“In a society that believes in the free use of the commons, each person pursues his own best interest, and ruin is the destination to which all rush.” So wrote biologist Garrett Hardin in the journal Science in the 1960s.

The tragedy of the commons has existed since ancient times. Public goods—belonging to the majority and generating positive benefits for them—often receive the least attention and contribution. When it comes to governing public goods, historical experience either appeals to a Leviathan, i.e., centralized authority, but this assumes accurate information, strong monitoring capacity, reliable and effective sanctions, and zero administrative costs; or it turns to privatization, yet property rights over certain mobile resources cannot be precisely divided. Even when ownership is clearly defined, risks may still not be proportionally distributed.

Blockchain is closely linked with the governance of public goods. Elinor Ostrom, author of “Governing the Commons” and Nobel laureate in 2009, pointed out that in reality, very few public goods governance problems can be solved by a single approach. Beyond the Leviathan and privatization, there exists a third, potentially superior, community-based governance path: community members leverage their local knowledge to autonomously design contracts and self-govern. In broader transnational digital communities, blockchain, as a trustless collaboration mechanism, is precisely the ideal tool for implementing such governance models.

Due to various historical and practical reasons, Chinese-speaking communities have relatively less experience compared to English-speaking ones regarding what constitutes "public goods" and how to build and govern them. While the Chinese-speaking ecosystem in the crypto space has created many excellent applications and economic models, when it comes to public goods—both in theory and practice—our representative high-quality projects remain scarce. Therefore, during Gitcoin Grants Round 18 (GR18), the Global Chinese Community (GCC) decided to launch a special donation round titled “Global Chinese Community for Public Goods,” establishing a prize pool of $25,000 to match donations for projects participating in GR18 and registering for this thematic round.

What is GCC?

GCC stands for Universal Digital Commons of Global Chinese Community. We are dedicated to building a global digital commons community for Chinese-speaking builders, providing incentives for contributors in this field, attracting more builders to join, and channeling greater financial support into these efforts. Our goal is to transform the current situation where participation in blockchain public goods from Chinese-speaking regions is limited and funding support is insufficient.

Previously, GCC has supported Gitcoin Grants 15 and the Gitcoin Grants Beta Round. Representative projects we've funded include Soul Wallet, WTF Academy, and ChainEye.

What is the Gitcoin Grants 18 thematic donation, and how to participate?

The Gitcoin Grants program is a quarterly initiative operated by Gitcoin DAO, empowering ordinary believers in the web3 space to direct funds toward projects they believe are important. Through the Quadratic Funding (QF) allocation mechanism, individual donations are amplified in impact.

Gitcoin Grants 18 (GR18) is the 18th iteration of this grant cycle. The deadline for core round applications is August 15, with an early bird deadline on August 11 at midnight. Thematic rounds are sub-rounds managed independently by project leads outside Gitcoin, who make decisions, coordinate, and execute them. These rounds are selected by the Gitcoin team and must meet specific criteria.

This time, GCC is launching a thematic round named “Global Chinese Community for Public Goods.” The application link is:

https://builder.gitcoin.co/#/chains/10/rounds/0x30c381033aa2830ceb0aa372c2e4d28f004b3db9

Considering our thematic round launched later than others, we will merge the application and donation periods, with deadlines as follows:

Application Period: 2023/08/01 (12:00 UTC) – 2023/08/29 (12:00 UTC);

Donation Period: 2023/08/15 (12:00 UTC) – 2023/08/29 (12:00 UTC);

Of course, we encourage projects to complete their applications before August 15, ensuring your submission will be reviewed prior to the start of this round.

What kind of projects do we hope to see?

1. Eth Infra / Ethereum Infrastructure Projects

Whether it’s zk, Layer2, storage, node services, data indexing, or wallets—we encourage more Chinese-speaking builders to contribute to the international Ethereum community.

2. DeSci / Decentralized Science

This is one of the most underdeveloped areas of public goods in the Chinese-speaking world. In the English-speaking world, we see dedicated organizations like VitaDAO focusing on life sciences research, and Molecule advancing drug discovery, both securing significant funding. No equivalent-scale cases exist yet in the Chinese-speaking ecosystem. We hope researchers across disciplines will step forward to build DeSci organizations within our community.

3. Security & Anti-fraud

Although this area already has mature business models such as crypto auditing firms and security companies, blockchain security incidents continue to occur frequently. Small individual victims especially struggle to seek redress. We hope the industry develops better public goods for security and anti-fraud, and that unpaid contributors who identify and warn about vulnerabilities receive fair recognition and compensation.

4. Education & Policy Advocacy

We believe education in crypto technology and philosophy can help bring more Chinese-speaking builders—developers, artists, philosophers, and other professionals—into the global blockchain community, promoting exchange between Chinese-speaking and other linguistic communities. At the same time, we hope to see more mature policy advocacy groups emerge in the Chinese-speaking world to advance crypto-friendly regulations.

5. Decentralized Public Governance

Open-source theoretical research on governance, consensus mechanisms, governance tools, funding mechanisms, reputation systems, etc., are all eligible under this category. We need both practitioners and thinkers to collectively improve the public governance capabilities of decentralized organizations in the Chinese-speaking world.

If your project doesn’t fall neatly into one of these categories but you believe it contributes meaningfully to public goods in the Chinese-speaking community, you’re still welcome to apply. We’ll assess such cases individually.
Your project must meet the following conditions:

First, your project must satisfy the basic eligibility requirements for GR18. See this link.
Additionally, your project must:

• Be a public good;

• Have at least one founder or team member who uses Chinese as their daily working language; and any funds received must directly support the development of the global Chinese-speaking crypto ecosystem;

• Not have received substantial external funding through venture capital, token sales, or NFT launches;

• Must not solicit donations by promising donors unique benefits or rewards;

• Have a proof-of-concept or product prototype; earlier-stage projects should accumulate more progress before applying in future rounds;

• Applicants receiving funds must be directly associated with the project, and fund usage must align exactly with the stated proposal.

If you have questions about how to apply for Gitcoin Grants 18 or GCC's thematic round, please refer to the following helpful videos and guides:

Video: How to Donate on Explorer

Video: Creating a New Passport

Video: Renewing Your Passport

Grantee Onboarding Guide

Video: How to Create Your Grant in Builder

Video: How to Apply to a Gitcoin Grants Round

Bridging Docs

GG18 Eligibility

Guide to Promoting Your Project

A sustainable world needs more public goods and effective support for them. We hope this vision continues to take root and grow in the Chinese-speaking world. If you're passionate about this mission, click the link below now—we look forward to building a better future for the crypto world together with you: Link