Self Curated Registries

TL;DR:

Self-Curated Registries let people nominate themselves (or their projects) for funding consideration. Instead of applying to a central committee, anyone can join the registry—and the community helps surface what’s legitimate, valuable, or aligned.

This mechanism enables open participation in funding systems. By removing gatekeepers, Self-Curated Registries shift power toward the edges—anyone who believes they meet the criteria can list themselves. Communities can then engage with the list by signaling support, challenging bad actors, or curating with filters, tags, or upvotes.

Registries can power various downstream mechanisms: Quadratic Funding, Direct Grants, Voting Pools, or even Retro Funding rounds. They provide a flexible substrate for participation, and can be permissionless, curated, or semi-moderated depending on the context.

These registries are often paired with Allo Protocol, enabling transparent listing, filtering, and connection to capital pools.

Best For

Open, participatory ecosystems
Public goods communities
Early-stage contributor discovery
Systems where gatekeeping is a concern

Good At

Enabling broad participation
Reducing overhead and bureaucracy
Making funding more accessible
Seeding bottoms-up legitimacy

Dependencies / Requirements

Registry interface or application flow
Optional: moderation tools or eligibility filters
Signaling, voting, or curation layer
A mechanism that uses the registry as input (e.g. QF round, review board, etc.)

Not Good At

Preventing sybil attacks without additional verification
Filtering high volumes of spam without curation
Environments that need strict vetting or compliance
Contexts with low community engagement

Who Should Use It?

DAOs or communities that want to lower barriers to entry
Grant rounds that want to be inclusive and discover new talent
Funding ecosystems experimenting with open-source legitimacy
Protocols building transparent contributor pipelines

Example Use Cases

A Quadratic Funding round allows any project to add themselves to the registry; community donations determine which get funded
A grants program uses a registry to let contributors self-nominate, and a steward council filters or tags entries
A local civic network creates a registry of community groups eligible for recurring public goods funding