Connecting Funders and Builders

Transcript

[music] what solutions we're looking at within the Ethereum ecosystem. So just to start off with what is funding coordination. So as part of the funding coordination team within the Ethereum foundation, there are three objectives that we have. The first one is increasing net new public goods of funding. The second one is actually being able to match supply and demand of these of these public goods. And the third and most important one is how do we reduce ecosystem demand of the EF for funding. So Odin project Odin is uh is [snorts] is being led by Rahul my colleague and he walks through how we can move this is one of the examples that we can move

from grants to contracts. So on the on the uh the left side here you'll see this grant sprint cycle and this is what traditionally is the status quo right? So grants get awarded, features and products get shipped, the runway shrinks and then basically the grand cycle begins that way. Right? So you have this constant loop of grants being awarded and shrinking over time mainly because the open source projects that are being uh developed don't have a monetizable way of creating and building that revenue. So what Odin does is it is it's a it's a project that takes in a set of cohort individuals and candidates runs through um runs through the program and

in the end you get what's called like you get it pursues like a northstar and on the on the right side here you see like diversified funding. So it will either go through research contracts, services uh services and pilots and possibly like long-term grants, right? And that's basically going to it aims to get to a stable base where you're no longer part of this grand cycle. You run through the program and you come out with a a revenue generating open source uh project. So I know the vend diagram is a little cut off here, but um so part of the uh the question is like how do we actually find like these these these contracts, right? Because they're actually quite difficult to find. On one

end, you have one-time grants that either get bid and then you have to go request them again. And on the other side, you have like long-term jobs and opportunities which candidates usually go for. The middle part is something that I haven't seen and the Ethereum ecosystem doesn't have properly speced out and how does it's how do we find that contract work? So, it's there's a discover discoverability problem and we're hopefully like looking at proposing something here today. So before I introduce what um the Ethereum Foundation has been working closely with uh with a team, we should define what an RFP is. RFP is a request for proposals and that's a funer basically

looking to write up a spec and it's posting the job work and it's scoping it out, putting a budget and a deadline and it essentially gets published into an auction and then you have multiple teams bidding on on that proposal. So you could have uh you could have a sophisticated uh one-man shop or you could have you know uh a full-on consulting shop bidding on these proposals with their budgets and it's up to the funer to decide who they want to choose and then whoever actually on the third step is the funer chooses the the one the winning contract basically and that gets usually that's either like depending on the funers's like core objectives that it could either be the

scope could be at the beginning or at the end or throughout milestone delivery. So here what I'm presenting today is RFP search and that is a grantee that we recently awarded at the Ethereum Foundation and they recently completed the last milestone for what is an open index of Ethereum ecosystem funding. So right now what we have today are these opportunities you can see on screen. There are bug bounties, grants, hackathons, RFPs, accelerators and as of last week we have 170 open opportunities and growing. Um, all of these are indexed from third party websites. Um, and at the moment we're looking at possibly how we can shape the roadmap for RFP search. So we may be looking at

possibly supporting the open source ecosystem or maybe even exploring um other ways for fetching that data. Um, RFP search is AI agentic compatible. So you can use MCP today. Um and you can also sign up on the platform directly as a funding publisher to publish your proposals. We're looking at possibly exploring contract work as well. Um so not us but uh funders and seeing whether that can be um discoverable. So to conclude because this is lightning talk we are reaching we if you want to talk to Karma they're the ones that awarded the RP the RFP. If you are a funer and you want your uh proposal is

not being indexed and you would like it to be indexed, please reach out to them or me and we can see how we can help you on board. If you are a builder, please join us for the live demo and workshop that we'll be holding. I think it's on 2 days or tomorrow, like I think it's not tomorrow, but the day after at 11:00 a.m. I'll be walking through the demo how you can possibly use RFP search and navigate through it. And for everyone else, if you are a developer or even just on the governance side, we're looking for people who can contribute to the repo and help scale it. Again, the road map is open-ended. So if anyone has any proposals for how to push it and scale it, we're all open to suggestions.

Um, so thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you. Please stay up here on stage. Okay. I I hope I think this is a topic that's very interesting for most of you. I hope you all scan the QR code that was just shown on the last slide. Now, there's a couple of questions here. Um, let's take the first one. How do Ethereum ecosystem funders distinguish between genuine sustainable blockchain utility and projects that primarily demonstrate speculative transaction activity or incentivized adoption?

>> Yeah, that's a good question. I think as a rational funer, you'd assume that um you would want that whatever you publish if you especially if you're scoping it out and assigning a budget with milestones that the uh builder will actually build it out and not just uh and not just like game it, right? Like all these things are gameable sometimes but not always. Um but definitely I think it's like up to the funer to rationalize over what they choose and how they fund it. >> Okay, I hope that answered this question. Now, um, oh, the next one. So long, we don't have enough time for that. Let's take the next one because it's also upvoted twice. Are you interested in decentralized social platforms? If so, would you like to invest in one if it's

creating real value? Um, I can't answer on this because that's not really relevant to this presentation, but just so that it's clear like RFP search is a platform connecting funders and builders and not necessarily we the EF are choosing who we want to allocate that funding for. So just so that's clear like we're not we're not like uh looking at investing in in any projects. We we don't have any portfolio or VC capital to allocate towards. >> Okay. [music] >> [music]