Giveth Galaxy vs Giveth

Tension
The initial mission of Giveth was to build the future of charitable giving by building and growing the Giveth platform (dapp). Since then Giveth has become a collection of different initiatives, many of those not directly related anymore to the initial mission. We now refer to Giveth as a Galaxy of ideas, concepts and initiatives that mainly seek to help to move the Ethereum space forward. It has become an Ethereum incubator.

This change of scope is confusing for both team members, as for the outside world and for the community. To the outside world Giveth is mainly regarded as a donation platform and it is this aspect that people find fascinating and opens doors.

On the other hand a lot of team members love the idea of being a Galaxy, and we are all proud that great projects have come out of it.

But the two have been conflicting for a while now within the team, and they are very confusing for outsiders.

It also makes it very hard / impossible to well-position the Giveth dapp and push for adoption, as the requirements for branding and communication are very different from Giveth Galaxy.

I believe that positioning both worlds better will help relax these tensions and open the door to a prosperous future... to boldly go where no-one has gone before.

Proposal
Use the Giveth Galaxy name to build a strong umbrella brand for all the different initiatives. This brand will have its own logo, website, positioning. The main domain / entry will be givethgalaxy.com.

Keep using the Giveth.io brand and domain for the donation dapp. This brand will also have its own logo, website, positioning. It will keep a reference to the Giveth Galaxy, for example as ‘a star within the Giveth Galaxy’, but its main domain / entry will be giveth.io

I believe that by doing so we make it very clear for both the outside world and the inner team what is what (e.g. similar to Aragon vs Aragon.one). We can both focus on our strength, building great brands, products and communities, while maintaining a coherent ‘Giveth Galaxy’.

But…I imagine this is a very sensitive issue. Everybody loves Giveth, but the fact is Giveth is changing a lot, Devcon4 made that very clear. It’s time to move forward and not be attached to the past.

The (sad) alternative is that the dapp will pick a new name and continue with that. It’s not a fork, but we’ll be forking off the Giveth brand.
To be clear, we very much do not prefer this option. On the other hand we are also convinced we need to have a clear positioning and branding to drive adoption of the dapp and truly build the future of charitable giving.

So I hope everybody can and will be aligned on this!

Giveth Galaxy for the incubator and gov experiments
Giveth for the dapp

Cheers!