More Meta than Cartel — MetaCartel x Gitcoin Round 4
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
The latest wave of Gitcoin grants has been one worth writing about! If you haven’t seen Evan Van Ness’ or Vitalik’s break down of the most recent CLR matching wave, they’re absolutely worth a read, and a good briefing for this article.
During the Gitcoin round 4 grant matching, MetaCartel managed to collect ~25% (Including Moloch DAO & any grant/project associated with MetaCartel) of the total amount of CLR matched funding. By having an existing community that is extremely outcome focused & entrenched in action, we were able to consistently find more signal (and therefore grant matching) than anyone alone.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
The Meta 🧩
As the name suggests, MetaCartel has being ‘Meta’ as one of it’s core values, what does Meta mean you ask? Well here’s one definition from Urban Dictionary (11/10 source quality):
Meta, ‘A term used in MMO’s meaning the Most Effective Tactic Available. It’s basically what works in a game regardless of what you wish would work.’
So perhaps more important than the ‘Cartel’ of MetaCartel, is the ‘Meta’, If there’s an effective tactic available, it should be utilized!
The Community 🌶
As a community, we’ve come a long way since May 2019 when the DAO was summoned, we’ve organised countless community events, funded almost 20 different projects or people, and built ourselves one of the strongest communities in the Ethereum space — that aren’t connected through a salary or a speculative asset, which has been the driving factor behind communities before these types of DAOs.
These communities have been organised in a way which is relatively new and untested, the technology plays a large role in this, however so is the ideology of MetaCartel DAO members — A borderless community, who are driving towards a common goal without traditional structure or remuneration, only aligned interests & incentives.
When it comes to Gitcoin CLR matching, if this means a community can be the earliest & most popular inside of the popularity contest, this should be seen as a positive, thing for the entire Ethereum space 🙌
Support cycle ♻️
A large reason for MetaCartels success in both consistently producing quality outcomes & building an engaged community is because of the feedback loop that’s been built as a result of purposeful culture.
“A lot of the grants are really small. We do grants for several reasons. A lot of them are really a sign of support. And then we put our community behind projects, and when we help them find initial users, customers, and we kind of help close down the feedback loop.”
This feedback loop is exactly what led to MetaCartel’s success within the Gitcoin grant matching, we’re always willing to be the first users and hold projects up to the community & wider ecosystem. Whether that’s utilizing a protocol, contributing to community discussion, or sending everyone $1 to their Gitcoin grant, community & friends are exactly that!
MetaCartel as a Digital Nation 🛰
As we continue to tread into uncharted digital territories, MetaCartel sits in a new vertical between online community, muti-sig wallet & charity organisation, this type of new digital nation built on the common belief that Ethereum is going to push the world forward. It doesn’t seem unlikely that over time we’ll see new, innovative and fringe versions of these same digital communities.
An important detail when examining MetaCartel as a digital nation, is it’s youth, only 12 months ago none of this would have been possible, MetaCartel’s influence is still in it’s earliest stages and as more initiatives, progress and feedback loops are created, MetaCartel’s ability to incubate winning strategies continues to grow in parallel.
Let’s take a look at the power of this new digital nation, MetaCartel in practice:
Sablier — a MetaCartel grantee and one one of the top matched grants had 163 unique contributors, only ~20 had association with the wider MetaCartel community.
MetaGame — is a Massive Online Coordination Game, focused on coordinating in creation and exchange of value with the least friction and most fun possible. MetaGame was another grantee with ~$7,000 in matching, again had 145 unique contributors and no more than ~20 were tied into MetaCartel.
The numbers are similarly true for DefiZap, these three projects combined raised ~$6.5k in contributions and ~$22.5k matched in funding. All three of these examples had no more than 15% of the contributions come from MetaCartel members.
MetaCartel + Gitcoin Grants, The Math 📊
*Math disclaimer — This was all done by manually pulling grant info from Gitcoin, likely not accurate beyond a 5% margin of error at all*
Interestingly, MetaCartel & friends received pretty close to the average amount of funding per grant, however they received disproportionately much higher level of CLR matching. Summarized by Peter extremely well here.
Using overall number, ~173 projects received any CLR matched contributions, ~20 of these projects were associated with MetaCartel- Meaning ~11% of the total projects that received funding, these 11% of projects received ~13% of total funding — So far the numbers match up.
More interestingly, the chart below, outlines the total CLR matching received by MetaCartel projects which was ~25% of the total matched amount. This solidifies the points made above, that it was the coordination of the community that made the difference.
Lets Bring Things Down To Earth 🌎
There’s only 1,300 people in the room the begin with.
Realistically, with only 1315 unique community members contributing to these grants we’re still in micro economy mode. This is the best time to start testing these type of systems, and growing the communities behind them. Each grantee being a donor to multiple different projects makes complete sense, when there’s only a thousand people inside of the ecosystem to begin with there’s going to be a metric sh*t load of cross pollination.
Grants Are Great 🎉
Thanks for reading, huge shoutout to Gitcoin, all of the Round 4 Sponsors & of course all contributors! I know personally, and as a DAO, we’re always hyped to see & contribute to new grantees! Looking forward to catching as many projects & people as possible at ETHDenver.
List of MetaCartel & Friends Gitcoin Grantees 📝
Raid Guild, DaoHaus, MarketingDAO, Undercollateralized DeFi, MetaCartel, Wizard of Dapps, Burner Wallet 2, Abridged, MetaGame, DefiZap, MetaFactory, Sablier, rDAI, Dune Analytics, Gasless Mosendo, Gelato Finance, Fantastic12, rTrees, TrojanDAO/Infinite Moloch, Enzypt, Tornado.Cash
Check out all of these projects!
Thanks to Peter ‘pet3rpan’ & Cooper Turley for review & contribution!
Get involved
- 🚩 For those who want to work their way into the DAO or contribute to MetaCartel DAO, create your character to start
- 🎁 For those who want to support our work, here is the guide to pledging to MetaCartel DAO
- 📄 Our manifesto detailing our mission and values
- If you want to join our community, start the conversation by sending us a meme you find funny — our twitter DMs are open 🌶
