Evolutionary Grants Games

TL;DR:

Instead of a one-time grant process, Evolutionary Grants Games treat funding like a living system. Proposals emerge, mutate, and compete across iterative rounds. Community members act as selectors—signaling support, remixing ideas, or voting over time to shape what gets funded.

Inspired by biological evolution and game dynamics, this mechanism turns grantmaking into a creative, adaptive process. Projects don’t just apply once—they evolve. Proposals can be revised, merged, or replaced. The community acts as both a selection pressure (through voting or signaling) and an evolutionary environment where only the most adaptive ideas thrive.

Games can be structured with:

• Rounds or generations (e.g. monthly)
• Fitness functions (impact metrics, votes, community support)
• Mutation/recombination rules (edit, remix, merge proposals)
• Elimination criteria (low-performing proposals drop off)

This mechanism is best for emergent discovery, community creativity, and long-term funding ecosystems that want to reward not just good ideas—but ideas that get better over time.

Best For

• Experimental ecosystems
• Funding innovation and discovery
• Engaged communities willing to iterate
• Long-term project development pipelines

Good At

1. Encouraging adaptive, iterative proposals
2. Surfacing new and unexpected ideas
3. Creating community involvement beyond voting
4. Funding based on fitness, not hype

Dependencies / Requirements

• Structured round or generation system
• Interfaces for proposal editing, remixing, or iteration
• Rules for survival, elimination, or promotion
• Clear incentives for participants (funding, recognition, etc.)

Not Good At

• Environments with low engagement or attention
• Urgent or one-off funding needs
• Projects requiring stable or predictable funding upfront
• Communities that resist experimentation or fluid processes

Who Should Use It?

• Public goods ecosystems interested in creative emergence
• DAOs experimenting with game-based governance
• Grantmakers tired of rigid proposal formats
• Communities that value co-creation and iteration

Example Use Cases

• A funding game where new proposals are submitted every month, and only the top-performing ideas continue or evolve
• A remixable proposal platform where users can fork or combine funding proposals, and matching funds go to the most adaptive
• A long-term grants process that grows ideas over time and gives increasing resources to those that adapt to real feedback