The tragedy of the commons has turned from a real issue into a slogan. At the moment of Bitcoin halving, what we are experiencing is speculation, taking over, sudden wealth, and an omnipresent sense of anxiety, with an explosion of messages about missed opportunities for wealth. The open, transparent, and immutable blockchain will solve the tragedy of the commons and bring us a beautiful new world. Such fairy tales do not exist.
The tragedy of the commons has turned from a real issue into a slogan. At the moment of Bitcoin halving, what we are experiencing is speculation, taking over, sudden wealth, and an omnipresent sense of anxiety, with an explosion of messages about missed opportunities for wealth.
The open, transparent, and immutable blockchain will solve the tragedy of the commons and bring us a beautiful new world. Such fairy tales do not exist.
In this article, you can see living examples of workers who have made different attempts and contributions to blockchain and public goods while remaining anonymous. Fairy tales do not exist; a beautiful world does not come suddenly. Every step and every attempt requires effort and practice.
I hope this article can rekindle your original intention and enthusiasm for blockchain.
Public Goods is good.
Current bounty 丨 $171.00
Class representative ｜ @swiftevo
Review ｜Lauran
Typesetting ｜豚
Ethereum hopes to become a testing ground for public goods funding mechanisms#
Public goods are important for Ethereum and any crypto ecosystem. They rely entirely on the selfless contributions of open-source software and protocol research, benefiting everyone in the ecosystem. We need to study how to fund them for sustainable development.
When a public goods version of a problem has not yet been developed, commercial methods or closed, centralized solutions always come with many limitations or costs, leaving users with little power or requiring payment. Such examples are everywhere. Generally speaking, once a public goods version is created, due to its openness, everyone can use it without restriction to solve problems, and anyone will benefit. However, due to its openness, it cannot effectively distinguish between those who pay and those who do not.
The decentralized nature of the Ethereum ecosystem makes it impossible to provide a centralized solution for any specific problem. Our challenge is that if you create a decentralized solution, it usually does not provide a business model for the creator. So, when it indeed becomes a public good, it is decentralized and open. You cannot adopt a paid usage business model to obtain a stable economic source to support subsequent maintenance, openness, and labor costs.
Therefore, how to provide stable and sustainable funding for public goods is a very important challenge in the Ethereum ecosystem. Vitalik Buterin hopes Ethereum can become a testing ground, providing a favorable environment for the development, research, and practice of different public goods funding mechanisms. Once these mechanisms are developed and refined in the Ethereum community, they can be exported and applied elsewhere, even in any corner of the world.
In the following discussion about public goods funding mechanisms, Vitalik mentioned two fundamental questions: Where does the money come from, and how is the money distributed?
Where does the money come from?#
Currently, public goods not only have Gitcoin Grants as a continuous and regular funding source, but we also have Optimism retroPGF and other different funding mechanisms in the ecosystem.
In October 2023, ETHEREUM ETF VANAC announced that it would provide 10% of its shares to Protocol Guild. This will undoubtedly become one of the important funding sources for Protocol Guild, supporting long-term development.
(https://blockchain.news/news/vaneck-pledges-10-percent-of-ethereum-etf-profits-to-protocol-guild)
In public goods funding, Gitcoin Grants and Ethereum have been trying to shift from one-time donations to sustainable and stable funding. This is a crucial step. The emergence of mechanisms like RetroPGF and ETF Vanac shows that Ethereum is steadily moving in this direction.
📝 Translator's Note
The impact of Optimism RetroPGF retrospective public goods funding
Since 2021, Optimism's retrospective funding has emerged. With the display of influence, attention to sustainable funding for public goods has injected into RetroPGF, causing its scale to continuously increase.
An introduction to the puzzling reality and development of Optimism grants (above), https://www.gate.io/zh-tw/learn/articles/introduction-and-movements/924
Imagine that currently, various Layer 2s with billions of dollars in national debt can participate in funding the public goods ecosystem as a means or strategy to gain market share. Initially, it was Optimism, then the entire Ethereum, and then the internet and the broader world began to pay attention to and support public goods.
This may be one of the paths for the long-term development of public goods.
Translator's Note: RetroPGF is not just limited to those officially held by Optimism; it is a model and mechanism that can be easily replicated. In January 2024, Kevin Owocki published an article titled "EasyRetroPGF.xyz - Run your own Optimism-style RPGF Round" on the Optimism forum.
The RetroPGF mechanism and code are fully open-sourced in this article, and other communities are welcome to use them for free. In other words, RetroPGF is no longer limited to being hosted only by the official Optimism. Anyone can access all open-source code and applications, and you can also establish your own RetroPGF round. At the same time, you can see that Gitcoin and Optimism are not in competition with each other; rather, they support and develop each other.
In the same month, GreenPill.network announced its collaboration with Optimism to hold EasyRetroPGF training, attracting friends interested in RetroPGF to participate in training and cultivate more talent for public goods.
🔗 Further Reading
[1] EasyRetroPGF.xyz - Run your own Optimism-style RPGF Round
https://gov.optimism.io/t/easyretropgf-xyz-run-your-own-optimism-style-rpgf-round/7359
[2] Optimism RetroPGF Round 3 with Jonas Sieferth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rfDfc9x438
[3] GreenPill.network EasyretroPGF training
https://twitter.com/greenpillnet/status/1751663585292611890
How is the money distributed?#
Quadratic funding
Compared to "Where does the money come from," "How to distribute" is actually a bigger and more important question. If funding for public goods can be effectively distributed, people and different organizations will be more willing to donate. Imagine if there were a powerful, effective, and trustworthy neutral system where you only need to throw money into the system, and public goods projects and their contributors would receive actual subsidies; many people would be willing to participate, right?
Quadratic Funding and Retrospective Funding are two mechanisms currently under development. The biggest challenge among them is how to create real information sources, such as who contributed to which projects and which projects are upstream of others, allowing those truly important but less visible or well-known projects to receive more attention and support.
Various distribution mechanisms
Optimism RetroPGF attempts to establish a mechanism for "how money is distributed" through a delegated form and multi-layer structure. Badgeholders serve as a review committee, scoring each application case, and the score directly determines the share of funding;
The standardized model established by Hypercerts is also trying to clarify what constitutes a contribution. Instead of automatically collecting this information, it relies on responsible individuals to record who made what contributions. This approach is more likely to attract people to fund the entire ecosystem rather than just individual independent projects.
Protocol Guild sets up independent smart contracts to manage the tokens donated by people. Within a reasonable lock-up period, developers self-organize and present their contributions to Ethereum development. Each member of the community contributes tokens. This mechanism aims to achieve reasonable distribution of funds and hopes to activate the community.
Tea.xyz's open-source software impact ranking TeaRank
Tea.xyz has designed a Proof of Contribution scoring mechanism to rate each open-source software (OSS) registered on Tea.xyz. Since the platform is linked to GitHub, simply entering the link to your software on GitHub allows for registration.
The ranking is called TeaRank. Proof of Contribution dynamically scores each registered open-source software. The value, impact, and the number of software relying on this open-source software are all important factors affecting the score.
https://tea.xyz/rewards-for-oss-contributions
The total issuance of the TEA token used for incentives is 10 billion, with an expected issuance date in the second quarter of 2024. It is used not only for incentives and capturing the value generated by open-source software but also for governing TeaDAO. It is hoped that contributors to open-source software will have the right to govern TeaDAO while receiving incentives.
Dominant Assurance Contracts (DAC) mechanism – Web3's "money-back guarantee"
In 1998, Alexander Tabarrok published a paper titled "The Private Provision of Public Goods via Dominant Assurance Contracts," detailing how Dominant Assurance Contracts as funding guarantee contracts affect public goods.
In 2024, Alex established the EnsureDone platform, the first fundraising platform to practically apply the DAC mechanism fundraising platform.
In simple terms, DAC is a fundraising mechanism. Project leaders need to regularly disclose the project's progress to allow the public to assess its impact and completion.
Translator's Note: In the original text, the word "Project" will be used for planned projects; while "project" refers to completed projects for distinction. The projects in DAC are still in the planning stage, so this section focuses on projects; while the entire text related to retrospective mechanisms refers to completed projects, which will be collectively referred to as projects.
If it meets the expected goals, the project will receive full funding.
If it does not meet the expected goals, everyone can get their money back, plus a bonus fund.
If the project does not achieve the expected phased results during its execution, investors will increase their investment or even attract new investors to join to obtain the bonus fund.
If the project achieves the expected phased results during its execution, it will attract more contributors to donate more funds to support the project to achieve the expected results.
If the project is very close to the final goal but time is running out, potential speculators will wait until the last moment and then flood in funds to gain benefits.
Translator's Note: In early 2022, Alex mentioned the possibility of combining DAC with Quadratic Funding (QF). The preliminary distribution of QF can more effectively allocate funds to projects that need and deserve support; the DAC mechanism drives projects to achieve expected goals, otherwise, donors can receive refunds and additional return rewards. We can see more detailed settings and example discussions in the extended reading materials.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/ 瑞士军刀
When we have QF, DAC, retroPGF, Hypercerts, and qualification-limited voting, it feels like having a Swiss army knife with different tools. Combining all these different capital allocation mechanisms and starting to conduct A/B testing on them is exciting to think about.
All these different developments are like pieces of a puzzle, moving towards the ecosystem of public goods. People will also become increasingly accustomed to funding public goods.
"Where does the money come from" and "how to distribute" are not independent questions; rather, they influence each other. In terms of funding sources, Optimism provides a sustainable and stable funding to assist the development of public goods. With the support of 10% of ETHEREUM ETF VANAC shares, Protocol Guild can continue to contribute to the ETHEREUM protocol.
In the distribution mechanism, we cover retrospective public goods funding, quadratic funding, and the distribution methods of Protocol Guild and DAC. The three mentioned distribution mechanisms provide different solutions and can even trace where significant impacts come from, allowing for more reasonable allocation of funds.
🔗 Further Reading
[1] Optimism Third Round RetroPGF
https://round3.optimism.io/lists/0xf46ab2d9aedd6409544ec2a6ff8ad83e31e5889b1da7c0f5775f5625b0aa3d33
[2] DeSci's Self-Learning Journey 009 – What is QF Quadratic Funding
https://matters.town/@swiftevo/452708
[3] Protocol Guild's mechanism for funding public goods
GitHub - protocolguild/docs: ARCHIVED - This repo hosts the docs site for the Protocol Guild
[4] The Private Provision of Public Goods Via Dominant Assurance Contracts
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4682
[5] Dominant Assurance Contracts and Quadratic Funding
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/01/dominant-assurance-contracts-and-quadratic-funding.html
[6] Quadratically Funding Dominant Assurance Contracts: A Path to Public Goods at Scale
https://mirror.xyz/scotta.eth/A92ybbjx43FZszOJvWUslPcIsUfTcIqnenYNDOHOXFA
[7] Tea.xyz: A New Way to Fund Open Source Software with Max Howell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtgAV0iOfDE
Focus and Diversification of Fund Distribution#
In a recent interview with David from Bankless, Vitalik pointed out that DAO governance and fundraising for public goods belong to the same problem in many ways. The biggest difference is that DAO governance focuses more on a single solution, while public goods fundraising is dispersed in different directions.
(Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FnRN7aiorI)
Whether it's DAO governance or how people donate to various public goods projects, they are two cases of using decentralized decision-making mechanisms. The quality of these decisions cannot be verified mathematically or through protocols.
If we have $50 billion and want humanity to land on the moon, the first method is to distribute $50 billion evenly to everyone in the world, hoping someone will land on the moon. The second method is to randomly select someone and concentrate the $50 billion investment on that person to support them in landing on the moon. Comparing the two methods, the latter seems to have a higher probability of success.
For public goods, the scale of funding is far from the $50 billion amount. But just as funding is dispersed to support various projects or completed projects with the same goal, public goods also face the focus and diversification approaches to the moon landing problem.
The convex worldview shows that if funds are evenly distributed to everyone globally, the invested funds are dispersed and cannot effectively solve the "moon landing" problem. For example, Protocol Guild's concentration of 10% of ETHEREUM ETF VANAC shares fully supports the development of Protocol Guild, allowing it to continue contributing to the ETHEREUM protocol.
The concave worldview advocates for diversified investment to reduce risk. For example, Gitcoin Grants or retroPGF promote funding for different types of projects in progress or completed projects.
In the practice of DAO governance and public goods funding, we see the differences in convex and concave curves. DAOs select one option from many through voting and discussion, then concentrate resources to break through the problem, presenting a convex curve; on the other hand, in public goods funding, we simultaneously support different options in a dispersed manner. We hope to address problems with diverse strategies, presenting a concave curve below.
Thus, DAO management and public goods funding are two facets of the same problem: focus and diversification.
Vitalik interview: Convex vs Concave https://youtu.be/zUrgFU6vZq8?t=200&si=e5-4KWP1nu-RYV8F
📝 Translator's Note
Vitalik's convex and concave blockchain, https://www.odaily.news/post/5158695
Of course, the world is far more complex than we imagine. In the extended reading materials, we can also see saddle points in three-dimensional space. When dealing with different problems, we also use different criteria to solve them. Sometimes we need to focus funds to break through; sometimes we need to diversify investments to avoid putting all eggs in one basket.
The translator believes that the introduction of saddle points is not to seek a perfect mathematical point that is neither high nor low. Rather, it serves as a reminder that concave and convex are merely variations in two-dimensional space. When you deny the high risks of focusing investments by putting all eggs in one basket with a concave perspective, your actions may be a form of convex diversification from another angle.
For example, Protocol Guild's concentration of 10% of ETHEREUM ETF VANAC shares fully supports the development of Protocol Guild, allowing it to continue contributing to the ETHEREUM protocol. At the same time, Protocol Guild adopts a diversified funding approach for different projects, which in turn is a form of concave worldview diversification.
🔗 Further Reading
[1] Vitalik interview: Convex vs Concave
https://youtu.be/zUrgFU6vZq8?t=200&si=e5-4KWP1nu-RYV8F
[2] Vitalik's convex and concave blockchain
https://www.odaily.news/post/5158695
Impact Traceability - Behind the Projects#
After discussing the flow of money, Vitalik and Kevin Owocki's discussion delves deeper into the impact of public goods and project traceability.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2347:_Dependency
We should not just look at each project or initiative in isolation. If you consider the builders upstream, you might even think of the creators of hash functions.
📝 Translator's Note
Steve Marquess and Stephen Henson: Two Unsung Heroes Saving the Internet
OpenSSL is the default encryption engine used by most networks. Commercial companies and government departments benefit from the free OpenSSL and its continuous updates, often without giving back. (https://www.openssl.org/)
Without security toolkits like OpenSSL, every time you log into Instagram or Gmail, or enter credit card details on Netflix, the security keys handling your personal information could theoretically be vulnerable to attack.
In 2006, OpenSSL experienced a routine coding error known as the Heartbleed bug, leading to the largest security breach in human history, resulting in password leaks and chaos for commercial companies and governments. The US and Canadian joint verification agencies hoped the OpenSSL team would make extensive complex code changes. It was then that everyone realized that the daily updates and maintenance of OpenSSL relied entirely on Steve Marquess and Stephen Henson, who had been working quietly. The funding OpenSSL received was only enough to sustain the project for six months. The unsung heroes behind it kept OpenSSL operational.
As the two resolved this crisis, their quiet maintenance of OpenSSL finally gained worldwide attention.
If we had a mechanism for impact traceability, any sub-project developed based on your project would allow you to automatically receive a percentage of contributions from each sub-project, for example, through a smart contract, providing real feedback to the underlying contributors.
🔗 Further Reading
[1] The Internet Is Being Protected By Two Guys Named Steve
https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisstokelwalker/the-internet-is-being-protected-by-two-guys-named-st
Can Smart Contracts Truly Solve Impact Traceability?#
EIP-6968#
Contributors: Zak Cole [email protected] Zak Cole (@zscole) Kevin Owocki [email protected] lightclient (@lightclient)
EIP-6968 is currently in draft form. It is a mechanism called Contract Secured Revenue. When anyone triggers a smart contract, they need to pay a gas fee. Previously, gas fees paid miners for a series of interactions with smart contracts. EIP-6968 hopes to allow the creators of corresponding smart contracts to also receive a percentage of the gas fees as a reward for their contributions to the creation of the smart contract.
EIP-6968 plans to be deployed on the Public Goods Network, hoping to attract more developers to join this Layer 2 network.
*Public Goods Network is a Layer 2 sidechain created by Gitcoin on Ethereum, advocating that every submitted gas fee will be reinvested into the development of public goods. Unfortunately, in January 2024, the Public Goods Network announced it would cease operations within six months.
On the EIP website, EIP-6968 has not been updated for over six months and is marked as "not to be used."
🔗 Further Reading:
[1] https://twitter.com/pgn_eth/status/1747652971419283744
[2] https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-6968
Zcash
Zcash is a cryptocurrency based on zk-SNARKs zero-knowledge proof technology. It can mask transaction information to achieve complete confidentiality of personal and transaction data.
Zcash has a founder's reward mechanism in its system. This mechanism automatically extracts 20% of the miner's gas fee rewards for developers as a source of funding for Zcash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko_Wilcox-O'Hearn
https://www.blocktempo.com/privacy-cryptocurrency-zcash-prepares-for-friendly-fork/
In Web3, everything is public and unrestricted. People can hard fork different versions of new Zcash, even fork a version that does not extract the founder's reward from gas fees, and people can freely choose a version of Zcash without Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn's name or the founder's reward mechanism.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko_Wilcox-O'Hearn
People's ability to trace smart contracts is a matter of free choice. This is the real challenge. In the daily life of blockchain, people face a moral choice when selecting smart contracts – to choose one that automatically allocates a portion of the gas fee as a reward to the original contributors of the smart contract or to choose one that does not have traceability.
Deploying mechanisms for public goods through a laissez-faire approach and gradually improving them based on market responses while educating participants is similar to the quadratic funding model used in Gitcoin Grants held every three months.
However, if we do not have a well-designed Ethereum protocol to incentivize contributors, the loopholes in the mechanism may be exploited. Therefore, keeping the mechanisms that reward creators off-chain or outside smart contracts as a balancing channel becomes very important.
Incentives Beyond Money
When we start considering using non-monetary items or feedback to reward participants for their contributions, we can refer to the following two examples.
Taiwan - Gold Card Program
If you can prove that you have actively contributed to open source for the past eight years, you are eligible for Taiwan's employment gold card. This visa allows you to live and work in Taiwan for three years. (This is a general overview; please refer to the official link for the latest announcements.)
https://goldcard.nat.gov.tw/zh/qualification/field-of-digital/
Here, we see that Taiwan rewards those who contribute to open source, and this does not come at a cost to Taiwan. Instead, it is a good thing for Taiwan. They are identifying and attracting long-term open-source contributors. In a sense, they are making a valuable contribution to open source. This not only makes the contributors and the world better but also benefits Taiwan.
Free Tickets from Protocol Guild
If you participate in Protocol Guild and contribute, you can receive free tickets to various conferences. This is a very clever strategy. Although the tickets may cost $800, if you give the tickets to the right contributors, they are actually adding value to the conference. Essentially, this is an underdeveloped mutually beneficial collaboration.
If you have a good way to identify contributors, this could also be a method to determine who can receive funding and who has access to tickets. The better you do in identifying contributors to public goods, the more you can truly recognize those who bring value to the ecosystem, provide them with non-monetary feedback, guide them to join the community, and contribute more, unlocking more opportunities.
This will realize the vision of a decentralized community. Through the influence of contributors, social capital is generated and fed back into the community, while it continues to grow your community. This non-exclusive, non-competitive incentive resonates with the essence of public goods.
Leverage Points for Builders: The Role of Other Ethereum Builders in the Development of Public Goods
We have been emphasizing the importance of public goods in the development of Ethereum. So how can builders with software skills, design skills, writing skills, or other professional skills make good use of this development trend?
Impact Recording
Currently, there are not many tools available to standardize contributions to public goods, form datasets, and attempt to convert them into some format.
If we establish a system that can record and measure impact, connecting to the previous discussion on "how money is distributed," we can effectively reward those who are truly contributors, such as:
-
Retrospective mechanisms that record and measure impact
-
Hypercerts
We can better record, view, and track the impact generated by different public goods projects through these systems. For example, we standardize the data for each project... this is the percentage of contribution to each detail or contributor's impact, who directly contributed to a project during a specific time period, their shares, and so on, creating an open dataset. This can also help avoid the "free rider" problem. At the same time, Ethereum builders can more easily establish corresponding reward mechanisms to fund true contributors.
Imagine if all Web 2 open-source software developers joined Web 3 and received funding based on the impact they generated; the world would be completely different. These people are influential, and they will also impact the world.
🔗 Further Reading
[1] Unlocking the Potential of DAO Projects: Incentivizing More Participation with Contribution Records!
https://matters.town/@bi821010/482315
[2] Time-Traveling Donation Certificates: Hypercerts - The World of Blockchain
https://matters.town/@smallbe/396156
The Good in Public Goods - The Future?#
As the public goods funding mechanisms in Ethereum begin to show such a wide variety of funding mechanisms, driving the entire ecosystem's development, with projects like Gitcoin Grant and retroPGF willing to continuously invest funds into public goods development, and systems like Hypercert measuring impact, these can effectively assist in scaling the ecosystem of public goods. The Ethereum Foundation is also focusing on cultivating more independently developing organizations rather than developing the foundation itself.
All these examples or mechanisms have a positive and valuable impact on the entire ecosystem.
A Public Goods Hyperstructure Vision
The future of public goods funding resembles a hyperlinked structure that can operate without the need to establish trust mechanisms. Although human participation still exists, it resembles a naturally existing system, just as countries rely on legal systems to operate continuously.
In the future, compared to government departments, the ecosystems or mechanisms supporting public goods will be decentralized, very close to an ideal self-sustaining system that does not rely on Vitalik or Kevin Owocki to drive it; this will be the ideal utopia for public goods funding.
We see that in addition to Gitcoin Grants' quadratic funding, there are also other mechanisms like Optimism's retroPGF, GiveTH, clr funding, etc., providing support. With the emergence of this sustainable structure for public goods funding, people can contribute to public goods and receive economic returns.
Ultimately, beyond "working" and "doing ICOs," people will have a third option – to contribute to public goods.
In the future, will blockchain's public goods funding mechanisms disrupt traditional charitable funding mechanisms?
The transparency, integrity, global nature, and programmability of blockchain, without manual operation, provide a significant advantage for establishing public goods funding mechanisms. Traditional centralized funding mechanisms face issues such as opacity and untraceable cash flow, leading to low accountability for donors. Donors can only donate based on the project's credibility without verification. Blockchain has many essential advantages over traditional methods.
Photo Credit: Ianoran Lhm provided by "Is Child Sponsorship a Scam?" - A New York Times Investigative Report
Translator's Note: The image shows the "beneficiary" information received by netizen Ianoran Lhm during the controversy over child sponsorship by Hong Kong's Christian Action.
Blockchain fundamentally presents how to establish a rule system in an open and transparent manner. Everyone can see what the underlying rules are. Everyone can ensure compliance with the rules. And all of this is done in the same way. Therefore, cheating becomes more difficult.
Traditionally, the closest simulation is like using paper or electronic voting in democratic voting systems. However, public goods are so diverse, vibrant, and rapidly growing, such as traceability tools for public goods, certificates for recording impact, or different platforms for distributing donations.
Comparing the 300,000 data generated by Gitcoin Grants every three months with the data generated by democratic voting in local elections every two years, it is not difficult to see that the work in the blockchain-based public goods system is high-resolution democracy. Although quadratic funding is not perfect, it generates a large amount of detailed democratic data, and people actively participate in it.
Currently, social media may be somewhat dysfunctional, but in the future, it could be another high-resolution democratic system waiting to be improved.
In 2022, Kevin Owocki conducted a quadratic funding initiative on the Lens social platform. Anyone discussing EthCC in France raised $20K in funding rounds. Each post on different topics on Lens is a project, and each tip for the same post is a small donation through quadratic funding.
In the fixed three-month Gitcoin Grants, everyone may only need to spend 15 minutes funding their favorite projects. However, if public goods funding is injected into our daily social media atmosphere, it would be a way to enhance discussions about public goods and provoke thoughts among people in their daily lives, rather than just being an activity that gives me a dopamine rush every three months. What would that be like?
🔗 Further Reading
[1] QF Social Network on Lens Protocol by Kevin Owocki https://github.com/supermodularxyz/supermodules/issues/2
[2] Is Child Sponsorship a Scam? - A New York Times Investigative Report
https://www.thenewslens.com/article/159994
The Vision – 10 Years Later
Now it is 2023, what changes does Vitalik think the world will undergo in 10 years?
We expect to see more types of public goods emerging. This will no longer be limited to Ethereum but will extend to the broader internet and even the real world beyond the internet. Then people will begin to contribute to public goods, and contributors can receive economic returns for their efforts with minimal administrative burden or automatically through the operation of smart contracts.
The change brought about by this is that more open-source solutions will emerge. From day one, projects will be open-source, allowing others to use your tools to solve their problems. By doing so, it can increase your income. The earlier you open-source, the closer you will be to the root of the problem and the upstream of the contribution flow, rather than in the traditional world where the earlier you open-source, the easier it is for others to steal your work. Do you remember the commercial solutions or centralized solutions mentioned at the beginning of the article?
This is thanks to the combination of the funding systems, impact measurement methods, traceable smart contracts, and everything we discussed above.
For contributors to public goods, when they provide valuable tools, platforms, or data, they can expect to receive sufficient and stable economic funding, allowing them to continue focusing on the project without having to become a volunteer working for love or spending more than half their time on marketing for more exposure. They can earn a living from contributing to public goods to pay their bills and daily expenses. Steve Marquess and Stephen Henson can live with the proper protection while quietly maintaining OpenSSL.
For example, in Optimism, impact equals profit. Therefore, if I am an agent or leader in a certain tool or platform, if this tool or platform generates some positive impact, I can profit from it. Therefore, I do not have to go out and find a job; I can focus on creating impactful projects rather than just thinking about how to commercialize the project or establish a paywall.
Conclusion as Prologue - How Can We Sustain It?#
Vitalik believes that we should strive to make the funding sources for these public goods at least a more automated long-term guarantee, rather than just one-time grants.
For example, every Layer 2, not just Optimism, can direct a portion of their funds toward public goods funding. At the same time, future public goods are not limited to rollup-specific constraints or limited to Ethereum but exist as a broader public good as a whole. We can achieve some long-term commitments from projects to reinvest a portion of profits or capital into this funding flow chain for public goods every quarter, driving the entire ecosystem to continue developing. The future direction should shift more toward automated and lasting funding for public goods, especially under a trustless system to ensure long-term liquidity for public goods funding.
For example, pre-commitment could be one method. When projects are smaller, their focus will be more concentrated. As the project scales up, the focus will automatically expand. The actual execution rules and details, how to write and standardize them, and how to combine future technologies and social norms, etc., are all interesting topics waiting for us to explore.
[1] Developer Incentivization
https://ethresear.ch/t/developer-incentivization-in-protocol-contract-author-fee-rebates/6179
[2] Convex and Concave Dispositions
https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/08/concave.html
[3] Contract Secured Revenue
https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-6968
[4] Optimism RetroPGF
https://app.optimism.io/retropgf
[5] Quadraticlenster
https://www.quadraticlenster.xyz/
[6] Hypercerts
https://hypercerts.org/
[7] Tea
https://tea.xyz/
We continue to pay attention to the latest developments in the GreenPill crypto thought. The "GreenPill" podcast is hosted by Kevin Owocki himself and is also a sub-column of Bankless Youtube. Continuously tracking and co-learning from the "GreenPill" podcast is to keep up with the latest frontiers of renewable crypto thought.
This episode's podcast link
Subscribe to the podcast 丨https://availableon.com/greenpill
The Network State website 丨https://thenetworkstate.com/ (including book and podcast resources)
Discussing the Meta Crisis with Daniel Schmachtenberger | Part One
The Theories and Practices of "Radical Markets"
As a Workstream project in the Uncommons community, "GreenPill Podcast Co-learning" adopts a co-creation form, encouraging more people to get involved. Specifically, we are recruiting the following roles:
Class Representative
Listen to the podcast, produce notes after listening, and publish them on the Uncommons community media account.
What is required is not translation! But expansion and summarization based on content understanding.
Share your notes and understanding in the co-learning session.
Bounty will be awarded based on the podcast duration, at 3 USDT per minute.
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Typeset based on the content produced by the class representative and column information.
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https://app.dework.xyz/greenpill
If you are interested in our Workstream, please open our Notion page:
https://greenpillcn.notion.site/GreenPill-62cbfc461cb44fd0a55f62a8104928bc
Our related output content will continue to be published on the Uncommons community's relevant media platforms, so please stay tuned.