Community GDP

Community GDP is the primary health metric for Flarehub. It measures how much money the community earns, not how big a treasury looks on paper.

In plain terms: Community GDP is the total dollar value paid to contributors and teams through opportunities discovered, facilitated, or funded via Flarehub.

What counts towards Community GDP

We track the gross value of opportunities that route through Flarehub surfaces, including:

• Bounty payouts.
• Contract milestones.
• Microgrants and Instagrants.
• Event stipends and travel support tied to shipped work.
• Follow-on grants or deals that can be directly traced to Flarehub proof-of-work (e.g. a team funded after a Flarehub hackathon or residency).

Where possible, values are normalised to a common currency (e.g. USD equivalent) at the time of payout for consistent reporting.

Simple formula

At a high level:

Community GDP = Σ (all verified payouts to contributors and teams that stem from Flarehub programmes)

This does not include:

• Treasury balances that are not yet deployed.
• Speculative token price movements.
• Unverified off-platform arrangements without a clear link to Flarehub proof-of-work.

Why Community GDP matters

Optimising for Community GDP changes the core question from:

• "How many people are in the Discord?" to
• "How much are our contributors actually earning from real work?"

Practically, that means:

• Programme design — scopes, bounties, and contracts are chosen for their potential to unlock earnings and long-term opportunities.
• Budget allocation — hubs, programmes, and events that generate more GDP over time earn larger or more flexible budgets.
• Talent outcomes — contributors can point to a concrete earnings history when talking to employers, investors, or grant committees.

How we track it

To keep the metric trustworthy and beginner-friendly:

• On-chain escrows and claims provide a canonical record of bounty and contract payouts.
• Programme ops maintain ledgers for grants, stipends, and event-related payments.
• Follow-on opportunities (e.g. VC rounds, ecosystem grants) are added when teams document the connection to Flarehub proof-of-work.
• Aggregated dashboards show GDP growth over time, with filters for programme, hub, and contributor segment.

Where self-reported data is used, reviewers require public artefacts (announcements, grant posts, or signed statements) before adding it to the GDP ledger.

Using GDP in decisions

Community GDP feeds directly into:

• Regional budgets — hubs that consistently generate GDP and active contributors can unlock larger quarterly budgets.
• Instagrants and microgrants — projects that have a clear path to increasing GDP are prioritised.
• Fast Track nominations — teams that combine strong proof-of-work with significant GDP contribution are surfaced to accelerators and grant programmes.

GDP is a guide, not an oracle: qualitative factors like long-term ecosystem fit and strategic relevance still matter.

GDP decision matrix

GDP flow (at a glance)

Programme budgets → Bounties, contracts, Instagrants, and events → Verified payouts to contributors → Community GDP ledger and dashboards → Budget, grant, and Fast Track decisions.

Disclaimers

• Community GDP is an operational metric, not a financial statement or investment product.
• Values are indicative and may be revised as better data or methodologies become available.
• Contributors are responsible for understanding how earnings reported in GDP relate to their own tax and regulatory obligations.

Next steps

• Contributors: focus on scopes that build reusable products, integrations, or playbooks. These tend to generate more GDP over time.
• City leads and hub operators: track the GDP generated by your local initiatives and include it in your quarterly updates.
• Sponsors: design bounties and contracts that tie directly to adoption, usage, or integrations so that your spend feeds into visible Community GDP.