In brief
- Gitcoin grants is hosting a charity drive for coronavirus.
- It's matching donations with $100,000.
- Previous funding came from the Ethereum Foundation and ConsenSys.
Open-source crypto bounties platform Gitcoin’s fifth round of grants includes a section dedicated to causes that help fight the coronavirus. Grants are due to be allocated on Monday, the project announced on Twitter, and the company will match donations with $100,000 of its own money.
The funds go toward charities fighting the coronavirus, the global pandemic with over 300,000 confirmed cases, according to data metrics site Worldometers. Due to the coronavirus, governments worldwide have pushed hundreds of millions of people into lockdown, and hospitals are overrun with patients.
Among charities currently on the platform are Red Cross Italy, Save the Children, and a mutual aid fund for masks and test kits.
Charities can take funds out as soon as they like, but they will only receive Gitcoin's matching funds once the campaign ends on April 6, Scott Moore, Gitcoin's technical growth lead, told Decrypt.
Due to the crypto market's volatility—it crashed last week along with global markets—Moore doesn't expect people to buy crypto just to take part in the campaign.
"But if you're already holding those tokens, and recognize the very real risk COVID-19 poses on a massive scale, I think it would be short-sighted not to donate and be part of solving this very real global challenge," he said.
Alex Wilson, co-founder of The Giving Block, a platform that helps charities process crypto donations— has partnered with Gitcoin for the project. Wilson told Decrypt that charities working with his platform have the option of converting their donations straight to US dollars. That'll help counteract the volatility.
There's no word yet on who's providing the $100,000, but the Ethereum Foundation, ConsenSys (which backs an editorially independent Decrypt), and Ethereum community members provided the money for previous grant rounds.
Gitcoin last December announced a $200,000 grant program for Ethereum projects. The firm plans to hold four fundraising rounds in 2020 to help to boost the ecosystem.
Since launching in January 2019, Gitcoin Grants has distributed $797,000 to open source projects. As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, perhaps even more grants will be diverted toward the healthcare efforts this year.
"If we see enough community interest, which we hope we will, we'll start up another round very soon," said Moore.
This article has been updated with comments from Gitcoin and The Giving Block.