# Sandbox Island For Web3 x Commons
Protocol Labs is a very interesting existence in the crypto space, the organization was created with strong intentions to build for humanity, other than IPFS and Filecoin, PL also started a department called “Network Goods” approximately a year ago to build better coordination systems for human beings. Network Goods was a natural development after IPFS was widely adopted by web3 communities. IPFS clearly created a lot of value as a public good, yet means for value capture has not been clear, charging usage fees limits the potential impact IPFS can bring to the industry. Given this context, Evan Miyazono and his team started the mission to explore potential funding models for public goods, so we may have a better future to imagine.

Evan and Ben visited Taiwan from 2022/11/15 to 2022/11/20. da0 took initiatives to plan a series of conversations with governments, media, corporates and academics. Protocol Labs agreed to visit because of Taiwan’s unique political narratives and civic momentum, of course, Vivian was quite persuasive too.

The discussions mainly focused on two initiatives built by the Protocol Labs team, “Funding the Commons” and “Hypercerts”, which we will dig into a bit later. It’s eye opening to peek into how Protocol Labs think about things, instead of looking at the rules of the world, design strategies accordingly, then hope for positive outcomes like a normal tech startup, they adopted the thought process of mechanism design. They start by looking at outcomes, understand why and how strategies were formed, then try to change the rules. I believe it is possible to change the rules of the world, so we can have a more collaborative future.

## Hypercerts
Hypercerts, at least from what I can see, has gained a lot of resonation from people who learned about the concept. Evan and I discussed briefly on why that is. My belief is that people see hope in Hypercerts, there are hopes to bring commons and public goods to another dimension, but there are also hopes that it’d fix bad business ideas. Hypercerts is an amazing tool, but it can’t fix everything, that being said, we are still very excited and hopeful for what Hypercerts can do.

If you haven’t been able to read about what Hypercerts are, here are some links to catch you up
Website : https://hypercerts.xyz/
Blog post : https://protocol.ai/blog/hypercert-new-primitive/
Blog in Mandarin : [【Web3】不自私的證書 (as an NFT). 我挺喜歡紐約，城市雖髒卻髒得很有文化，走在紐約街上可以直接感覺到城市蓬勃的生氣，… | by Noah Yeh | ONWARD | Medium](https://medium.com/noahs-onward-blog/web3-%E4%B8%8D%E8%87%AA%E7%A7%81%E7%9A%84%E8%AD%89%E6%9B%B8-as-an-nft-ce45cc7f336d)

From the discussions, we received overwhelmingly positive feedbacks from event participants, but no good discussions come without questions and doubts, a couple interesting questions came up during these talks
* Hypercerts might not be able to provide long term sustainable funding
* Resource allocation towards head projects
* Evil use of Hypercerts

The biggest question for Hypercerts so far is where do retroactive funds come from? Who on the secondary market, would want to buy Hypercerts?The theoretical answer is, for phase one, in order to establish positive market signals that would convince proactive funders and contributors to join, we should focus on persuading foundations, governments, wealthy philanthropists to become retroactive funders. Once there are enough positive signals, the market would grow organically. Yet having the signals transition from “guaranteed buyout” to “someone will buy this” might require more than hopes and wishes. Impact as collectibles play an interesting role here, what would make impact more like baseball cards? I recently watched a documentary made by Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mcelhenney, the film is about them buying a football club from Whales (Wait what?). The interesting and relevant part is that the football club Wrexham A.F.C. does not own the stadium they play in, the Wrexham fans do. They bought it because the previous owner of the “racecourse” (used to be a place for horse racing) wanted to demolish the stadium and turn the land into more profitable constructions, he intentionally bankrupted the organization so the stadium would be sold at a much lower price, at least that was the story. To save the stadium from evil businessmen, the fans pooled together enough funding to make the purchase. Years later, Ryan and Rob came in and bought the stadium from the fans.

This is a very good example of how Hypercerts might have been used. The Wrexham case of course did not rely on Hypercerts or blockchain technology to happen, but Hypercerts can certainly make cases like this more prevalent. The fans during the buyout probably did not think too much about financial gains, they wanted their stadium, they wanted to make local impacts. The target audience of Hypercerts, at least in the next couple of years, probably would not be the traders in crypto markets, they have way too many choices that trumps Hypercerts in profitability. But the possible financial gains of Hypercerts might persuade more donors to chime in. If Ryan and Rob didn’t show up from thin air, it’d be an impact collectible, and that might just be enough.

The other possibility is to “process” these impact certificates with value aligned transformations. Art would be a good example, with generative art picking up pace in the NFT world, project owners can stake “impact” at smart contracts that issue NFT art, when the NFT gets bought, collectors didn’t just collect art, they also collected impacts. Artist didn’t just make art, they also made impacts. In theory impacts can be staked in many more types of smart contracts that issue membership, tickets and others.

For phase one, we are inclined to stick to pledgers who are more likely to write bigger checks to incentivize participation from proactive contributors or funders (One can use labor, time or resources other than money in exchange of Hypercerts). One group we’d really love to get to is the government (although negotiation might require some early successful PoCs). Government spendings are often criticized to be wasteful and unprofessional, if they spend on funding retroactive impact, this problem would no longer exist, same thing goes to any grant or organization who wants to see impacts happen and intend to regard the outcome as public goods and commons.

The second question is about concentration of funding towards bigger players. This depends on the types of retroactive funders. If it is a single wealthy funder, grants that discloses transparent and fair measurement of results would most likely get more projects to participate, because these projects would understand which metrics to focus on. Similarly grants/programs with more reputable evaluators would theoretically also gain more participation. Of course participation would be affected by the size of the fund, but if people believe these fund would only be sent to certain participants anyway, the retroactive funder probably wouldn’t be able to get as much outcome as they would like to see. It’s a different story if the distribution of funding is based on market attention, although we still believe this is better than not having a market.

An interesting question was raised during our session with academic researchers. What if China issues a 10 billion dollar retroactive fund to topple Taiwanese democracy? What if retroactive funding is used to incentivize terrorist attacks? This is indeed an interesting discussion, and this is exactly what the thought experiment Roko’s Basilisk is about, an evil being from the future can incentivize people from the present to help it come to existence, if one doesn’t, one would be punished when it comes to life. Evan’s answer is if this is what Hypercerts are used for, it probably would make it easier for the officials to track who is doing what.

da0’s intention here is to build a trusting and sustainable partnership with Protocol Labs, we want to build the first batch of Hypercerts experiments in Taiwan, and we want the world to benefit from these experiments. These experiments will include Vivian and potentially others in a leadership role, which have always given me a peace of mind.

## Funding the Commons
Another very exciting project that we are looking forward to take part in is Funding the Commons, unlike most research projects at PL, Funding the Commons is a global effort that builds communities around public goods and commons. No spoilers, but we might see it somewhere close to us in 2023.

There have been five Funding the Commons around the world so far in different formats, the biggest one was FtC New York. It was held in the American History Museum right next to Central Park, which is where me and Vivian got inspired and started da0. The crowd you would see at FtC is very different from the ones we’d see in any other crypto events, there’s no talk about market conditions, about trading NFTs, about building hype or excitement. It’s about bringing likeminded individuals together to solve much bigger problems including climate change and many more. Participants usually include impact project owners, impact funds, nonprofit organizations, and researchers.

Funding the Commons would be the social fabric behind this movement for the betterment of society, and we have Benjamin Illies leading this forward, together we want to make many more friends, and build a strong community that deeply believes in the intersection of web3 and humanity in Asia.

## Friends with Aligned Values
There are many more projects that PL is working on, but these are the ones da0 will be focusing on at least in the short term.

Now I believe we can comfortably call Evan and Ben our friends, with our values aligned, trust built, friendship formed, we are very excited about the future we will be able to create together.

# Web3公共財的沙盒島（Google 翻譯版本）
Protocol Labs 在加密領域是一個非常有趣的存在，該組織的創建具有強烈的為人類建設的意圖，除了 IPFS 和 Filecoin，PL 大約在一年前還成立了一個名為“網絡商品”的部門，以建立更好的協調系統人類。 Network Goods 是 IPFS 被 web3 社區廣泛採用後的自然發展。 IPFS 顯然作為一種公共產品創造了很多價值，但價值獲取的方式還不明確，收取使用費限制了 IPFS 可以給行業帶來的潛在影響。在這種背景下，Evan Miyazono 和他的團隊開始了探索公共產品潛在籌資模式的使命，因此我們可以想像一個更美好的未來。

Evan 和 Ben 於 2022/11/15 至 2022/11/20 訪問了台灣。 da0 主動計劃與政府、媒體、企業和學術界進行一系列對話。 Protocol Labs 同意訪問是因為台灣獨特的政治敘事和公民動力，當然，Vivian 也很有說服力。

討論主要集中在 Protocol Labs 團隊建立的兩項計劃上，“Funding the Commons”和“Hypercerts”，我們將在稍後深入探討。讓人大開眼界的是，Protocol Labs 是如何思考事物的，而不是看世界規則，相應地設計策略，然後希望像普通科技初創公司那樣取得積極成果，他們採用了機制設計的思維過程。他們從觀察結果開始，了解戰略形成的原因和方式，然後嘗試改變規則。我相信改變世界規則是可能的，因此我們可以擁有一個更加協作的未來。

## 超證明標準 Hypercerts
Hypercerts，至少從我看來，已經從了解這個概念的人那裡獲得了很多共鳴。埃文和我簡要討論了為什麼會這樣。我的信念是，人們在 Hypercerts 中看到了希望，希望將公地和公共產品帶到另一個維度，但也希望它能解決糟糕的商業想法。 Hypercerts 是一個了不起的工具，但它不能解決所有問題，話雖這麼說，我們仍然對 Hypercerts 可以做的事情感到非常興奮和充滿希望。

如果您還沒有讀到 Hypercerts 是什麼，這裡有一些鏈接可以幫助您了解
網站：https://hypercerts.xyz/
博文：https://protocol.ai/blog/hypercert-new-primitive/
普通話博客：[【Web3】不私的證明書（作為 NFT）。我挺喜歡紐約，城市雖然敏感卻很有文化，走在紐約街道上可以直接感受到城市沸騰的生命，… |通過 諾亞葉 |前進 |中](https://medium.com/noahs-onward-blog/web3-%E4%B8%8D%E8%87%AA%E7%A7%81%E7%9A%84%E8%AD%89% E6%9B%B8-as-an-nft-ce45cc7f336d)

從討論中，我們收到了來自活動參與者的壓倒性積極反饋，但沒有好的討論是沒有問題和疑慮的，在這些談話中提出了幾個有趣的問題
* Hypercerts 可能無法提供長期可持續的資金
* 對頭部項目的資源分配
* Hypercerts 的惡意使用

到目前為止，Hypercerts 面臨的最大問題是追溯資金從何而來？在二級市場上，誰會想要購買 Hypercerts？理論上的答案是，對於第一階段，為了建立積極的市場信號以說服積極的資助者和貢獻者加入，我們應該專注於說服基金會、政府、富有的慈善家加入成為追溯資助者。一旦有足夠多的積極信號，市場就會自然增長。然而，將信號從“有保證的買斷”轉變為“有人會買這個”可能需要的不僅僅是希望和願望。 Impact 作為收藏品在這裡扮演著有趣的角色，什麼會使 impact 更像棒球卡？我最近看了一部由 Ryan Reynolds 和 Rob Mcelhenney 製作的紀錄片，這部電影是關於他們從 Whales 手中購買了一家足球俱樂部（等等？）。有趣且相關的部分是足球俱樂部雷克瑟姆 A.F.C.不擁有他們比賽的體育場，雷克瑟姆球迷擁有。他們買下它是因為“跑馬場”（曾經是賽馬的地方）的前任所有者想要拆除體育場並將土地變成更有利可圖的建築，他故意使該組織破產，以便以高價出售體育場更低的價格，至少那是故事。為了從邪惡的商人手中拯救體育場，球迷們籌集了足夠的資金進行購買。多年後，萊恩和羅布進來，從球迷手中買下了這座球場。

這是一個很好的例子，說明瞭如何使用 Hypercerts。雷克瑟姆案例當然不依賴於 Hypercerts 或區塊鏈技術的發生，但 Hypercerts 肯定可以讓這樣的案例更加普遍。買斷期間的球迷可能並沒有過多考慮經濟利益，他們想要他們的球場，他們想要在當地產生影響。 Hypercerts 的目標受眾，至少在未來幾年內，可能不會是加密市場的交易員，他們有太多的選擇，在盈利方面勝過 Hypercerts。但 Hypercerts 可能帶來的經濟收益可能會說服更多捐助者加入進來。如果 Ryan 和 Rob 沒有憑空出現，那將是一個有影響力的收藏品，這可能就足夠了。

另一種可能性是通過價值對齊轉換來“處理”這些影響證書。藝術將是一個很好的例子，隨著生成藝術在 NFT 世界中的步伐加快，項目所有者可以對發行 NFT 藝術的智能合約產生“影響”，當 NFT 被購買時，收藏家不僅收藏藝術品，他們還收藏影響。藝術家不只是創造藝術，他們也產生影響。從理論上講，可以在更多類型的智能合約中產生影響，這些智能合約可以發行會員資格、門票等。

對於第一階段，我們傾向於堅持更有可能開出更大支票的承諾者，以激勵積極貢獻者或資助者的參與（人們可以使用金錢以外的勞動力、時間或資源來交換 Hypercerts）。我們真正希望接觸的一個群體是政府（儘管談判可能需要一些早期成功的 PoC）。政府支出經常被批評為浪費和不專業，如果他們花在資助追溯影響上，這個問題將不再存在，同樣的事情適用於任何希望看到影響發生並打算將結果視為公共產品和公地。

第二個問題是關於將資金集中在更大的參與者身上。這取決於追溯資助者的類型。如果它是一個富有的資助者，公開透明和公平衡量結果的贈款很可能會吸引更多項目參與，因為這些項目會明白應該關注哪些指標。同樣，具有更多知名評估者的贈款/計劃在理論上也會獲得更多參與。當然，參與度會受到基金規模的影響，但如果人們認為這些基金無論如何只會發送給某些參與者，追溯資助者可能無法獲得他們希望看到的結果。如果資金分配是基於市場關注度，那就是另一回事了，儘管我們仍然認為這比沒有市場要好。

在我們與學術研究人員的會談中提出了一個有趣的問題。如果中國發行 100 億美元的追溯基金來推翻台灣民主會怎樣？如果使用追溯資金來激勵恐怖襲擊怎麼辦？這確實是一個有趣的討論，這正是洛科的蛇怪的思想實驗，一個來自未來的邪惡存在可以激勵現在的人幫助它存在，如果不這樣做，就會受到懲罰它栩栩如生。 Evan 的回答是，如果這就是 Hypercerts 的用途，它可能會讓官員更容易追踪誰在做什麼。

Da0 的目的是與 Protocol Labs 建立信任和可持續的合作夥伴關係，我們希望在台灣建立第一批 Hypercerts 實驗，我們希望世界從這些實驗中受益。這些實驗至少會讓 Vivian 和 Jacky（以後還會有更多）擔任領導角色，這一直讓我安心。

## Funding the Commons
我們期待參與的另一個非常令人興奮的項目是 Funding the Commons，與 PL 的大多數研究項目不同，Funding the Commons 是一項全球性的努力，旨在圍繞公共產品和公地建立社區。不劇透，但我們可能會在 2023 年在離我們很近的地方看到它。

到目前為止，世界各地已經有五次以不同的形式資助下議院，最大的一次是 FtC New York。它是在中央公園旁邊的美國歷史博物館舉行的，我和 Vivian 就是在這裡受到啟發並開始 da0 的。您在 FtC 上看到的人群與我們在任何其他加密活動中看到的人群非常不同，沒有談論市場狀況、交易 NFT、建立炒作或興奮。它是關於將志同道合的人聚集在一起解決更大的問題，包括氣候變化等等。參與者通常包括影響力項目所有者、影響力基金、非營利組織和研究人員。

為 Commons 提供資金將是這一改善社會運動背後的社會結構，我們有 Benjamin Illies 引領這一進程，我們希望一起結交更多朋友，並建立一個堅信 web3 與人類交匯點的強大社區在亞洲。

我們期待參與的另一個非常令人興奮的項目是 Funding the Commons，與 PL 的大多數研究項目不同，Funding the Commons 是一項全球性的努力，旨在圍繞公共產品和公地建立社區。不劇透，但我們可能會在 2023 年在離我們很近的地方看到它。

## 價值觀一致的朋友
PL 正在進行的項目還有很多，但這些是 da0 至少在短期內將關注的項目。

現在我相信我們可以輕鬆地稱 Evan 和 Ben 為我們的朋友，我們的價值觀一致，建立信任，建立友誼，我們對我們將能夠共同創造的未來感到非常興奮。

為 Commons 提供資金將是這一改善社會運動背後的社會結構，我們有 Benjamin Illies 引領這一進程，我們希望一起結交更多朋友，並建立一個堅信 web3 與人類交匯點的強大社區在亞洲。