HPGF Ecosystem Support Machine Proposal (Base)

Abstract:

The Ethereum Public Goods Ecosystem is in a stage of rapid expansion around the many variables of project funding. Responses to the provocation put forth by Optimism's retroactive funding infrastructure have proliferated in the direction of impact attestations, peer review networks, prospective funding and crowdfunding. If this concert of ambitious and internally complex initiatives is still in infant stage, its less a problem of mechanism design, and more one of mutual coherence: that is, how these tools fit together with each other, and how that coherence creates a story that can be told to a broader world of impact creators. Hyperactive Public Goods Funding (HPGF) is our name for a generative synthesis of this multiplicity of protocols, describing the emergent properties that arise when these siloed mechanisms - especially strategies of prospective and retroactive funding - are fused into a well-oiled, feedforward machine of sustainable impact.

If that synthesis has remained illusive, it is because those who have engaged these tools thus far are so high context - our hesitance as an ecosystem to bring our toolkit to non-web3 communities may well be what is holding us back from reaching the coherence to be available to them in the first place. The HPGF Ecosystem Support Machine (ESM) aims to address this tension, interlinking the scattered components of the Ethereum public goods ecosystem into a system that is legible, accessible, and valuable to those striving to make tangible real-world impact. Through a combination of facilitation, research, content generation, and community organizing, our goal is to coalesce these disparate systems into a virtuous cycle that empowers creators and innovators. For reasons outlined below, our first community of concentration in this effort is what we call the global investigative commons - that is, the journalists, researchers and data scientists that navigate the uncertain terrain of finding truth outside of the sanction of nation-states and private enterprise.

Overview

Hyperactive Public Goods Funding (HPGF) is a fusion of some of the most innovative elements of the public goods space. The flow finds synergy between prospective crowdfunding, impact tracking and evaluation, and the participatory retroactive public goods funding mechanisms developed by the Optimism community, fusing them by way of rigorous impact validation strategies and other open peer review processes. The goal of HPGF is to generate a virtuous cycle that, over time, will cohere enough to attract large pools of capital into the markets whose terminus is not profit extraction, but rather the judgment of impact by open process and participatory bodies interested in the flourishing of prosocial enterprises.

As it stands, this flow is only recently coming into shape. Because it's born from a concert of already complex and ambitious initiatives, the flow has a high risk of remaining inaccessible or even incoherent to the communities most in need of its innovation - indeed, at this point in development the acccessiblity and coherence of the flow is a question even for the builders shaping it. The HPGF Ecosystem Support Machine (ESM) is a workgroup dedicated to solving this problem by locating friction points where focused efforts in one domain (e.g., user onboarding) generate reciprocal clarity and coherence across the entire HPGF project ecosystem. Our work focuses on mending some of the natural fragmentation in the current public goods space, generating bridges not just between siloed web3 teams but between the public goods community and those communities outside of the web3 space that would benefit from their mechanisms immediately.

Our first community of concentration in this effort is what we call the global investigative commons - that is, the journalists, researchers and data scientists that navigate the uncertain terrain of finding truth outside of the sanction of nation-states and private enterprise. The parallel interests as well as the incidental convergence represented by this community's funding crisis make it an excellent first choice to stage our efforts, but the onboarding, concierging and explanatory work it will demand is sure to generate positive externalities that will extend far beyond journalism. Our workgroup is thus most concerned with finding the interventions that are most animated by mutual alignment and a shared problem space in order to develop HPGF Ecosystem Support output that has multidimensional benefit.

Problem Statements

1. Technical Onboarding Friction: Newcomers to Web3 face considerable hurdles, including complexities around account abstraction, autonomous wallet flows, and the intricate processes involved in participating in decentralized governance and DAOs. This barrier not only deters engagement but also restricts the inflow of diverse contributions to the ecosystem.
2. Cognitive Dissonance and Conceptual Misunderstandings: Many users struggle to grasp the transformative potential of Web3 technologies, perceiving them as mere technical novelties rather than tools for autonomy, sovereignty, privacy, and decentralized data management. This inhibited understanding undermines the broader adoption and application of these technologies for impactful IRL community empowerment.
3. Educational Resource Disarray: The landscape of educational materials related to Web3 and public goods funding is vast yet fragmented, characterized by conflicting tones, purposes, and varying levels of accuracy as aspects quickly are rendered obsolete. This inconsistency poses a significant barrier to learning and effective utilization of Web3 tools.
4. The Popularity and Nepotism Challenge: A notable imbalance in funding allocation results from a tendency to favor well-recognized projects, leading to a cycle of nepotism and exclusion that stifles diversity and innovation within the ecosystem, especially for new and lesser known projects that lack Web3 reputation. (See "Matthew Effect")
5. Siloed Development Focus: Web3 development teams often concentrate intensely on their specific projects, overlooking opportunities for cross-collaboration with other protocols and product teams. This narrow focus limits the potential for creating cohesive user experiences and leveraging synergies across the ecosystem.
6. Communication Gap Between Technical and Non-Technical Communities: Bridging the complex, technical domain of Web3 with the longstanding challenges recognized by non-Web3 native users remains a formidable task. The prevailing reliance on jargon and buzzwords further alienates non-technical audiences, impeding mutual understanding and collaboration.

The underlying issue across these challenges is the absence of sufficiently neutral intermediaries capable of acting as facilitators, bridge builders, knowledge sharers, and translators between the technically adept Web3 natives and the broader, non-technical audiences who stand to benefit immensely from these innovations. Addressing this gap is crucial for fostering a more inclusive, effective, and impactful public goods funding ecosystem.

Hypotheses

These hypotheses serve as guiding principles for our efforts to bridge gaps, foster understanding, and catalyze impact across the ecosystem.

1. Collaborative Learning and Feedback Integration: We hypothesize that creating platforms/spaces for product teams to share their insights and experiences will encourage them to critically evaluate and enhance their feature sets and narratives. By integrating valuable feedback from non-Web3 users, not only will the product/protocol team benefit through improved offerings, but this shared learning will also enrich the collective knowledge base, aiding other teams addressing similar challenges.
2. Expanded Definition of Public Goods: By shifting our focus beyond the confines of Web3 infrastructure to embrace a more inclusive and human-centered conception of public goods we believe that Web3 product/protocol teams will be better positioned to tackle significant, wide-ranging issues. This broader orientation is crucial for addressing urgent global challenges and fostering more adoption toward a more responsive and socially engaged ecosystem.
3. Facilitation by Neutral Third Parties: The hypothesis here is that overcoming the formidable barriers between segregated user groups and product teams, each secluded within their respective walled gardens, is an unrealistic expectation for these parties to manage on their own. A supportive intermediary, adept at navigating both realms, could effectively mediate needs and facilitate a robust exchange of information and value, enhancing mutual understanding and cooperation.
4. Cultivation of Inquiry and Active Listening: By dedicating resources to exploring this emergent area of concern, we anticipate that we will not only refine our capacity to pose more insightful questions but also improve our ability to listen attentively to the needs and aspirations of all stakeholders involved. We expect that this concentrated effort will act as a catalyst, elevating the entire public goods ecosystem to new heights of exchange, innovation and impact.

Contrary to the thesis of "take care of our own systems first," we are of the belief that richly engaging and refining materials to onboard impact creators into the public goods space will have a crucial reciprocal benefit for the space in its development capacities. We propose a feedback loop where, with the help of a neutral intermediary, ecosystem developers and new communities can grow together, shaped to the strategic contingencies of each community as they make use of the HPGF toolkit to their own ends.

First Focus: The Global Investigative Commons

While this group's work is intended to be relevant to a wide range of public goods oriented communities, it's our belief that building around a monolithic and abstract user will blind us to the important nuances that will make HPGF a viable force for impact fundng. We will only find the common patterns if we derive them out from specific deployments. To this end, we've chosen the global independent journalism community (what one group calls "the investigative commons") as our initial focus for onboarding, empowering, and tailoring an HPGF toolkit around.

Our team has connections to members of this community who are deeply embedded in the funding polycrisis in independent journalism, particularly in the area of the climate coverage. Both the climate change and the journalism funding crisis have acted as catalysts of experimentation in decentralization as well as reappraisal of core values around open source production, the value of public goods and the viability of commons institutions in our society. The latter, perhaps even more saliently, has instigated a growing dialogue around impact tracking, highlighting issues including the networked nature of impact and the relative value of qualitative and quantitative data for verifying impact.

In short, the independent media establishment is experiencing an ordeal that makes for striking convergence with the concerns of HPGF and the broader web3 project. When framed within the larger conversation around the metacrisis and the defensive technologies necessary to address it, it becomes even more clear why this community will make a powerful ally in charting out the real life stakes of Hyperactive Public Goods Funding.

The specific communities within the journalism field we are focused on building relationships with are

a) those that are combining local grassroots coverage and citizen journalism with in-depth investigative capacities to make new tactical organizations or initiatives adequate to the cosmolocal breadth of climate change and the metacrisis;

b) those that are borrowing methods from data science to forge new protocols of truth telling beyond the interest of state, corporate or other institutions vulnerable to capture and antisocial tendencies.

These two areas overlap heavily, and are also constitute a forward thinking contingent of the community that we believe is ready to experiment with funding instruments that transcend the traditional binary of private equity and state-sourced. Indeed, the funding crisis in journalism is largely animated by the tremendous flaws in both spheres; when delivered in the right language, we think this community will embrace the participatory, p2p forms web3 has to offer exactly because of their high-level exposure to the flaws of legacy systems.

Initial Blueprint of HPGF Meta

Our nascent model of the Hyperactive Public Goods Funding (HPGF) initiative is designed to harness tools and protocols from the public goods space to build a holistic, cycle-forward system for empowering purpose-driven communities. The methodology, depicted in the meta diagram provided, outlines the steps and associated tools needed in onboarding communities, bootstrapping DAOs, and developing network protocols of accountability and impact. The process is divided into distinct phases, each contributing to the overarching goal of enhancing the public goods ecosystem through strategic use of public goods technologies. By mapping out this HPGF structure, our workgroup hopes to serve as a mirror and locus of context for the different builder silos that animate it.

Click here to view in more detail.

Working Doc of HPGF inventory

1. Community Onboarding and Empowerment: The initial phase focuses on identifying significant purpose-driven communities and facilitating their onboarding into the Web3 space. By offering best practices and streamlined processes for engaging with Web3 tools, we aim to mitigate the intimidation factor associated with privacy, autonomy, and security concerns, thus accelerating their entry and efficiency in utilizing these technologies.
2. DAO Bootstrapping: Recognizing the value of decentralized and transparent coordination, the next step involves assisting these communities in establishing their own DAOs. This effort is grounded in the belief that DAOs enhance knowledge sharing, enable trustless and permissionless access to shared treasuries, and empower communities to make swift collective decisions, thereby amplifying their impact.
3. Signal Support through Yeeter: Utilizing Yeeter and/or comparable tools, we plan to assist communities in gaining initial signal and financial support. This platform facilitates the early-stage bootstrapping of communities around shared ideas, allowing for progressive maturation and reducing bureaucratic overhead in the long term.
4. Formalizing Promises and Milestones: This phase supports project teams in formalizing their goals and aspirations on-chain, leveraging a combination of Yeeter, DAOhaus SDK, Moloch DAO contracts, and the Hats protocol. The aim is to protect all parties involved by ensuring accountability through shared stakes in the project's success.
5. Content Composition and Intellectual Property: In collaboration with the JournoDAO, PDX DAO, and the Ethereal Forest community, we explore the composition of content that embodies the collective voice of a community. This includes experiments with on-chain intellectual property management through tools like DIN (Decentralized Intelligence Network), PermaPress, and Story Protocol.
6. Peer to Peer Validation: Given our planned engagement with the journalism community at first stage, Factland represents a convergence point that addresses the needs of a specific community while gesturing toward solutions that may be relevant to impact projects across fields. Factland provides a platform for community-driven fact-checking and peer review, facilitating the generation of qualitative and quantitative data to validate project ambitions. This stage is pivotal in forming a reciprocal relationship between Creator (researcher) DAOs and Collector (patronage) DAOs, fostering an environment of open critique and data-driven impact assessment. EAS and other trust network protocols will also be key considerations at this stage.
7. Impact Reporting: Working closely with the Hypercerts team, we aim to automate and streamline the conversion of collected data into on-chain impact reports. This phase is crucial for impact validation, potentially leading to the establishment of marketplaces that offer rewards to both research teams and collector communities. Deresy, EAS, and other qualitative and quantitative data sets will also be explored.
8. Marketplace Dynamics and Funding Flow: Investigating strategies for the ownership and distribution of Hypercerts impact reports, including fractionalized ownership, PCO (partial common ownership mechanics) and Harberger taxes, to ensure a sustainable funding stream for research teams.
9. Retroactive Funding Preparation: Aligning project members and DAOs with ecosystems prepared to distribute retroactive funds based on demonstrated impact, supported by attestation networks and clear impact data.
10. Legal Entity Formation and Compliance: Researching best practices for forming legal entities and undergoing KYC processes to smoothly receive retroactive funds and integrate with broader funding networks, including non-profit and research institutions outside of Web3.

Impact and Deliverables

1. HPGF Meta Flow By placing the various elements of the public goods stack into a modular, user-oriented flow we will a) give needed coherence to the non-web3 native communities that are most in need of these tools, b) unlock the power of each tool while highlighting areas for intervention and improvement that may have remained invisible to projects in their silos. We have already completed the first version of a detailed diagram of this Meta (see Initial Blueprint of HPGF Meta).
2. Bespoke Reciprocal Concierge Services We will act as hands-on advisors for native and non-native web3 communities alike, interpreting and clarifying tools and their contexts to users who may otherwise avoid these crucial funding instruments, especially those users whose work falls through the cracks of traditional funding environments. Our success at onboarding individuals to stages of the HPGF flow will be a good metric of success.
3. Technical and User Experience Documentation: A substantial part of our effort will be directed towards facilitating technical discourse among project teams, capturing these discussions, and transforming them into an open knowledge repository. The outcome will be user guides and documentation designed for easy navigation and accessibility, empowering users with the knowledge to effectively engage with these new tools.
4. Protocol Experience and Editorial Content: Furthering the technical aspect of our deliverables, we aim to refine the details surrounding the mechanics of hyperactive public goods funding. This endeavor will culminate in the publication of editorial blog posts, high-level synopses, and detailed explorations of dilemmas and problem spaces, all crafted in collaboration with active/potential users and product teams.
5. Collaboration with JournoDAO A pivotal component of our project involves direct collaboration with JournoDAO, a collective of journalists focused on the implications of the web3 toolkit for the nuanced challenges of free speech, objective truth, and the technological facilitation of high-integrity news dissemination. By partnering with this group as a primary intermediary, we hope to zero in on distinct elements of the crisis in journalism that might be abstracted out into protocols of impact tracking and peer review well-suited to the HPGF flow.
6. Community Engagement with Global Investigative Commons: In order to keep the above pursuits specific and oriented toward terminal goals, they will be undertaken in the context of an engagement with the Global Investigative Commons, both through contacts in JournoDAO as well contacts in the climate journalism and data science world that happen to be concentrated in Berlin (represented in diagram as the Berliners). A further metric of success will be progress in the dialogue between web3 and journalism, so that conversations around the funding crisis in that community are informed by the nuances of the web3 HPGF toolkit.

Our aspiration extends beyond the immediate project outcomes, encompassing a desire to share our learnings and successes with a diverse audience that spans both Web3 enthusiasts and real-world communities. This endeavor is geared towards maximizing the societal impact of all our efforts, ensuring that the benefits of hyperactive public goods funding are accessible, relevant, and responsive to a wide demographic. As part of our commitment to community engagement and transparency, we have identified key opportunities for presenting our progress and soliciting feedback:

• Funding the Commons x Earth Commons in Bay Area (Apr 13-14) These simultaneouse conferences bring together builders, funders, and researchers to share the latest interdisciplinary research focused on creating open source public goods funding infrastructure toward real world implementation. Present current findings, areas of concentration, progress on pilots, network more usecases and pilots.
• MetaCamp Gathering in Costa Rica (End of May) An intensive gathering of contributors to the public goods and greater Ethereum ecosystem. Great space for intensive dialog and ecosystem-focused ideation. Potential new pilots, mechanics, etc
• General Forum on Ethereum Localism in Portland, OR (September 13-15) A public presentation scheduled for this event will provide a final milestone update, further solidifying our commitment to open dialogue and community involvement.

Project Timeline and Roadmap

March: Preliminary Research, Partnerships, Bootstrapping

• Convened at ETH Denver
• Initiated contact with key stakeholders including JournoDAO, the Berliners, PermaPress, Yeeter, Factland, DIN (from DAOhaus), HATs, Smart Invoice, Hypercerts, GoFundOP, Deresy, Gitcoin, Hyperstaker, Hyperfund, and other teams.
• Launching exploratory research on retroactive funding, legal entity formation, and identity verification challenges.
• Commencing preliminary research and proposal writing with the aim of kickstarting the project in April.

April to May: Strategy Development and Integration

• Leveling up coordination and identifying opportunities for integrations across HPGF project teams.
• Initial summary of findings and report to ecosystem for self-coherence
• Presenting preliminary work at Funding the Commons x Earth Commons in Berkeley.
• Conducting exploratory research interviews on user prospective user side with emphasis on JournoDAO, FactLand and the Berlin contingent of the Global Investigative Commons in San Francisco.
• Bringing JournoDAO through the HPGF process.
• Two months dedicated to development and strategic conversations, culminating in a clear, presentable narrative.
• Presenting to MetaCamp community.

June to September: Initiate Concierge Services and Community Engagement

• Use initial collaborative model to provide tailored concierge services to interested user base developed through JournoDAO and Berlin community, assisting with wallet setups, DAO formations, and addressing their concerns.
• Actively sharing insights with the broader community as regular published reports.
• Aiming for impactful presentation and iteration upon our findings during an IRL gathering in Portland from September 13 to 15.
• Offering a retrospective of six months of activities and learnings, evaluating next steps.

Post-September: Expansion and Future Planning

• Post-presentation in September, the plan is to engage with the Ethereal Forest and Open Protocol Research Group, among others, to chart the path for the second phase of activities,.
• Use findings to generate more specific guide for the journalist community to onboard others.
• In the same way that the initial focus was organically defined by found areas of convergent interest with the journalism space, we intend to identify other communities with specific needs situationally appropriate to HPGF interventions.
• Establish a framework for continued growth and impact, leveraging insights from the initial phases to enrich future endeavors.

Team & Roles

TW

• Facilitator, UX research
• Member of Moloch DAO, DAOhaus, Gitcoin, RaidGuild, Yeeter, Bootleggers
• Previously founded Pluriverse, Death Dialogues

Vengist

• Research & Design: Networking, Systems & Mechanism Design
• Founding member of MetaCartel (early funding for dapp and dao ecosystems), DAOhaus (moloch dao as open source protocol), Raid Guild (dao of builders), PublicNouns (public goods support & funding), and many other ecosystem support bodies.

Exeunt

• Community organizer, writer and designer
• Co-Founder of PDX DAO; Co-Organizer General Forum on Ethereum Localism. Lead copywriter at PDX DAO, Ethereal Forest and The Open Machine
• Brought together diverse nonprofit and mutual aid groups to establish the community space in SE Portland, Bridgespace Commons. Previous contributor at Pluriverse and general content writer and critical thinker in web3 space

Macks

• Research: Technology analyst, economic engineering, operations and metagovernance
• Co-founding member of PDX DAO & Ethereal Forest; serial DAO contributor; Delegate: Juno Network Operations Department; operations and system & mechanism design for various orgs.

Relevant Cultural Artifacts Open Value Network P2PF Wiki

Why we need Retro Profit Organizations Matt Stephenson, Lavande, Scott Moore

Shape Rotators Guide to Funding What Matters Kevin Owocki

Cradle-to-unicorn public goods funding Carl Cervone, Kevin Owocki

Stacking Public Goods Funding Mechanisms Kevin Owocki

Proactive Fundraising for Retrofunded Projects Zach Herring

Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again Vitalik Buterin

Matthew Effect "In the sociology of science, "Matthew effect" was a term coined by Robert K. Merton and Harriet Anne Zuckerman to describe how, among other things, eminent scientists will often get more credit than a comparatively unknown researcher, even if their work is similar; it also means that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous.[4][7] For example, a prize will almost always be awarded to the most senior researcher involved in a project, even if all the work was done by a graduate student. This was later formulated by Stephen Stigler as Stigler's law of eponymy – "No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer" – with Stigler explicitly naming Merton as the true discoverer, making his "law" an example of itself.

Merton and Zuckerman furthermore argued that in the scientific community the Matthew effect reaches beyond simple reputation to influence the wider communication system, playing a part in social selection processes and resulting in a concentration of resources and talent. They gave as an example the disproportionate visibility given to articles from acknowledged authors, at the expense of equally valid or superior articles written by unknown authors. They also noted that the concentration of attention on eminent individuals can lead to an increase in their self-assurance, pushing them to perform research in important but risky problem areas."