This forum post provides a high-level overview of the GIVeconomy token distribution at launch, and a report of the current state of the GIVeconomy, as well as a proposal for simplification of the Giveth DAO’s governance over the remaining available tokens.
GIVeconomy Introduction
The GIV token, launched in December 2021 is the lifeblood of the Giveth community!
It is the governance token that fuels and directs the GIVeconomy and the Giveth DAO with the following parts:
- GIVbacks - Rewards for donors to public goods projects on giveth.io
- GIVpower - Get GIVpower (Giveth governance power) when you stake and optionally lock GIV, you earn a yield in GIV (if approved by Giveth Governance).
- Project boosting - Use GIVpower to boost projects on Giveth to improve their visibility and increase the incentives to donors who support them.
- Giveth DAO votes - Use GIVpower to vote on important decisions within the Giveth DAO.
- Gurves - GIV-backed token economies that regeneratively fund public goods (on the roadmap).
GIV Token Distro At Launch - 2021
The total supply is 1 Billion GIV tokens and was minted at the onset of the GIVeconomy with the following distribution:
Here’s an elaboration on each bucket:
- GIVdrop (17.05%) - At onset of the GIVeconomy, we did an airdrop to Past contributors (5.05%) and Crypto Donors & Giveth Users (12%). This airdrop was open to be claimed until December 2022, after which point the unclaimed GIV tokens (approximately 60M) were returned to control of the DAO.
- Future Contributors (9.95%) - This bucket was allocated to be distributed to Giveth contributors working after the GIVeconomy launch, and rewards were distributed via a program we called vesting from launch through April 2024.
- GIVbacks Rewards (13%) - To run our GIVbacks program, we allocated 1 million GIV tokens for every 2 week round from GIVeconomy launch until December 22, 2026. We upgraded the distribution method for this program in November 2025 but the total rewards allocation remains unchanged and has been maintained.
- GIVgarden Common Pool (33%) - This was the primary common pool that was designated to be controlled by GIV holders. We used Conviction Voting and the now-depreciated gardens v1 platform at the onset of the GIVeconomy to allocated funds to proposals, and eventually migrated this Common Pool to the GIVgarden representative multisig that is controlled by GIVpower holders voting in the Giveth Snapshot.
- rGIV DAO Treasury (8%) - This allocation was under control of rGIV (later, “nrGIV” token holders). rGIV/nrGIV tokens were/are non-transferrable reputation tokens distributed to “core” Giveth contributors until early 2024. This treasury was formerly managed through votes in (the now-deprecated) Aragon v1 and is now held within the nrGIV multisig and is used mainly for salary payments reimbursements.
- GIVfarm (10%) - This GIV was earmarked for GIV liquidity initiatives, such as the “GIVfarm” liquidity mining incentives, token swaps for DAO-owned liquidity and bridge operations. This GIV remaining in this bucket and related LPs are held and controlled by the Giveth liquidity multisigs.
- Future roadmap projects (9%) - This GIV was earmarked to build and fuel roadmap projects such as GIVpower, Giveth QF, and gurves.
GIV Token Distro Update - Jan 2025
We recently performed an analysis on the state of the GIVeconomy, assessing that state of each bucket to determine how much GIV is still available for use and how much has been distributed outside the DAO. For ease of accounting, and considering all the changes that have occurred throughout Giveth DAO governance since the economy launch, the current, simplified token distribution, as of January 14, 2025, is as follows:
The elaboration on each bucket:
- DAO-controlled liquidity: This is the GIV portion of our DAO-controlled LPs across Ethereum Mainnet, Optimism, Gnosis Chain, Polygon zkEVM or Solana. LP tokens are held in the Giveth liquidity multisigs.
- GIVbacks: This is the GIV that remains of our at-launch earmarked allocation, meant to continue running GIVbacks rounds with (up to) 1 million GIV rewards pools until December 22, 2026 (promised at GIVeconomy launch).
- Held by Community: This is GIV that has already been distributed to users, donors, contributors, partners, external builders, etc. in accordance with GIVeconomy operations and passed governance proposals, and is now outside of control of the DAO.
- Available to Giveth DAO: This all the GIV that remains (as of Jan 14, 2025) under DAO control and available for use and distribution, according to the votes of GIVpower holders in Snapshot.
- Pre-allocated for Salaries: This GIV is held or being streamed to the nrGIV multisig for use on salary payments to core contributors.
- Future liquidity initiatives: This is the remaining GIV from the at-launch allocation earmarked for future liquidity initiatives such as DAO-to-DAO liquidity token swaps.
GIVstream
As you may recall, the entire GIVeconomy distribution at launch was subject to the “GIVstream”, meaning that 90% of the total supply of GIV tokens at launch was locked and meant to unlock linearly via a “stream” until December 2026.
As of January 14, 2025, 65% of the total supply of GIV was liquid and 35% was still part of the GIVstream. Because we have been allocating GIVstreams to users via GIVdrop, GIVpower, GIVbacks, etc. and also distributing fully unlocked tokens, each of the “new” January 2025 subbuckets in the GIVeconomy has a different amount of tokens “unlocked” and “streaming”, depicted here:
Note: Final GIV numbers are approximate and rounded. Numbers as of January 14, 2025.
Governance Over of the GIVeconomy
Reflecting on Experiments
The Giveth DAO has been at the forefront of experimentation in decentralized governance and tokenization for some time. We’ve tried:
- Single-chain governance with conviction voting to allocate funds to proposals (Gardens)
- Combined governance systems with both liquid (GIV) and non-transferrable (nrGIV) tokens bringing together capital influence and reputation under one DAO roof
- Quadratic Voting for feature prioritization (Tokenlog)
- A veCurve model for donation platform project curation (GIVpower)
- Multi-chain voting power capture for on-chain votes (Snapshot)
- Liquidity mining with both Univ2 and v3 (GIVfarm, RegenFarms, Angel Vault)
- DAO-to-DAO token swaps for sustainable liquidity
Current Governance Model Ratification
In the end, some of these experiments stuck, and others did not. We are proposing now to officially deprecate nrGIV (reputation subDAO) and agree to the simplified Giveth governance approach we are currently operating under, which works like this:
- Get Giveth governance power (GIVpower) by staking (and optionally locking) GIV, on any GIVpower-supported chains (currently Gnosis Chain, Optimism and Polygon zkEVM)
- GIVpower is non-transferrable. Get 1 GIVpower for every GIV staked. Get up to 5.2x GIVpower if you lock your GIV for up to 1 year.
- Proposals to use or allocate GIV beyond previously agreed upon buckets (outlined in the 2025 image above) must follow the Giveth advice process and be voted upon by GIVpower holders in Snapshot.
- GIV required for the outcomes of passed proposals will be distributed via the corresponding Giveth DAO multisig.
Tl;Dr Updated GIV Token Distribution Proposal
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Since the launch of the GIVeconomy, the Giveth DAO has fulfilled early goals related to the distribution of GIV, and evolved our governance processes along with the changing ecosystem.
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This proposal is to report and ratify on-chain, the new, simplified GIV token distribution and corresponding Giveth governance model.
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The updated GIV token distribution has 4 major parts:
- Held by the community: This is GIV has already been distributed across the community
- DAO-controlled liquidity: This GIV is locked in LP tokens providing liquidity for GIV and controlled by the Giveth DAO.
- GIVbacks: This GIV is set aside to fulfill our at-launch promise to run GIVbacks until December 22, 2026.
- Available to Giveth DAO*: This GIV is under control of the Giveth DAO and can be used to meet roadmap goals, fulfill our mission and strengthen the GIVeconomy, following approval by GIVpower holders through on-chain votes (see “Current Governance Model Ratification) above.
*Note: Of the GIV “Available to Giveth DAO” some has been earmarked for use for salary payments and liquidity initiative already (see Jan 14, 2025 Token distro update above). This GIV will be used for those purposes unless another vote to reallocate it is passed.
Final Remarks
Since launch in 2021, we have achieved some pretty incredible things with the GIVeconomy so far! From GIVbacks to GIVpower curation, to our evolutions in Giveth governance over time, and we are still going strong!
This GIV token distribution and governance simplification is meant to make it easier for us to achieve our goals, and ultimately start launching tokens collateralized by GIV that regeneratively fund impact around the world. 
If you’re looking to get GIV and join us further in this mission, we have OTC partners that can help - reach out to me here or on Telegram and I’ll connect you!
This post will remain here on the forum for a minimum of 5 days before moving to Snapshot to ratify on-chain.
Praise @wmb81321 (especially) and @Griff @amin @freshelle @mitch for all of the time and effort you put into analyzing our current GIV token distribution and helping to simplify it to this point. This couldn’t have been done without you!
