# Public goods funding in Ethereum --- ## In blockchain communities, there are more public goods than private goods * Open source client code * Protocol research * Documentation * Community building --- ## How do we fund them? --- ## Two questions in funding public goods 1. Where does the money come from? 2. What mechanism decides who receives it? --- ## Where does the money come from? * Individual donations * Corporate donations (eg. Blockstream hiring Bitcoin core devs) * One-time premine and/or presale (eg. Ethereum) * Ongoing issuance and/or redirected fees (eg. Zcash) --- ## Thesis: public goods funding needs to be _long-term_ and _systematic_. This means we need funding to come **not just from individuals**, but from **applications and/or protocols** --- ## What mechanism decides the recipients? * Centralized small committee * Quadratic funding * Something else? --- ## MolochDAO  --- ## Gitcoin Grants <table><tr><td>  </td><td>  </td></tr></table> --- ## Retroactive funding * Instead of funding projects in anticipation of future work, fund them in recognition of work done * Investors could invest in public-good projects early, and also get rewarded when they succeed --- ## Optimism retro funding round  --- ## The future of funding * More large-scale application and layer-2 protocols on Ethereum funding public goods * More work in non-coin-driven decentralized governance * Ecosystems forming around these funding mechanisms, as people become more and more confident that they are here for the long term