Collaborative Research Round 03 Analytics

The OpenCivics Collaborative Research Round 03 generated valuable insights into the evolving landscape of on-chain quadratic funding for public goods. This retrospective offers some general reflections with regard to the round specifically as well as a set of potential upgrades and coordination efforts that we hope will improve Allo Protocol and Passport as products and the entire Gitcoin ecosystem as a community exploring similar design challenges.

Overall, the round was the most streamlined that we’ve run thus far. We chose not to implement a cap to the total number of projects included which minimized the deliberative process and resource triage of our previous round. Each round creates an opportunity for on-going learning and development of our Grants Program and we look forward to sharing what we learned!

Results Overview

OpenCivics Collaborative Research Round 03 distributed $38,750 USDC in matching funds to 16 projects. The round raised $3,778.70 in crowdfunding from 141 donors with 337 total donations, averaging $11.21 per donation. Overall, donors generated a 10x multiplier of their donations in matching funds.

Project Name	Number of Contributions	Total Matching (USD)	Total Crowdfunding (USD)	Total Funds (USD)
Stephen Reid: Technological Metamodernism	37	5,518.75	1,483.53	7,002.28
MycoFi for Municipal Resilience	33	5,518.75	268.93	5,787.68
Ethereal Forest's Open Protocol Research Group	23	4,271.33	542.02	4,813.35
VoiceDeck: A Marketplace for Journalism Impact	28	4,012.55	228.40	4,240.95
Bonding Curve Research Group (BCRG)	21	2,621.20	52.95	2,674.15
RnDAO - empowering humane collaboration	25	1,857.13	117.68	1,974.81
Governance in Context with Knowledge Org	21	1,797.82	322.39	2,120.21
Catalyzing Bioregional Innovation	23	2,475.52	222.41	2,697.93
Sideways Ostrom5	28	1,270.20	239.99	1,510.19
Flow State (Streaming Quadratic Funding)	16	1,419.51	42.95	1,462.46
LexClinic [alpha-to-beta]	12	1,000.00	62.40	1,062.40
Systematizing the Status of Commons Protocols	22	1,797.18	75.32	1,872.50
The Embodied Governance Playbook	12	1,025.70	36.88	1,062.58
Impact Reporting Interoperability	14	1,000.00	36.62	1,036.62
Distributed Governance Score Framework: DAO Ind	6	1,000.00	8.71	1,008.71

Compared with our previous round, both the number of donors and the total crowdfunding amount saw significant decreases.

Total Number of Donors:
- Consortium Grant Round 02: 1,062 donors
- Collaborative Grant Research Round 03: 327 donors
Total Crowdfunding Amount:
- Consortium Grant Round 02: $10,306.50
- Collaborative Grant Research Round 03: $3,778.72

The percentage change between the OpenCivics Consortium Grant Round 02 and the OpenCivics Collaborative Research Grant Round 03 is as follows:

Total Number of Donors: Decreased by 69.21%
Total Crowdfunding Amount: Decreased by 63.34%

Overall Data Insights

Key Findings:

Top Performing Projects:
- MycoFi for Municipal Resilience and Stephen Reid: Technological Metamodernism both received the highest matching amount of $5,518.75. These projects also garnered a significant number of contributions (33 and 37, respectively) and large amounts of total received funds. The high matching allocation suggests strong donor engagement and broad support.
Moderately Funded Projects:
- Ethereal Forest's Open Protocol Research Group and VoiceDeck: A Marketplace for Journalism Impact received moderate matching amounts of $4,271.33 and $4,012.55, respectively. These projects had a reasonable number of contributions (23 and 28) and received significant crowdfunding amounts.
Lower Funded Projects:
- The Bonding Curve Research Group (BCRG) received the lowest matching amount among the highlighted projects, totaling $2,621.20. With 21 contributions, this project still managed to secure a reasonable level of support, but it fell below the others in terms of both contributions and matching funds.