Funding the Commons
March 3 - 4 2022

Watch all sessions
Funding the Commons is a virtual 2-day summit for individuals and organizations building new models of sustainable public goods funding and value alignment in open source networks.
Join us as we advance the thinking, design, conversations and awareness of how to fund public goods.
Watch all sessions 
Speakers
Join Juan Benet (Protocol Labs), and other thought leaders to discuss novel experiments and future directions for funding our collective commons.
Welcome
Introduction and overview of Funding the Commons Day 1

Fireside chat with Jaan Tallinn
Juan Benet (Founder, Protocol Labs) hosts an open discussion with Jaan Tallinn

Reimagining Public Goods: Building a Solarpunk Future
The narratives we choose and the tools we build deeply shape the world around us. In this talk, Scott Moore makes the case that we must collectively chose more regenerative, positive-sum ideals that align more with a Solarpunk future. In turn he argues, we can solve many of the problems we face around how we manage our global commons

Improvements to the S-Process
Andrew Critch will describe and motivate recent and future improvements to the Simulation Process

Impetus grants: a new mechanism for funding aging science
The philosophy behind Impetus grants, funding mechanisms in use, and directions funded so far

Plural Funding
Glen Weyl introduces the Plurality paradigm for funding network goods and will briefly illustrate applications to a range of network goods funding approaches. Leon will detail the application to Quadratic Funding and Gitcoin


Focussed Research Organizations
Adam Marblestone will describe how Focused Research Organizations (FROs) promise to unblock research bottlenecks by applying systems engineering to some types of research problem

Incentivizing Ongoing Maintenance
In this talk, Pooja Shah explores different models and experiments to support the ongoing incentivization of open-source and public goods maintenance, as well as new models we may consider as we enter a more open, protocol-native future

Two Novel Mechanisms for Funding and Discovering Public Goods
Alex Tabarrok will provide an overview of dominant assurance contracts (DACs) aka refund bonuses and quadratic funding

Day 1 wrap-up
Closing comments and preview of day 2

Introducing Network Funds – Funding Public Goods for Fun and Profit
Introducing some novel structures for public goods funding vehicles, to make it more sustainable and scalable

Impact Markets: Attributed Impact and More
Challenges to designing a safe and efficient market for the retroactive funding of public goods using impact certificates


Interoperable mechanisms for non-rival goods
Avenues for interoperability between R&D roadmapping, retrospective impact evaluation, impact certificates, project tokens, and prospective funding schemes as part of an ecosystem for provisioning public goods

Catalyzing innovation and public goods funding in the Carbon Removal ecosystem
Daniel Pike will highlight public goods efforts by the Climate Map, a nonprofit developing open-access methods, data sets, and decision-making tools that shed new light and spur action on climate change response opportunities and priorities

Fireside chat with Tom Kalil
Evan Miyazono (Head of Research, Protocol Labs) hosts an open discussion with Tom Kalil of Schmidt Futures

Stable Orbits: Decentralization Lessons from Webs[0-3]
Learning from prior efforts to create and maintain the public goods of the Internet and the Open Web

Borderless public goods and interplanetary publics
Jessy Kate will speak to the challenges and progress in developing lunar colonies and the opportunity they bring for novel coordination and governance

Tech trees & DAOs to advance ambitious science & tech
Bio, nano, neuro, computing and space tech goals could benefit from support that’s invisible to external talent and funders. Tech trees can help map undervalued opportunities for progress and DAOs can help incentivize it

Networked Good - To the future
Closing comments and upcoming efforts for Funding the Commons & the future of Protocol Labs Public Goods


Watch now - Nov 21 Funding the Commons Event
In November 2021 Protocol Labs hosted our inaugural Funding the Commons virtual event with presentations from Juan Benet (Protocol Labs), Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), Karl Floersch (Optimism) and many others.
View the full speaker list and recorded presentations .
View the full speaker list and recorded presentations .