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The software company will reduce the scale of its operations to focus on sustainability.Software company Gitcoin announced that it will be winding down its Grants Lab, citing an unclear path towards profitability and a maturing L2 ecosystem.
Gitcoin announced the move via a blog post today, and clarified that the shutdown is specific to the Grants Lab and the Grants Stack technology. Other Gitcoin offerings, such as the Human Passport and KERNEL, will remain operational.
The company will not be omitting grant work entirely from its structure, but is shutting down the larger-scale operation of Grants Labs.
Instead of submitting a budget to Gitcoin Governance for H2 2025, Grants Labs will spend the remainder of its H1 funds on severance pay to affected employees.
Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki clarified, “We’re not retreating - we’re refocusing. Gitcoin will continue, but with a leaner team aligned around a more focused Gitcoin Grants program and managing its portfolio of assets.”
Gitcoin’s token, GTC, rallied on the news and is up 5% over the last 24 hours. The token surge comes after a strong week for GTC and altcoins in general, and GTC is up 34% over the last seven days to a $20 million market capitalization.
GTC PriceThe blog post goes on to cite potential growth opportunities and future activations for the Gitcoin ecosystem.
Some of these possibilities include new utilities for the GTC token, community activations through governance or public goods funding, or doubling down on existing grant recipients.
Juliet Ochago of the Gitcoin DAO emphasized that users can expect ongoing improvements for donors and grantees, and continued innovation within the Grants Program itself.
The pivot will mean an increased focus on community involvement, which the team is softly referring to as the “Gitcoin Community Edition” phase of project development.