 First, I wanted to thank everyone for coming and what I love about this is that it kind of like resembles one of the topics we would love to cover here in Fund the Commons, like different approaches to funding public goods, different mechanisms, different design choices to do so, and that it like literally brands that with like actual like building together because I know there's a lot of like different collaborations and different ways to actually build aligned systems and also just like ways to help each other through like gico and optimism, of course, you know, so like I'm super excited for this talk because I know like there's a lot of overlap, but also a lot of like friendship and a lot of just like building together throughout the years, so I really like that extra aspect of this. So I wanted to start just to think about like when you guys think about funding public goods, like what is measurement, how do you think about impact? In terms of like, I know you both, all of you guys kind of like have a lot of insight into the crowd and just like they let many communities in the crowd make some of the decisions, so I wanted to touch on like how your experience being kind of like giving the power to the edges to make those decisions of what impact means. Making impact is all about friendship. That's true. Done. No, I think that like really a lot of what we're talking about in web3 is actually taking away, and in my view, is taking away from like traditional notions of impact, you know, deferring to some kind of large like committee that like decides like here is some like, you know, metrics we need to hit. It's more about letting the community from like a grassroots perspective decide for themselves, locally, like what are the things that they care about and how do they actually then kind of like bubble those things up to broader like global ecosystem. So, you know, the kind of solutions that we've come across in previous models of like impact measurement often come from like, for example, effective altruism, which like has its benefits, but from my perspective I think it's much more effective to think locally first, think from a mutual sort of perspective and try and start with like shared needs within communities and go from there. Agreed, and I think coming back to this shift in who decides what is impactful? Whose opinion matters? And we've been in this dynamic that has been so one way for so long, which is why people are so disillusioned with anything like charities with any models that we have because it simply doesn't work. There's this dynamic where somebody made a decision over there and the effect here is completely wrong, misunderstood, not actually impactful at all. And so I think a granular local first and then concentric circles of impact that goes out of that is the way to to think about it and really try to explore it that way. Nice, and absolutely agree on these, you know, concentric circles, and we start out really small, but when we have a small group of people and a community, one question that's really not trivial to answer is what is the scope of that community and what is the scope of that impact? So basically like when if I'm in some, you know, internet community what, like, okay, yes, I may really want to make more money or I want to, you know, live in a better place, but that's not really related to that online community and that online community's mandate. So it's really hard to not only measure impact, but also scope impact with respect to some local community's objectives. Well, so I think, you know, this is interesting because I always think of impact is like, you know, obviously it's very grassroots, right, especially for everything that we do. All of us here, it's from the ground up, but I think, you know, when we think about Web3 systems and the intersectionality of like what it is that we all kind of work on, we do, you know, start thinking globally, but I think that the big thing is really acting locally. As you all just said, right, making sure that in whatever that scope of our community is, whatever this concentric circle is, right, wherever in it we are, how are we actually moving forward and driving these things forward? And I think one other thing to kind of point out in terms of like how we actually go about funding these things, it's not, I think we tend to sort of conflate funding, like all, it's like one giant thing, but like venture capital and, you know, grant funding are very, very different, right? When we think about grant funding, it is within the scope of, you know, one sort of determined thing. For VC funding, you have a lot more free rein to kind of, you know, ebb and flow and find places to go if you fail. Great, let's pivot and find something else to do, but for grants, you don't really have that benefit. You have a scope that's outlined, you have milestones you want to achieve, and those are the things that you're heading towards. So the overall impact of what you're doing within grant funded work is sort of more akin to impact bonds, right? You're heading forward in the future and trying to see how this is going to affect something in the future. Whereas for venture capital, it's not necessarily that. You have quantifiable measures that you're aiming for. There are things that you know you want to hit. You know what's going to bring returns, and like that's what you're optimized for. And also on that note, for example, we have a lot of grants here that it's like very proactive, like, oh, I have this idea or this project, I want to make this a reality, and I'm going to talk to my grant to see if other people also see value in it. But then we also have the retroactive funding, which is we also see the value that this created that maybe was someone creating this action or this project that was pure intrinsic motivation, and then you would recognize that value and give it back to them as like retroactive funding, which I think it should be, it would be as more effective if it eventually became more of a norm or a default, because that way people are intrinsically motivated to do things knowing that eventually if they do things well, they would get the retroactive funding. But I'm curious to hear what do you guys think on like, what are the different categories of public goods that are best matched to different types of funding, and if there's any sort of relation there, where there's some public goods that will thrive on a specific model versus not very much on the other model, and if there's any gaps there. Yeah, that's a good question. I think there's there's certainly a challenge that I think can kind of identify, you talked about it really well with grants versus venture capital VC funding. And I think the challenge there is hardly that like with grants you don't really have a good sort of sense of, yeah, return. You don't have a sense of kind of like, hey, if I make a massive impact, I'm going to get, you know, some decent size return of profit, and you know, we're gonna get into this early, but like you could almost say that like what we should be doing, maybe Carl can elaborate on this, is like impact equals profit in some contexts. Now there's things where that doesn't work, like Ether's JS should not be a DAO, you shouldn't just have the community managing like a JavaScript library, but like I think that you can have sort of these different modes of community management that at least allow for some kind of, you know, kind of collaborative way of at least giving positive externalities back to Ether's JS, even if it's not directly from them having their own community DAO or whatever. And so I think on the one hand, I think it's very important to be able to give people stable funding such that they're able to like continue and like feel safe in like doing the work they're doing, but on the other hand having that like external like kind of incentive and long-term sort of set of positive externalities that are going back to those communities is really important. I guess like, yeah, I feel like maybe the model to like answer your actual question, like I think that I would see working would be like, you know, something like Uniswap is a good example of something that in my mind does have positive externalities in that sense is a public good. And I think that can be really useful in terms of being able to go back and leverage those positive externalities that like impact people's profits sort of model and give back to other things that may not have like maybe further down the stack might not have that same level of sort of, you know, possibility. So that's just the one, I mean, one way to think about it. I think it's a really interesting kind of question. I don't think this can be the right answer, but I'm curious to hear. And that's the thing, right? Like, I don't think there needs to be a defined answer right now. And the same way as we've had this conversation across different panels that we've had this week, it's okay for us to be figuring out what works and what doesn't. It's okay to not figure out, okay, that works for this, that doesn't work for this. And I think a lot of hybrid stuff could emerge by combining certain models further down the line that apply to a certain type of funding or a certain type of project. And I also think a lot of it is, and I've said this before, so much of it is this unlearning of these were the only ways that we could do it. Why would we still think in those limits now? Because this is a chance to rejig, to combine, to really put it as an open source, an open source element to it, where it's like an open source economy, open source funding, where you have the bits and you combine them to be relevant to an initiative, to an impact, and so on. It's a work in progress. So it was my turn. I am a retroactive funding maximalist. I am definitely a savage when it comes to that. Now, I will say that retroactive funding is not the going to be, at least my guess, is not going to be the primary driver of you know, funding right now, not right now, because the world is not ready. It's coming. It's coming. It's like a freight train. It's just gaining steam. But right now, we still need some proactive grant funding. We still need these like less, I guess, scalable types of funding. But eventually, once we kind of put, you know, some juice in the engine, then it'll start revving up and then the retroactive funding thing will actually cause that intrinsic motivation that you were talking about to build towards impact as opposed to building towards profitable extraction. And so this is, you know, just the beginning stage. And I think that's why we're seeing a lot of grant funding. We're seeing a lot of proactive investment. But I actually do really hope that over time, we can kind of wean ourselves off and start doing more interesting types of things, like even even some kind of hybrid model where with like purchase commitments, which where you say, okay, well, you can do this thing. And if you did do the thing, I'll give you some money for it. And I'll commit to giving you some money now. So it's a different kind of grant. But anyway, very interesting. I want to quickly chime in on that. Is there one area or what would you think that would steer that engine forward even more? Hmm, I think, ah, ooh, okay, the thing that will steer the engine even more is we need to capture the intrinsic profit centers of the internet. Okay, what does that mean? Okay, normal old fashioned ugly companies, which we don't like anymore. They have profit centers, and those profit centers make tons of money. And then they redistribute that money to all the things in the company that make those profit centers, you know, work. So Google has a bunch of services, but it comes down to a bunch of advertising money. So what we need to be doing is we need to find the profit centers that are on the internet, maybe block space in layer two, that might just be one of them, but and capture them for the people and allow those profit centers to actually redistribute and fund public goods as opposed to funding private interests. This is hard to follow. Kind of fucked up, Carl. I want my retroactive public. Um, uh, so yeah, I mean, I think, you know, all of that is fantastic, right? Agreed. I guess, like, I don't know, to make it a little spicier, I, for, for the longest time, I was very anti retro, uh, I don't know, grant funding. I mean, I think in general, still today, like exactly what Carl said, I think we, we are not there yet. The world's not ready yet. And that, that's okay, right? We have to unpack, unlearn and kind of like re, relearn what it is that we, um, or where agency lies, who actually can empower whom, um, if anyone has been on a grant's call with me, like I, I like to say that grant funding is like dating, you know, it's, it's a two way street and it should be a two way street. You should, you should, you know, know who is giving you money. You shouldn't just take money willy-nilly. And I think what, what three enables, especially like with grant programs today, it's, it's, you have the ability to actually turn down capital. There's money everywhere. So you, you can actually say like, no, I don't want your money because you're asking for too much from me and I don't want to do what you're telling me to do. I can go to someone else and get money. And I think being able to do that shifts the paradigm because you no longer, you no longer have to, you know, go to an institution, uh, whatever that foundation entity organization is and ask, you know, are, am I good enough for you? Right? Agency has shifted so that it can be, this is what I'm doing. This is where I'm providing value. Is this something that you find valuable? If yes, great. Let's see if this works out because you can also figure out whether or not the institution is the capital that you want to have, right? What is it that they're asking from you? What is it that they want you to do? Is this pulling you away from your core values? And if the answer is yes, you know, the making you do things that you don't want to do, that's not the money you want, right? You should date and see other funders and figure out, you know, is this good? Uh, and the answer might be no, you know. And that's the thing. And really it, it all boils down to that, right? Web three and what we're all doing enables choice. You have a choice and you can choose that or you can choose this, but it gives you that option and you feel empowered to take it or not to go somewhere. And that value alignment is incredibly important because you want that to be there from the beginning and not feel like a prisoner because you took some money. And that is a complete game changer. And it's incredibly, incredibly impactful, whether it's retro or whether it's pro, it boils down to that. And that's a lot in terms of meaning. You can actually also choose to, I mean, like, which is pretty amazing, like create your own money. I mean, like you can literally create like your own currencies. And I think that that sort of like it goes back to the local point that we started with, right? Or like, you're not just choosing between like, Oh, like, do I want like money from like Google or Amazon or whatever? Like you're choosing like an actual sort of like set of values and then like kind of designing converse principles like from there instead of kind of working backwards from what's in the market, what's available to me. And that's harder. What's the lesser evil? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, diversity is a lot, especially since like when I first started like with 50 years, and we're like connecting, like, connecting our founders with like the next round, like after we supported them with future investors, I don't know if it was like, who could they we also connect them so that they will be like, also good partners along the way. And it's like, not just like the mission, but it is like allowing them to build what is really valuable and not optimized for like the returns or other things, but actually like provide a lot of value, which we focus a lot on. And also the fact of like those, and it was really like with demand of opportunity, something that I've been seeing a lot is a lot of people actually who have told me like, Oh, now with a lot of so many like work or a big job opportunities, it actually acts as a forcing function for me to stop and be like, Oh, where do I really want to contribute or grow or like give my time to because there's a lot of like potential possibilities to go there. Something that I was thinking is the unlearning as well with this possibility to design our data currencies or to give value to like grants to different areas of like the ecosystem rounds, like different specific causes or even like choosing where to give the retroactive funding. What are the things you guys think we need to like unlearn about like, how do we measure impact or like, what kind of impact do we measure? And that we would and what are the things we want to implement like new learnings? Good question. So just pulling from what Ken was saying earlier about dating, it's I think it's reshaping our relationship with value and what value means and how we define it and how we how comfortable we are with definitions that go beyond cash money. And I think and that's hard, like for a lot of people, like let us remember, you're putting so many people in the situation of having to completely shift the way they evaluate things, what they give their attention to, how they give their attention, the fact that it isn't like it's a two way street versus, you know, you need directional flow of value. You're like completely blowing all of this up and saying, now we're redefining what is impactful, what is beyond the cash, what is cash, what is money? Because we're also redefining that. So you're like, doing all of this plate spinning is the only way that I can define it is all at the same time. And then also trying to keep your balance, which is scary as hell, but also incredibly, incredibly exciting. And I think it's that it's redefining a lot of our relationships with value. It's kind of like an absurdism to crypto, in that sense. Like I do think there's actually like a really interesting like, and I think that that's actually like a broader it's broader than crypto, like in web three is a cultural movement where people are kind of recognizing, wait a minute, like, yeah, these institutions or systems like, I don't kind of like suck, like they don't really work very well, actually. And like, maybe we should like think about that, like maybe we shouldn't just be like, Oh, this has existed for like 200 years. So of course, this is like, what we have to stick with, like people who were no smarter than the people in this room like decided like at some point to randomly put this system in place. And then at some point, everyone just like, by like a kind of Lindy effect was just ready to accept it. And I think that we need to just be willing to redefine those things more carefully and be part of the process. Everything is a social construct. That's that's what it is. It just comes down to social construct. But in all seriousness, like, even the idea of like success, right, like everyone kind of like anchors on like, what is success, like, it has to do this, like, we need to accomplish this. But if you remember, a couple of years ago, there was something called plasma. You don't remember plasma scaling, Ethereum. So where is plasma today? No, but I can tell you that so much of what we know and have learned from plasma has brought us to where we are today. So would we call plasma a success, Carl? Absolutely. Context, I worked on that stuff. Ken, this is a personal dig. I feel fully. This is an alley. You're right. It's an alley. You're right. You're right. No, no. This is redefining success, right? Like, we don't have to say that just because plasma doesn't exist today in the form, right? No, but that's okay. Because it's the learnings that, you know, have brought us from plasma to where we are today with optimism, right? We would not have any of that without without what we had done in the past. So I would call plasma a huge success, state channel success. We don't see it in the form that we thought when we initially gave all these grants out. Even the ICOs that came out for whatever projects did these ICOs, you know, it doesn't matter because it brought us to something that actually works. And that is a huge success. I didn't take it personally, Ken. I was just kidding. I love you. Okay, anyway, what was I going to say? Oh, you said unlearn. I think the the main thing that is kind of, it's kind of like the, I don't know, it feels like it's in the ether is just that we need, yeah, I guess, we need to unlearn and help everyone else unlearn what we think is the profitable and right thing to do as a good old-fashioned capitalist, you know what I mean? Like the classic conception of what is the profitable avenue is find a way to gain power and then exploit people, right? That's like when I imagine it, I don't know about you. That's what I think of when I think of like a good old-fashioned capitalist. But that, that like mental image is incredibly damaging, eh? And incredibly untrue and poorly thought through because the moment you start capturing things and the moment you start exploiting things is the moment that you actually slowed down true growth of the economy and the true growth of every person's, you know, quality of life. And by bringing people up, we're actually raising the, you know, the most wealthy person in the world. It does not matter if we've destroyed the world in the meantime, right? I don't want to win the video game of point systems where, you know, in my bank account, if it's going to mean I come at the expense of everyone and our, and myself as well. So that kind of like weird, like gross meme of, of like what it means to be a capitalist and like make money, we need to get rid of that. I was going to say that. One, I love that. Definitely. And then I think another concept I really value is that kind of like experience. So like reigniting people to what wholeness could mean or what like being connected to nature could mean so that ultimately guides kind of like their actions. But something I'm like hearing a lot is this concept of decentralizing innovation to the communities. So developing the tools that you can give to communities that they kind of like incorporate their own values into the, that they value within their little economies. And they have everyone around the world kind of like using these tools to signal their values and what they want to fund and what they want to create forward. But do you think there's like, is that enough? Is that, is it enough to just give them the tools to signal the value if we are still operating from those beliefs that we need to let go of? Or do we need to actually bring forward new kinds of measurements or new kinds of things as like a proxy of like what should we be aiming for? I definitely think we need just very quickly like guide rails because like you can't just have people in you know every single local legal system just deciding like actually like maybe our think our shared needs are like we're like you know the capitalist like mustache or like that whole thing. Like we're gonna you know decide our shared needs are actually to make a bunch of money and just like figure out a way to like make profit and like not really distribute it back. You could theoretically end up in a world where like a lot of people are doing that. But what we want to do I think with this sort of like quadratic funding model that we're taking on is like say you have the shared needs you have like the things that you're trying to achieve but you also have like kind of a guidance guiding light from like movements or narratives that we can gather as web free like start to push forward like this or like this or like impact these are things that can help steer in the right direction what are fundamentally still local decisions. And that to me is like the connection point that I think we need to be making as we start to like iterate on these ideas and these tools. The other thing I'll notice like we just what Carl said earlier like we've had like a hundred years of being a very hyper individualistic society. And I think we don't really have a good muscle of like how to think about like collectively like what we need now or collectively what we need in the future. And I think before we can really use these things at scale I think we have to start iteratively and learn from like basically where are we now what how far have we gotten in terms of like our mental models and the narratives that we're kind of using to guide these particular decisions. And I also think pulling from everything that we've said around unlearning and redefining a lot of stuff it's also enabling people to feel comfortable because I genuinely believe and this is what we see with so many people coming into this ecosystem and they feel so drawn to it and so aligned to it it's in there you want everybody to be good and you want people to thrive but again we've been bastardized into this mindset that if I win you lose if I get mine you lose yours and being comfortable to let that go and having these models where you can go oh shit that's a choice that is in opposition to this extractive thing and the more you perpetuate that and the more you have that narrative the more you catch people and they become comfortable to let go and be there for the betterment of everything versus I'm going to take this because God knows when I'm going to like you know make it first but it's a long process by like let's face it it's not which is why it's not a revolution it's an evolution it takes time and it's fine that it does obviously it's a problem when we don't have that much money because we still deal with that shit but it is important to understand that that is the path and it's important to keep going at it and like bring new people in and make these examples and have these local efforts and and look at these local models and how we improve them together and so on and you know it takes all of us to do this and like genuinely fight the that horrific model that we've been just again stuck with for so long and now we have an opportunity to like look prosperity for everyone enjoy your meal. Yes strongly strongly agree and okay I don't know about y'all this is something that you kind of touched on with this collectivist in individualist thing right this dichotomy some I don't know about y'all but when I got into crypto I had a bit of a political identity crisis because in my mind there are two sides of the spectrum you're either individualist and you're a freedom liberal loving you know like you're really you know everyone's for themselves and you got to be free and bubble Bob pull your bootstraps up or whatever and then you're on or you're on the other side where you're like let's think about the community let's think about everyone and let's also make top down decisions for everyone that is going to benefit all the people right so there's this like your individualist and there's no there's you know there's kind of like this cold-heartedness I guess to that world but it's decentralized or your your collectivist and it's really centralized but I think crypto brings about a decentralized collectivist mindset which is like wow this is like literally the best from both worlds because we can actually think about the betterment of everyone but we don't need to be making top down decisions that may or may not pan out as we plan them that's huge I yeah that is like the big thing it's like we didn't have these coordination tools before our coordination tools were just like you know large companies or like states and so forth and like those things are still useful in their own way in certain contexts but like we have like tools and problems that those tools can address that are so far beyond any of that like scope like I mean climate change is a great example that there's like not really an easy way for like everyone around the world coordinate on like hey like how are you reducing for example like your emissions or how are you like hitting these metrics and I think that this is actually the first time that yeah we have that ability I think the last thing I'll add because we have 30 seconds left is that funding is not the only thing right like if we're solving these problems it's not a money thing right there's so much in terms of non-financial support that you actually need to address these issues to actually collaborate and it's not money that actually brings us together right it is a vehicle for us to do things but it's not you know the thing that intrinsically motivates all of us to actually make for a better world it's friendship yes all I was going to say about the money thing is if you look at it it's almost like you go to a restaurant and this is why the obsession with money is so irrational it's like you would go to a restaurant and eat the menu eat it and you would like eat like 10 of them and you go this is so delicious and then there's like all of this food that's just that's what we're doing this is what our society has pushed us to do we're like a bunch of many readers and it's time for us to eat better is all I'm going to say no I will and we still have a little bit because that was not very good tidy I was growing we've got more time through friendship we have added time back to being a flatter but something that I was going to say that I really appreciate I think when I first got and learning about like different models and mental models for like how to think about what three I came across I think it was building for human thriving that you seem and I were doing with the public library at keep going and you were talking about this efficiency versus diversity and how you could go try to be very very efficient with like a monocrop but maybe like destroy the land that we're like building or cultivating our plans versus we could have like something that is more diverse that is so resilient because of the plans kind of symbiotically built for each other and something that I really value as well that now we're talking about is this concept of like not individuals winning but rather that collective outcome and I think I would like to double double click on kind of like how good going and optimism have been very symbiotic themselves and building with each other and even now like when it comes to keep going grants 2.0 you guys are even collaborating and like doing things between each other and even with our work with a mutual grants and community building with token shops for other new and upcoming projects is all about this ecosystem growth and collaborating between each other. So I would ask if you guys have any other like advice or thoughts on how to create or enable these collaborative ecosystems. So one thing I'll kind of highlight which is interesting in that context is we have this concept of the commons which actually comes from like Eleanor Ostrom's work principally but like the idea with the commons is that like when you take things from you know you know local pool of like a local forest or like you know fishery it diminishes what's available to others and I think what's interesting about like open source software and like these other sorts of like public goods that we're talking about in the context of like web 3 is that they're more generative when you have more open source that's being built naturally more and more people can build on top of it and you have these composable kind of like positive some games that end up being played and that's something that didn't exist in we talked about this on the other panel I think too but like they didn't exist that way in web 2 and it's very difficult to like think about that in our current sort of like just yeah we have this sort of like you have to win mindset versus having like a collaborative mindset and we don't need that now because of these new tools and the new sort of dynamics we've introduced. So I think that's just a huge point. Yeah. I mean, Carl, I love your thoughts here. Well, I just want to thank Gitcoin for just being so collaborative really like it is incredible to have y'all coded very you know, you they Gitcoin has been working with us to help us build out aspects of our retroactive public goods for funding round 2 and like that kind of thing just saying oh I'm going to you know I'll help you do it. I just feel like that is such like within the spirit of building for the open source building for the commons building for the betterment of everyone and not feeling kind of insecure about your position like a lot of the public goods stuff like building out in the open and building open source software is really about being comfortable in yourself and being comfortable in the future that you will actually you know your time will come you will be recognized I think that people are the most selfish when they don't think that other people will recognize their work which is I mean it makes sense and so we you know with this software we're able to recognize each other and so I recognize y'all Gitcoin you know great. Hearts, hearts. Let me try out. Okay, perfect. I think like one takeaway would be like we're here like funding the commons everyone's presenting their own mechanisms their own design systems and their own ways of funding and supporting public goods and I would say like one encouragement will be to create those bridges as you guys did and kind of like support each other in creating these systems and creating as an ecosystem and just like learning and supporting. So thank you all of you so much for this amazing panel and I think after this we're going to workshops so yeah. Thanks everybody. Hey Alehek. Thank you.