Retroactive Public Goods Funding - One Year In

Transcript

all right welcome everybody we are here ecc hallelujah hallelujah okay one year ago back in ecc it was a century ago realistically speaking we talked about retroactive public goods funding that is rpgf and so this talk i was planning on doing a one-year-in kind of history lesson it's like we learned this we learned that we learned that and then i realized that there's so much stuff that i need to talk about to communicate the vision it literally is going to take a 45-minute talk so we

had 20 minutes so instead of thinking of this as a history lesson i just want to set your expectations this is a snapshot in time articulating the optimistic vision retroactive public goods funding how we make public goods profitable how we make impact profitable all of these questions all bundled in to one crazy talk so y'all let's get started this is gonna be fun okay so we're gonna talk about some early visions to give you some context why are we thinking about retroactive public goods funding why are we thinking about optimism what is all of what do these things mean okay everything goes back to vitalik as it

always does 2014 vitalik talks about ethereum he talks about dowse he he even re he named daos he renamed it from dac from decentralized autonomous to corporation to a decentralized autonomous organization this because we're not trying to recreate necessarily the old corporations right organizations where it's at vitalik put together youtube video after youtube video which i consumed relentlessly and learned about governance about doubts about the future of coordination systems that ethereum enables and it wasn't just ethereum i mean was it i literally called metallic ethereum it wasn't just vitalik

it was a bunch of other incredible community community members back then shout out to vlad zamfir talking about law way before it was cool right it's incredible these people have set some philosophical foundations for decentralization and governance what that looks like in a decentralized context that we are going to be going back to and need to be going back to today in fact it influenced me to go i mean i go crazy you know i said introducing a theory of the internet's government i was like no ethereum is not a world computer it is a governance tool which will allow us to coordinate as a species more effectively fundamentally money is a coordination tool we are all being

coordinated by ethereum so it's the internet's government and that's a vision that we're working on today but it has evolved since then since then we started plasma group right the the early people in the optimism community were also the people working on plasma group plasma group was a open source layer 2 scaling solution plasma that we were working on to scale ethereum as a non-profit right we're scaling ethereum with this thing but the thing we realized is that we're building a public good we're building all of this open source infrastructure but we don't have nearly enough funding to get this job done because scaling

ethereum is not something you can do with four you know little folks it requires a massive effort from an enormous number of people so we realized there was another problem with ethereum not just that it doesn't scale but also that there was no public goods funding at the time ethereum was not providing the adequate funding for the builders that were trying to scale it at the time and that continues today right this whole public goods movement is an expression of that need and so we realized we need to actually solve two problems we need to scale ethereum and allow for public goods to be funded into the future so if there's another crisis another scalability

crisis another thing we need to coordinate around we can then coordinate around it and so of course you know those we it turned into optimism by magic and this new thing would actually tackle both of those challenges at the same time and in that kind of transitionary period where we shut down plasma group we said scalability is still a priority but another critical issue has come become clear to us and that is the problem of funding public goods so that is critical to this vision and so of course you know we're jamming chatting with metallic like you know what what are we going to do about this public good stuff you know you're talking about it all the time and so we're writing this like manifesto back

in 2019 and jing i just have to quote the original draft it was face it financial maximization and ruthlessly cutting the undercutting the bottom line to milk the cracked blistering puzzle teeth of the cash cow isn't even working this is why we wanted to build an alternative infrastructure in the first place remember but we've soiled ourselves with our own icos and straight up ponzis and it's like okay that's true but you know hola that's you know like okay let's find the moderate approach um that's a classic v move and so you know came back and it's like lifeblood is the lifeblood of the infosphere is not one-to-one trades but rather it is

public goods public networks and interactions and decisions that invariably affect thousands of people at the same time all at once when i release a public good the world can consume when i release open source software music etc all of these things they are massively accessible to the world that is an amazing thing so the optimistic vision back you know we're back at it we're thinking about it 2022 we're like okay we want a world where the systems governing our interactions benefit both their participants and the world at large we want to create a system where positive externalities and you know all the incentives are aligned and the way that we would do this is we would

what's what's happening we're going into the future [Music] crazy stuff's going on oh my god we're here oh my god what's going on this is insane it is the year 2052 the super intelligent ai has finally arrived tesla finally shipped autopilot rationalists no longer fear agis the agi turned out to be pretty chill climate change has been solved thanks to a billion inventor named geohot and most importantly we live in a world where the systems governing our interactions benefit both their participants in the world at large all thanks to optimism ethereum and the public goods movement today

today a young whippersnapper wanted to learn the history the old-fashioned way so they logged into the library and they found an old book the optimistic vision this is what they read we're going in the library pulling out a book in our digital universe optimistic vision we open the book we start reading it and of course the book is now simulating the past going into the past poof now we are here in ecc talking about the optimistic vision with our friend from the future who has now broken causality and we are probably destroying the fabric of our universe creating a rift okay i won't go into that don't think about it too much don't

think about it we're back in the back in the present y'all [Laughter] [Applause] the optimistic vision okay web 3 has opened a new door opened the door to a new potential reality a cyberspace not only governed occupied but governed by its citizens right this defy is not the killer app the killer app is the coordination tools that we are building and working on incrementally day after day all of the time and we are presented with an opportunity to reinvent the way that we organize in

this digital age today we organize through these mega corporations that control the public goods of the internet they are the kind of you know they they keep everything on the rails and they govern the progress and the innovation and you know these systems these government systems that we use are hundreds of years old based on traditional you know the classic stock stock market and look at these guys you know they're governing these systems that we control and my god bob is really happy i gotta say i can't i can't hate on bob right here he's he's really having a great time so like you know i'll give it to him but nonetheless this is an insufficient system

and it's an insufficient system for a world that is rapidly changing you know dolly too comes out of the blue at least to me and comes out and just boom now everyone can create incredible artwork easily it is insane to see this thing happen and additionally all of these crazy technologies changing the way that we're able to construct information morphing who you know i can no longer trust that my face cannot be replicated all of these systems are bringing up fundamental questions about freedom of speech about what it means to be human what identity is who controls these systems where the power

is where the money is these are questions that our existing institutions are not necessarily suited to solve on their own at least so next paragraph it is critical that we seize the occasion ethereum had an incredible vision and it is still a work in progress but we can realize that vision and solves ethereum's two challenges scalability solve the scalability trilemma additionally unprofitable public goods that's why we became optimism it's because ethereum was breaking on all this money giving it to miners not the public goods that made it profitable and spending enormous sums on

security without investing in itself normal business principles of investing in yourself did not apply we need to create systems that do so we need to make they're impundable all right time's up let's do this where jenkins so we got to do this cyberspace today suffers a monumental market failure because it is it had econo it inherited the economic rule sets of the physical world right the physical world is not infinite surplus right we can't transfer songs the same way i mean we can't transfer starbucks the way we transfer songs and you can't you know yet unlike the world of flesh and steel the cyberspace is built on information which can be replicated not a car right

you would steal a car you wouldn't steal a movie like these systems are so broken it's a different fundamental thing we're trying to reintroduce scarcity this means public goods are far more important to the growth of cyberspace but our markets are ill-equipped to nurture that growth we need these new systems and we are being held back by our inability to re reward creators for the clear benefits that they provide so unprofitable public goods it's a real problem what am i going to do got to get them all right the optimism collective is a new model of digital democratic governance or optimized to drive rapid and sustained growth of a decentralized ecosystem you know the optimism collective and by the way notably this

is not just token votes right we need to elevate humanity we need to elevate identity we need to create systems that benefit us that give us a voice not just a voice based on your wallet it's a band of communities and companies and citizens united by mutually beneficial pact to adhere to impact equals profit the principle that positive impact to the collective should be rewarded for profit to the individual right we are a community and optimism is the fabric of all of these people right people organize into different groups different crews whatever and we need to unify everyone with a common fabric and that is our role and impact equals profit is critical in doing so because we need to be providing

profit to the projects and the people who are giving impact to the collective impact equals profit and this axiom can serve as a north star motivating the creation of a more productive and empathetic economy notably this we know that there's no objective impact measurement but by measuring our subjective sense of impact we can do a better job of aligning interests with the collective good so the optimism collective will dispel the myth that public goods cannot be profitable impact equals profit we will constantly provide massive retroactive incentives for things that benefit optimism ethereum and the collective as

a whole that's retroactive public goods funding it's easier to find to fund things after they've happened then before they've happened right this is fundamentally easier and investors can provide the upfront cash so this is why we created this virtuous cycle of retroactive public goods funding these collectives are the propellant for growth right we're trying to grow this ecosystem of public goods and this growth can yield profit for the collective and the profit for the collective enables us to invest more in public goods it is a virtuous cycle where you know the we're giving value to these builders the buildings are giving value to the people the people are giving value to the the protocol the protocols then giving value to the

builders it is a virtuous cycle that we can all live by and we also do need to scale ethereum can't forget about that just fyi it's very important everyone forgets anyway virtuous i don't know that was a trippy weird image that i found okay we expect that the collective's interest will increase over time and that i will go over my time but just like a minute i promise sorry it's a little longer than i expected but nonetheless uh we start out with smaller scale public goods and we can expand over time until we have reached the globe's public goods and we imagine a future where that is extremely commonplace that these digital realm public goods actually expand into the physical world

right we can fund you know disease prevention we can fund green energy we can fund the biggest challenges that we have as a species and we need better coordination systems to do it than what we have today and it may seem crazy this may seem crazy but it is really not crazy because you got to be optimistic if you're pessimistic or optimistic choose the optimistic path because we can make a better world and it's really hard to predict how things change because exponential growth is extremely hard to predict it's insane anyway we start out small with a sense of pragmatism but we aim big as out of an overwhelming sense of optimism feet on the ground in the clouds this is a terrifying image absolutely terrifying i have no idea who the hell would do that

to a great saying um anyway right we want to create this future we want to create a coordinated cyberspace and together we will summon ethers phoenix and just really quick either phoenix we're doing all these things on the blockchain right we're we're building things we're doing contributing to the public good and the public welfare version one of the collective might reward this person version two rewards that person but forgets about the second person who's done some contributions version three rewards another person but left out two other people but if you keep this cycle of iterative progress and the things are recorded then ether's phoenix the ultimate version of this coordination system can look back into the past and reward those who are actually having an impact this is how

today even though you don't think the future is possible you should be building towards it because it will reward us for helping us get there so ether's phoenix i'm not saying i'm going to change the world but i guarantee that it will spark the brain that does change the world tupac shakur i will say as one of my favorite quotes i just love that quote so much anyway stay optimistic y'all absolutely and now for the final thing our protagonist is going back into the future traveling back into the book bang oh no what's happening oh my god no oh no we're going back into the present poof we're back at ecc back in this weird world of strobes and craziness and our stotagness is stuck in the past what are we gonna do what are

we gonna do well we guess we gotta make that optimistic future come true so our protagonist can get back to their home or else autopilot will never ship that is the reality that's why we're all here today that's what we're here for peace love you