The viaPrize team successfully added fiat donations to 2 rounds during GG21 and 4 rounds for GG22.
Noah Chon Lee made this post proposing how fiat donation could work
https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/10-000-donated-to-gitcoin-zuzalu-round-with-credit-card-pilot-project-proposal/18827
The viaPrize team successfully built this for the Open Civics and Collab Tech rounds for GG21. https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/we-donated-to-gitcoin-projects-with-credit-card-review-of-paypal-fiat-payments-in-gg21/19287
Most of the other round leads during GG21 heard of this and asked if we could do the same thing for them. Unfortunately, we didn't have the resources to meet this community demand.
The GG21 rounds we did have the funds to support worked successfully.
OpenCivics fiat stats:
Average PayPal donation size - $62.30 (crypto avg was $11.21)
PayPal donation volume - 7.21%
See their review here: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gg21-retrospective-opencivics-collaborative-research-round/19313
From the user's perspective, they just check out using fiat like they would in any normal web2 online store. From the smart contract's perspective, it just receives funds from a wallet like in any web3 platform.
Steps:
-User sends $10 with PayPal (for example)
-Our team sends 10 USDC from our own wallet
-10 USDC lands in a custodial wallet associated with that user's PayPal account (1 wallet per PayPal account)
-The 10 USDC continues on to the Gitcoin smart contract
The donation shows up on-chain within a few seconds of the user sending a fiat payment.
This means we need a ready supply of stablecoins in our own wallet that we replenish over time.
Sybil resistance consists of whether it is a "verified PayPal account." After the round, we whitelist the wallets associated with the verified accounts to receive matching.
We believe the fiat donation volume would be much higher (perhaps 10-30%) if we had this feature built directly into Grants Stack instead of on a separate website.
This is also preferred so our team isn't stretched thin maintaining an entire Gitcoin copy instead of building in this particular feature.
With a single change that we already have ready, we believe we could increase Allo GMV by 10-30% today.
Long-term, this could result in multiple times more Allo GMV as Gitcoin transitions from purely a crypto platform to a blockchain-based platform that anyone can use. This accessibility may open partnerships with major institutions.
We have this proposal written here for our team to be funded to build this into grants stack and we were encouraged by Sov, Meg, Kat, and Ed to put it to a DAO vote. Currently we are reviewing the legal side to make sure everything is considered before a vote. https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gcp-017-updated-proposal-for-fiat-donations-in-grants-stack/19446
If this goes well, we think we would transition viaPrize into a nonprofit and build up a for profit company normie.tech helping more web3 platforms be accessible to non-crypto users.
This could mean a future where people can send fiat directly to a smart contract. Users wouldn't need an onramp (which fail 78% of the time) or a steep learning curve to participate in web3.
Web3 would be accessible to 100x as many people.
For GG22 Celo PG supplied 5000 USDGLO for our stablecoin balance and are paying us $1,500 for our services setting up fiat donations for the BioFi PathFinders and Regen Citizens rounds.
Thank you for this support!
For the Youth in Need and Ma Earth rounds on Arbitrum we supplied the funds for the reserves.
You can donate to these rounds with fiat at these links:
qf.viaprize.org/biofipathfinders
qf.viaprize.org/regencitizen
qf.viaprize.org/maearth
qf.viaprize.org/youthinneed
For all rounds we are taking approximately a 1.5% fee (PayPal takes 3.5% + $0.35 per tx and we take the remainder to equal 5%) which covers our costs of sponsoring gas and chargebacks.
We were encouraged by friends to apply for this.
Note that we are being paid for the Celo rounds and are working to secure a paid contract directly with Gitcoin as well.
Funding this would reward us for our months of unpaid work creating this system and setting up the OpenCivics, CollabTech, Youth in Need, and Ma Earth rounds.
Please contact us at normie.tech if you are public goods platform in the Alloverse who we can support with gasless transactions and fiat payments to your smart contracts.