The Network Goods team at Protocol Labs recently held the second in a continuing series of events bringing together researchers and thought leaders to discuss novel experiments and future directions for funding our collective commons.
The Funding the Commons series is intended to stimulate and showcase research and discussion about innovative funding methods for critical public goods and open-source networks. Over a two-day virtual summit held March 3-4, participants enjoyed presentations from researchers, inventors, and thought leaders in the network goods funding space, including Jaan Tallinn of the Future of Life Institute & the Center for the Study of Existential Risk, Allison Duettmann of the Foresight Institute, Scott Moore of Gitcoin, and Tom Kalil of Schmidt Futures.
The themes of the March Funding the Commons workshop include:
- the new paradigms for encouraging open-source innovation and the maintenance of critical projects
- new systems-engineering approaches to incentivizing risky research
- new incentives, mechanisms, and markets for funding public goods at scale, and
- new ways of coordinating alignment on ambitious research projects
Presenters also shared updates on public goods funding and network funding experiments started following the November 2021 Funding the Commons workshop. You can watch all of the talks here on our Youtube channel.
This series is part of an ongoing conversation about incentivizing the creation of public goods and building a flourishing digital commons: please join us on the Network Goods Discord server (invite link here) and follow the Network Research twitter (@Protoresearch) to learn about upcoming events, including our next Funding the Commons workshop, an in-person event to be held June 15-17 2022 (location TBD). See you at the Commons!
