The money doesn't (necessarily) go to the person running/requesting the project, but to an "arbiter" role who judges the work and refunds the "donators" if the team doesn't deliver properly. The Patron (project author), Arbiter and Worker "should be" different people, but there's nothing at the protocol level stopping the same npub from occupying multiple of those roles. Technically, not only is is not different from zap goals - it actually uses them under the hood.

Catallax - A Protocol for Pseudonymous Contract Work Economies

Catallax is an open protocol that enables pseudonymous contract work economies. It runs over Nostr, Bitcoin and Cashu ecash for censorship-resistan...

#catallax is a meta-protocol that integrates zap goals into a slightly richer experience - and the clients i'm working on integrate WoT and Dlists to add a curation layer I haven't yet seen with zap goals.

Grantless

Grantless — The Invisible Handout

Crowdfunded grants for open-source work, on Catallax. A permissionless, pleb-funded grant ecosystem on Nostr.

is just an opinionated client on top of catallax. You can do #catallax tasks as a single-fund or a crowdfund - the latter of which is better suited for #grantless.