LabWeek Public Goods Charts a Brighter Future in Funding, Sustainability and Decentralized Science | Protocol Labs

LabWeek Public Goods Charts a Brighter Future in Funding, Sustainability and Decentralized Science

We recently announced that LabWeek was coming to the San Francisco Bay Area April 11-16, 2024 with a focus on public goods. LabWeek is our global decentralized conference series and in 2024, there will be three of them. Each one will be dedicated to one of Protocol Labs’ primary focus areas. The other two, to be announced later this year, will cover AI and Neurotech, and web3, including digital human rights.

But first, LabWeek Public Goods. Protocol Labs envisions a future where public goods plays a pivotal role in shaping the trajectory of web3 and common goods, in general. To that end, LabWeek Public Goods will be dedicated to topics in that field, such as public goods funding, decentralized science and sustainability.

LabWeek Public Goods will bring together experts to discuss how we can support essential resources for a better funded, sustainable and fairer digital future. As with all LabWeeks, there will be many events organized by PL teams, including Funding the Commons and Earth Commons, which will deep dive into public goods funding and sustainability, respectively.

Protocol Labs has dozens of teams innovating in these pioneering areas (you can discover more about them in the PL Directory). In this blog post, we take a look at how many of them are progressing in this space.

Innovations in Public Goods Funding

Public goods are very important to blockchain communities, playing a key role in improving the R&D pipeline. In his talk from Funding the Commons in 2021, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expounded on the role of public goods on the algorithms and mechanisms of blockchain communities, in particular.

More importantly, there are several models of public goods funding in the web3 landscape that are being implemented right now. Here are a few examples:

Retroactive PGF: Rewarding a Solid Track Record

Retroactive public goods funding ( RetroPGF) refers to the practice of providing financial support for a public good or service after it has already been produced or initiated. This approach encourages collaboration and contributions by allowing for an assessment of the outcomes before committing financial resources. This creates a goal-oriented process that is easier to measure. This space has already gained strong traction.

• Optimism distributed more than $100 million in RetroPGF to 501 contributors in January, including IPFS, libp2p and Gitcoin (full list of completed projects can be found here).

• In March 2024, FIL-RetroPGF-1 allocated 200,000 FIL tokens to be awarded to recognize contributors of the Filecoin ecosystem.

Quadratic Funding: An Algorithmic Way to Raise and Distribute Capital

Quadratic funding leverages capital raised from two sources – matching partners and community donations – in a formula used to distribute a larger portion of funds to projects with more community support. This approach is designed to address the challenge of funding public goods by creating a more inclusive and democratic process that encourages diverse participation in supporting valuable projects that benefit the broader community.

• This grassroots way of backing valuable projects has been used in recent projects, including Filecoin’s method of rewarding community contributors and creating incentives for the development of public goods.
• Gitcoin has long been a proponent of quadratic funding, using the funding mechanism since its inception in 2017 to support popular entities like Uniswap, one of the largest protocols in DeFi with over $400 billion in total trading volume.

Hypercerts: A Primitive for Impact Claims

Hypercerts, a new primitive introduced at Funding the Commons in June 2022, offer an interoperable data layer for impact-funding, addressing impact claims and owner rights, providing flexibility in sale or award methods.

• In 2023, Hypercerts collaboration with Gitcoin targets challenges from climate change to open source software, spanning domains such as quantifying software impact, organizing events via Funding the Commons, and redefining capital allocation.
• Other funding mechanisms have been used and researched by pioneering PL teams, including Artizen, Open Impact Foundation, SourceCred, AthenaDAO, Drips, CryptoEconLab, Atlas Computing Initiative and more.

Sustainability in Public Goods

In the context of public goods, sustainability refers to the ability to maintain or continue providing essential public goods over the long term without depleting resources or causing significant harm to the environment or society. Achieving sustainability in public goods funding involves several key aspects:

Financial sustainability: Securing stable funding sources

Identifying stable funding sources is key to securing a fair and long-term means of supporting sustainability in public goods. Traditional sources include taxes, user fees, grants, or philanthropic donations for public goods provision. Novel funding mechanisms are being explored and employed by teams across PL’s ecosystem.

• Glow Labs, part of the PL ecosystem, redesigns the carbon credit economy to enhance stability, benefiting projects like solar farms by increasing long-term value confidence and improving capital efficiency.
• Several PL teams have dedicated themselves to financial sustainability and a greener digital future. These include Fora, Kariba Labs, Veritas and many more.

Environmental sustainability: Public goods without harming the environment

Thought needs to be put into the provision of public goods in a way that does not harm the environment or deplete natural resources. This could involve implementing sustainable practices in resource management, such as using renewable energy sources or adopting eco-friendly technologies.

• Earth Commons has a mission to facilitate incentive alignment, cooperation and accountability to steward the Earth’s precious resources in perpetuity, such as forests, fisheries, oceans, biodiversity, freshwater reservoirs, and other ecosystem services.
• Other PL teams innovating in this space include Reneum, New Atlantis and many more.

Social sustainability: Promotes equity, inclusion, and cohesion

Ensuring that the provision of public goods promotes social equity, inclusion and cohesion within society. This may involve engaging communities in decision-making processes, addressing the needs of marginalized or vulnerable groups, and promoting social cohesion through collaborative initiatives.

• Earth Commons is hosting an inaugural conference in partnership with the Berkeley Climate Change Network to explore how leveraging emerging technologies and open science can help us respond to dynamically evolving challenges across complex economic and ecological systems.
• Confirmed teams present include Foresight Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and more.

Decentralized Science

Decentralized science (DeSci) offers a promising alternative to traditional models of scientific research and funding that often face replication issues, an intensive review process and high cost of publishing. DeSci, on the other hand, offers the potential to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate innovation, foster trust and transparency and address pressing global challenges in a more inclusive and sustainable manner.

Open access to research findings, data, and methodologies

Open access allows for greater transparency and collaboration among researchers, as well as broader dissemination of knowledge to the public.

• DeSci Labs recently introduced DeSci Nodes beta, an open-source system aimed at enhancing scientific publishing, further advancing open access principles. DeSci Labs has since made their code open source.

Distributed funding to diversify funding sources

Decentralized science seeks to diversify funding sources, rather than relying solely on traditional funding mechanisms such as government grants or academic institutions. This may involve crowdfunding campaigns, where individuals contribute small amounts of money to support specific research projects, as well as innovative funding models like tokenomics and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

• Distributed funding has gained momentum over the last two years. VitaDAO's launch of VITA-FAST tokens in 2023 allowed token holders to directly influence longevity research.

Blockchain technology for secure and transparent transaction recording and verification

Blockchain technology plays a significant role in facilitating DeSci by providing secure and transparent mechanisms for recording transactions, verifying identities, and tracking the provenance of research data. Smart contracts can be used to automate funding agreements and ensure that funds are distributed according to predetermined criteria.

• Molecule utilized web3 technology to establish a secure record of scientific contributions, facilitating fair credit allocation and worldwide resource sharing. Notably, Molecule funded autophagy research at the University of Newcastle via an IP-NFT.

Get Ready: LabWeek Public Goods

Many of these projects listed above started at events or as conversations within the Protocol Labs ecosystem. These sorts of deep conversations and collaboration between researchers, academia, institutional funders, deep thinkers and more are critical to advancing the movement in public goods. Experimentation with network funding structures, impact certificates, and other novel mechanisms is crucial to evolve these concepts into practical, efficient tools for improving public goods. If you’re interested in learning more about this space or want to engage with the public goods community, join us at LabWeek Public Goods.