two frontiers im pondering as we quietly lay tracks for @gitcoin next chapter 1. syntropic financing 2. consumer adoption syntropy is the tendency of living systems to organize toward greater order, energy, and complexity over time. eg a forest doesn't just sustain itself, it gets richer over time. richer (in the context of nature) = more soil, more species, more energy turned into resilience each season. syntropic financing asks what capital would look like if it behaved the same way. money that leaves every system it touches more alive than it found it, where the returns are measured in the health and growth of the whole. consumer adoption is how that reaches the world. the primitive only matters if ordinary people touch it through products they'd already choose, no ideology required. get both right and you have an engine that grows the system and an on-ramp wide enough for everyone to climb aboard. I think in 2019-2022 @gitcoin was a leader in both. QF is a small glimmer of what syntropic financing can be. and @gitcoin was one of the first consumer dapps ppl used. I think that in 2027+ it is possible we could do it again at a larger and more holistic scale - tho success is not guaranteed, this is an aspiration and a target, imo we are well positioned to take another shot.

Just for funsies, I just revived the OG @gitcoin Avatar Builder - mix-and-match your likeness from 937k+ free permutations. Pick a style, swap parts, recolor, download your PNG. No wallet, no signup. avatar.gitcoin.co/

over the last 8 years, @gitcoin has helped fund the internet’s public goods millions of contributions tens of thousands of builders $70M+ deployed to what actually matters not hype not speculation real funding for real infrastructure open source climate coordination systems the stuff everything else depends on and we’re just getting started if you’re building something that matters or want to support those who are help fund what matters ↓ gitcoin.co

I co-founded @Gitcoin in 2017. Today I went to gitcoin.co and realized it has quietly become something new: a community-curated playbook for crowdfunding the Ethereum and AI ecosystems. Which honestly feels like the natural next step. Some of the latest trends: 1/ Quadratic Funding is now basic infrastructure. Hundreds of rounds. Dozens of forks. Anyone can spin up a QF deployment. The hard question is no longer how to run QF. It is when to use it versus retro funding, milestone grants, or something else. 2/ The funding design space is exploding. QF. RetroPGF. Hypercerts. Conviction voting. Streaming. Milestone-based funding. Vaults. Outcome-based rewards. Hybrid models. & more. This is becoming a full capital allocation design space, not a single product. Checkout gitcoin.co/mechanisms 3/ $60M+ distributed created a dataset. Gitcoin learned more from what failed than what worked. In a world where you can spin up a new funding mechanism in a weekend, institutional knowledge becomes the real moat. 4/ Funding is shifting from rounds to flows. Grant rounds create bottlenecks and funding gaps. New experiments are moving toward continuous funding, streaming, and always-on allocation systems. 5/ The source of capital matters as much as the mechanism. Donations were the bootstrap phase. The next era is structural capital: yield, protocol revenues, treasuries, and mechanisms that create recurring funding for public goods. 6/ Getting upside in funded projects is becoming a meta. Pure donations are giving way to hybrid models where funders can share in the upside. Hypercerts, retro rewards, token allocations, and other mechanisms are blurring the line between grants and investment. 7/ AI-driven capital allocation is emerging. As the design space explodes, humans alone cannot evaluate everything. AI systems will increasingly help surface projects, analyze impact, simulate mechanisms, and guide allocation decisions. 8/ Capital allocation infrastructure is becoming its own industry. Designing mechanisms, running experiments, publishing results, and mapping the space is becoming a core layer of the ecosystem. Mechanisms are getting cheaper to deploy. Which means the scarce resource is not mechanisms. It is maps of: • which mechanisms work at which stage of a project • which governance structures reduce capture • which incentive models actually produce public goods So maybe @Gitcoin’s most important role in 2026 is not running funding rounds. Maybe it is helping the ecosystem learn how to fund itself. More @ gitcoin.co

this is how @owockibot connects to @gitcoin 3.0

trends in gg24 interop domain: * capital clustered around legibility and analytics before execution-heavy infra * qf excels at discovery, not deep standards or invisible coordination layers * shared standards attract conviction capital, not volume * intents are emerging signals, not yet compounding systems thx @RohitMalekar for the overview post gov.gitcoin.co/t/gg24-intero…

2017: started Gitcoin 2019: launch 1st QF round 2021: launch DAO, wind down Gitcoin 1.0 2022: disaffiliated from Gitcoin 2.0 2024: return to Gitcoin 2.0 2025: wind down Gitcoin 2.0 2026: plot Gitcoin 3.0 comeback arc (if we’re lucky and good! time will tell if we are!) if you’re reading this, thanks for being on this journey with me 🫡

trends in @gitcoin gg24 privacy funding - privacy funding remains structurally hard: vc misalignment, regulatory chill, and public goods dynamics dominate - qf works for discovery across dapps, infra, education, and research, but total capital is still thin - privacy dapps and infra drew the most participation, especially identity, voting, transfers, and comms - research is everywhere but rarely standalone, pure research struggles to surface - private voting (maci) changed behavior: less bandwagoning, more independent judgment - sybil resistance worked, but large communities can still coordinate outcomes - biggest gap is not ideas, but sustained matching capital and earlier fundraising - opportunity ahead: fund privacy as long-term public infrastructure, not episodic rounds thx @john_guilding for this excellent retro! gov.gitcoin.co/t/gg24-privac…

NEW POD @vitalikbuterin on the @greenpillnet podcast for a year-end deep dive into public goods funding in the @Ethereum ecosystem. Thx @devanshmehta for co-hosting. We discuss how the landscape has shifted from “vibes-based” funding to verifiable, dependency-driven mechanisms, and why this is the best moment to reform PGF using new tools like programmable cryptography, AI-assisted evaluation, and deep funding models. Vitalik shares how he thinks about dependencies, credible neutrality, open-source licensing, pluralism, accountability, ethereum localism, and what builders should prioritize in the coming year. 00:00 – Welcome to the Greenpill Podcast 01:50 – Vitalik joins: why public goods funding matters 02:19 – Why PGF is essential for decentralization 04:18 – The crypto spirit: censorship resistance, institutional design & funding 06:42 – The shift from vibes-era PGF to verifiable mechanisms 08:25 – Why 2026 is the best moment to reform PGF 10:19 – Where does PGF money actually come from? 12:45 – Open-source licensing, taxes & funding dependencies 17:34 – “Fund your dependencies” as a stable mechanism 19:35 – Why general-purpose QF doesn’t work in a chaotic world 21:59 – Bottom-up vs top-down: polycentric PGF 25:29 – How to create accountability loops in public goods 27:22 – Funding open-source as an Ethereum priority 29:31 – Privacy as a public good & why it’s upstream of PGF 31:54 – What OSS developers really think about crypto 33:52 – Mixing social outreach with financial support 35:56 – What should PGF builders focus on in 2026? 38:13 – Work with new projects, not legacy ones 39:44 – Ecosystem cycles & “layers of sediment” 41:39 – Yield-based funding (Octant) & treasury strategies 43:40 – Accountability: from vibes to rigorous mechanisms 47:35 – Motivation, feedback & the psychology of public goods 50:43 – Profit sharing licenses & sustainable PGF pools 53:46 – Security, issuance & public goods 56:12 – Technology, democracy & long-term risks 58:31 – How PGF relates to DIAC (Defensive/Decentralized Acceleration) 01:00:05 – Solving the free-rider problem without coercion 01:02:12 – Mechanisms vs coercion: credible neutrality 01:04:16 – Institutions, power & capture risks 01:06:16 – Individuals vs institutions in PGF 01:08:41 – Why PGF is more error-tolerant than governance 01:11:01 – Pluralism: many funders, many mechanisms 01:13:14 – Why diversity of funders is healthy 01:15:17 – What Vitalik wants built next 01:17:12 – Ethereum localism & real-world experiments 01:19:28 – What success in PGF looks like by end of 2026 01:24:28 – Closing thoughts