Eligibility in Epoch 8 fell steeply after we cancelled more than 500 streams: E7 marketing participants hadn’t allocated during the E7 AW, triggering the cancellation rule. Since we skipped onboarding efforts in Epoch 8, the only fresh entrants were 24 organically acquired users who locked GLM. Altogether, 365 addresses submitted allocations, nudging us toward the engagement levels seen in Epochs 1-4. Voter turnout reached 28 % of those eligible.

Although Epoch 8 followed nearly the same relative path as Epoch 7, its absolute figures were lower across the board. We began briskly on day 1 and recorded an especially high count of first allocations on day 14.**

The hourly allocation pattern matched earlier epochs, with most decisions submitted during the UTC afternoon and early evening.

We see two key patterns in the cohort data. First, organic users (GLM lockers and allocators who never received handouts) remain stable from one epoch to the next, especially after adjusting for possible sybils. A decline in participation from epoch to epoch is compensated by small, but not non-existent organic growth. Second, participation from marketing-onboarded users is falling. The decline is moderate for Epoch 5 campaigns but sharp for the Epoch 7 campaigns, particularly in the SheFi community. By the end of Epoch 8 only 74 of those users were active, down from nearly 900 initial streams - an 8 % retention rate.

If these trends hold, Epoch 9 should see around 250 participants.

Epoch 8 stands out for two reasons. First, there were no marketing campaigns during this period, so new-user growth was entirely organic. Second, roughly 15% of allocators had joined Epoch 6 but skipped Epoch 7—evidence that the climate round didn’t resonate strongly with our user base. In the other epochs, that share was only 2 %–4 %.

In the top 20 there is virtually no correlation between total donation amount and MF-QF distribution - the biggest QF vs linear difference so far. In previous epochs, the linear model’s threshold was the main driver of any gap.

Again, what determined the outcomes of this epoch was the number of donors, not the total amount of donations.

Epoch 8 saw the average number of projects each user backed rise to 5.2 from 3.8, reversing the decline we’d tracked since Epoch 3.