Retroactive public goods funding: some notes and questions

Having started both for-profit and non-profit ventures, I’ve found that the grass is always greener: for-profit has beautiful machinery for a busted metric (cash), and non-profits have busted machinery for a beautiful metric (impact). Is there a best-of-both worlds-arrangement? Probably not, but we can certainly do better. One recent attempt comes from Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Optimism team. In their paper, called Retroactive Public Goods Funding, they make the following claims: To these I would add a 3rd point: The idea being advanced here is establishing a loop for non-profits that draws inspiration from venture capital-backed startups: The mere introduction of a prize, an unrestricted exit for non-profits, would naturally be welcome to its operators. Today, non-profits often have to chart a difficult course in which they wean off grants, which are often highly restricted, and make the leap to earned revenue, typically by delivering value in a completely new way. Consider an

Having started both for-profit and non-profit ventures, I’ve found that the grass is always greener: for-profit has beautiful machinery for a busted metric (cash), and non-profits have busted machinery for a beautiful metric (impact). Is there a best-of-both worlds-arrangement? Probably not, but we can certainly do better. One recent attempt comes from Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Optimism team. In their paper, called Retroactive Public Goods Funding, they make the following claims: To these I would add a 3rd point: The idea being advanced here is establishing a loop for non-profits that d