories.
As we'll see below, these splits are a great indicator of which projects are generating the most interest and the magic of quadratic funding.
Unique vs. total contributors
We also took a look at the average unique contributors relative to the total contributors per category. We felt this was a better reflection of interest than looking purely at totals. It breaks down like this:
The first thing that sticks out is the interest in ecological currencies. Both $EARTH and Azos have emerged and are taking advantage of the demand for an alternative currency. The same can be said for the sole universal basic income representative, GoodDollar.
Investment instruments, in turn, were not nearly as popular. Tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) are a hot topic in the wider crypto world but have yet to fully take off in the ReFi space. We expect investment instrument projects to garner more interest in GG21.
Fundraising projects, while generating little in terms of funding, were popular among the community with 84 unique contributors on average. This is a positive sign as the importance of alternative funding avenues in the face of declining VC investments.
Overall, the average number of unique contributors per project was 64.6. A positive sign, no doubt, but a clear indication that much work needs to be done to build communities and expand the funding reach.
Methodology
We took data from two different sources. Donation data came directly from the Gitcoin Grants API, while matching results were issued by Climate Coordination Network last week.
It's worth noting that two companies, One Sky Collective and xParametric, received donations but did not receive matching funds, so we excluded them from our analysis.
We then categorised the projects according to our the taxonomy used in The State of ReFi Report 2024. Our choice of category was based on the project's primary activity.
We hope to launch our curated ReFi project database this month. It has support for multiple categories per project.
More by CARBON Copy Team
Breaking Down the GG21 Climate Round
The View From Rwanda
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out at hello@carboncopy.news.