Super Detailed Gitcoin Donation Guide, One-Stop Interaction with ZkSync

This article is an original piece by Chain Catcher, authored by Loners Liu.

On March 10, the open-source software funding platform Gitcoin launched its 9th round of donation activities, lasting for 15 days. Many well-known DeFi projects have been incubated from Gitcoin, which also gathers many renowned developers and creative ideas. Ordinary users participating in donations have the chance to receive airdrops from some DeFi protocols, yielding substantial returns.

Badger DAO's requirement is that anyone who donates to Gitcoin before December 17 can receive at least 3 BADGER tokens (currently valued at $150); Furucombo's plan is to distribute 350 COMBO (currently valued at $840) to any address that has donated any tokens to a project or developer address via Gitcoin before December 23; Stake DAO has allocated 39% of its airdrop rewards to Gitcoin's 8th round donors, and Mask Network has also included all users who have donated to Gitcoin in two or more different rounds as one of their four airdrop targets.

Considering that this round of Gitcoin donation activities presents a great opportunity for users to obtain potential airdrop chances, many users are quite interested in how to donate. Chain Catcher reporters have provided a detailed interpretation and explanation of the entire donation process based on practical experience, including how to interact with ZkSync.

Gitcoin and Donation Activity Introduction

Gitcoin is a decentralized collaboration platform built on the Ethereum network. Gitcoin provides a community for developers, allowing them to collaborate on open-source projects through bounties, and also offers a public platform for projects to apply for "grants" from the community and the Ethereum Foundation.

A core feature of Gitcoin is the use of quadratic voting to crowdfund and allocate grants to projects. The intention is to solve the inefficiency of financing public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Quadratic voting means that the "square root" of the voting results is recorded as the voting score. For example, casting 1 vote earns 1 point, while casting 100 votes earns 10 points. The benefit of this approach is that it increases the cost of vote buying. In this voting model, as the number of votes increases, the cost incurred by voters rises exponentially (quadratically). Additionally, the funding pool for the 9th round of donation activities totals $500,000, allocated as follows: $125,000 for infrastructure projects; $125,000 for DApp projects; $125,000 for community projects; $50,000 for projects in East Asia and Southeast Asia; and $50,000 for NFT projects.

Super Detailed Donation Guide

Step 1: Go to the Gitcoin homepage (https://gitcoin.co/), scroll to the bottom, click on the first column "Products," and then click on the "Grants" to enter the Grant page (https://gitcoin.co/grants/), where you can see the homepage for the 9th donation activity.

Step 2: On the Grant homepage, click "Log In" in the upper right corner, use your GitHub account to log in, and complete the authorization to automatically obtain a Gitcoin account identity. If you do not have a GitHub account, you will need to register one first (GitHub account registration tutorial).

Step 3: After logging in with GitHub, Gitcoin requires users to set their initial profile. Note that at the bottom, it will ask about your work status. If you are only here to participate in the donation activity, you do not need to fill out this section; otherwise, you need to provide the corresponding information. Of course, if you want to participate in other activities hosted by Gitcoin, such as hackathons, you can fill it out according to your needs.

Step 4: On the Grant homepage, click "Connect Wallet," and you can choose a wallet from MetaMask, WalletConnect, Portis, Fortmatic, or Autherum. This article uses MetaMask as an example, so you need to import your Ethereum address into MetaMask in advance (MetaMask import tutorial).

Step 5: Browse and select your favorite projects on the https://gitcoin.co/grants/explorer/ page, or search for the corresponding project name in the search box on the left. Clicking "Add to Cart" adds it to your shopping cart for easy donation in the next step.

Clicking the small eye icon allows you to view detailed information about the project, including the project's website, Twitter, contract address, related introductions, team information, etc. You can also bookmark the project to see it later in your favorites.

Step 6: Add all your favorite projects to the shopping cart, then click "CHECKOUT" to enter the shopping cart page:

You can also leave a message for the project team by putting in a note you want to say:

Currently, Gitcoin supports two payment methods: one is to pay on the Ethereum mainnet, and the other is to pay via zkSync, using Layer 2 channels for transfers, which can significantly reduce transfer costs. The official note states that it can reduce gas fees by 99%, but you need to transfer funds into your zkSync wallet in advance, just in case there is also a zkSync airdrop. (zkSync transfer interaction tutorial)

Step 7: Click "Proceed" to enter the zkSync payment page, then click "Connect Wallet," and sign to complete the payment:

After the payment is completed, this page will appear, showing that the total transfer fee is only $1.26, indicating that you have completed the donation via zkSync. Clicking "Close" will return you to the Grant page;

Then a "Thanks for Contributing" thank-you page will pop up, indicating that you have completed this donation. You can also add these projects to your favorites on this page and share your donation results on Twitter.

In addition, you can also use the Mask Network tool to donate directly on Twitter, provided that you have a certain amount of tokens available for donation in your Mask Network account. Mask can automatically recognize Gitcoin donation links posted on Twitter. After installing the Mask plugin, users can directly see the donation entry, simply click "Donate," enter the amount, and complete the donation.

Through Mask Network, initiators can leverage traditional social networks like Twitter, which has a large user base, to share donation links, allowing others to see the donation entry directly, making it easier to fund Ethereum-based startups and public crowdfunding through Gitcoin in one step. It is reported that Mask Network has been a major supporter of Gitcoin since the 6th round of donation activities.

Summary

As the "arsenal" of Ethereum, Gitcoin serves as an incubation platform for project parties to promote their projects, gain investment, and attract technical talent. For developers, it is a stage to find suitable projects and showcase their development capabilities. For investors, it is an opportunity to discover promising projects with great potential and start funding them early, especially since many projects will reserve a portion of airdrop quotas for Gitcoin supporters in the future. Therefore, Gitcoin deserves more attention from the crypto market.

(Feel free to add WeChat ID gnu0101 to join the Chain Catcher group chat)