how's it going guys konnichiwa it's
really nice to be here in Japan thank
you for coming I'm gonna talk about
aligning ascent incentives around
funding open source I have been
committed by the way my name is Griff
green and I've been committed to the
etherium Commons for about three years I
focused almost all of my efforts on
contributing to the shared resources of
this economy and it's really fun but
it's also really difficult it's really
hard to find sustainable funding for
open source projects in general and
that's why I'm kind of putting all these
projects on hold of I got too much on my
plate and I'm really trying to put it on
pause so I can focus on the common stack
because the mission behind the common
stack I think can help all of us on our
open-source endeavors the goal is to
bring continuous funding to open source
projects we want to build a foundation
of tooling and documentation so that
everyone can build decentralized
alternatives to solve their own unique
situations because open source is
actually the same as nonprofits they
have the same issues there it's a
tragedy that comments everyone is
working really hard to find a reason for
people to give them money so they can
produce value and it's it's almost
impossible because there's no incentives
for people to give you money and it's
sad right like you have to beg for
grants find donors who are acting out
their own best against their own best
interest to fund the common good
contributors are overworked and
underpaid and in the end if you actually
want to create a business model you
usually have to sacrifice your ideals
and sellout you know create some piece
of closed-source software that you can
sell to an individual or provide a
service for someone and this is the same
situation that happens in the nonprofit
space because well you know open source
is a non-profit and what's interesting
is what is the difference between a
non-profit and the for-profit anyway
they all like a large nonprofit
House employees it has assets it has an
organizational structure has a bunch of
people who are committed to working
together to produce value for everyone
right and that's where it's a little bit
different nonprofits are producing value
for shared resources they're producing
value for a community whereas for
profits can find a way to satisfy an
individual want or need and this is a
problem with our current economic models
the default economic model as it stands
today only values people who satisfy
individual wants and needs and that
means that if you are providing
something for the common good or just
writing open source code that anyone can
fork in a permission this way you suffer
from free-rider problems people can get
the value without contributing and that
sucks you know and what's even worse
though is that for profits have an
incentive to exploit the externalities
of our economic models as in for profits
have a huge incentive to take your code
and run with it and make a bunch of
money and not even contribute upstream
changes like they don't even like add
any value to the underlying good they
just keep a closed source and this is
also present it's really easy to see in
the for-profit space where it's like if
you have a factory on a river everyone
wants the river to be clean even the
people that own the factory they want a
clean River no one wants a polluted
river but the factory has to look at
their spreadsheet and their spreadsheet
says that if they pay money to get rid
of their pollution ethically they'll
it'll hurt their bottom line so they
actually have a fiduciary duty to
pollute that river and that's just
douchey oh and then to not drop
the f-bomb oh well well and this is the
case with everything it's whether it's a
community well or a water bottling
facility if you're developing Linux or
you're working for Apple if you're
providing a common
good you you are going to probably be
exploited by a for-profit company if it
can work for their business model and
Bakhtin's have actually solved this
I know Elinor Ostrom would kind of roll
her eyes at me because you know the
tragedy Commons isn't that big of a deal
there's ways to get around it without
blockchains but man the incentive
alignment of blockchain technology helps
a lot and if you look at Bitcoin just
right you can actually see it's
providing a common good for all of
humanity
almost all block chains are they've
created their own economy to incentivize
contributions to the public good in
Bitcoin it's a global payment system and
curecoin they're the proof of work is
folding proteins for cancer research
right this that there's there's ways
that we can start using the incentive
models that blockchain technology
provides basically creating micro
economies that can incentivize properly
providing value through shared resources
and that's what we're trying to do with
the common stack we're trying to create
a continuous funding stream for open
source and we can use blockchain
incentives alignment tools to actually
incentivize contributions to physical
world open source applications we're
calling this the cyber physical Commons
because it's bridging that gap between
the blockchain space and actual real
world applications now it's a little
complicated I'm not gonna lie we have a
lot of work to do and let me go extreme
in that black box okay we have a lot of
work to do and it's not really that easy
to just slap a bonding curve on a dhow
and then say hey we're done we actually
need to do a lot of simulation work
because these are complex systems
they're complex pieces of infrastructure
that need to be well designed think of
building a bridge if you build a bridge
you need to do a lot of math upfront you
need to simulate that bridge you need to
take all the best practices and
learnings that have come to you
actually formalize the designs and math
simulate and then implement feedback
into the simulations when your
implementation tation details change and
then build the bridge right you can't
just build the bridge and then make a
pull request and expect everything's
gonna work out right and that's that's
how we often fall into designing and
working with blockchain systems we write
a white paper and we just go for it and
that works when you're building websites
and and things that you can just make a
pull request for but it doesn't work for
a public infrastructure and so we're
really excited about using CAD cad to
design our system and use use the open
source nature of CAD cad simulation tool
so that everyone can take our designs
tweak them and see if they'll work for
their application I wish I had more time
to talk about CAD cad it's a really
powerful tool really if you have any
desires to simulate your systems and
actually allow other people to use your
simulations and design their own systems
CAD CAD is the answer
so check out block science and all their
work there but what we're using it for
is to build a four layer system that
will solve the continuous funding issues
that open-source projects often have and
I'm gonna I'm a little behind so I need
to just speed through this but in the
end we're taking these different tools
and we're we're going to take one at a
time and implement and design them but
we want to build the community around
having lots of different options on the
shelf because there's not one size fits
all governance solution there's you know
between conviction voting which is
designed specifically for a proposal
framework or quadratic voting or future
are key depending on your system you may
want to use one thing or another
so the comments tax hopes to module
module lies all these different
components so you can kind of plug and
play we are really loving what's going
on with mullick and meta cartel they're
trying to address the same problems that
we are
they want to bring they want to solve
the issues of funding for open source
development into the theorem space the
problem is that they're not sustainable
they still suffer from the same
incentive alignment issue they require
donors to be self-sacrificing and lose
money to support the common good and
that but there's there we're heading in
the right direction especially
culturally I have to give it to Amin and
Peter and the other of McDowell leaders
they have really nailed the way that you
bring a community together there's a lot
of a lot of us we're building
revolutionary tech we don't know the
right way to do it we really have to
reinvent some things for boxing tech but
we probably don't need to reinvent the
wheel for how we order organize
ourselves this is a quote I used to hear
vacuum the chemical engineering days a
couple of months in the laboratory can
frequently save a couple hours in the
library and that's pretty much how we
organize ourselves in the blocking space
and we can do better there's so many
there's so many opportunities to learn
from other people's research and insider
outside our organizations or outside our
normal community just a few like things
that you guys can look up and then of
course inside our community we really
need to also especially look at the
fails the failures the Dowell argon
co-op and other ways that these
communities have like collapsed on
themselves the common stack is excited
to kind of lead the community around
putting all this information in one
place creating an open-source weekly of
how to Dowe and really nail down the
cultural needs of these communities
there's a lot of issues that need to be
addressed and need to be explicitly told
to community leaders but I'm going to
focus on one that's that I think is
sadly mmm not really on the forefront of
our minds called the trust
see every decentralized network that has
succeeded has actually started with a
trusted seed and that may be like
surprising because you think oh it's a
decentralized network right well these
decentralized economies don't will not
work without the initial the people who
are starting them carry more about the
value that the network is producing then
short term profits if if all they care
about is making money they'll just dump
their coin obviously right like if
Satoshi wasn't a benevolent trusted
whale bitcoin would have failed in 2011
he would have cashed out made a million
dollars and it would have been done we
wouldn't be here today the etherium
foundation same thing right they we know
they have a mandate to actually provide
value to the theorem community and the
countless failed coins they're the
exact opposite you know they don't care
about the underlying value of the
community that's why you don't buy them
because you can see they're just trying
to make money and so if you if they
don't care about the value the network
is producing their economy isn't going
to thrive but the trusted seed doesn't
have to last forever if you once you get
to the point like if Satoshi sold all
his bitcoins now Bitcoin would it would
it would go on yeah the price of tank or
whatever but they've they've had they
have a clear direction Bitcoin is a
store of value but a few years ago they
didn't really have a well-defined
mission in scope there were some people
that said it was a medium of exchange
some people that said it was a store of
value and when it came down to it they
had to fork because that wasn't clearly
defined for the community and that's
that's a huge problem but so if but if
Satoshi was around he would have just
said won and everyone would have went
with it and so you have to for the
trusted seed to exit and for the
community to continue on you just have
to define these certain things I don't
have enough time to really dive into it
because I do want some questions but
that's the cultural side if we want to
do this there's also the technical side
and we're a hair at DEFCON that's
probably
people want to hear about the cool like
incentive alignment tools that we have
at our disposal today so camp you have
to remember incentive alignment doesn't
solve the tragedy of the Commons it
doesn't fix anything that's an interface
for people to connect to your network
with and to not burn out there's also
the work layer this is where people
actually do work in in Bitcoin it's a
proof-of-work
right they're actually sharing their
computing power in in the common stack
because we're doing real-world
applications it's more about proposals
and escrows and accountability so that
you know the work is going to get done
and then of course there's the decision
layer the governance layer where you
have to actually decide which proposals
are we going to choose and the
monitoring layer which is where you
actually can understand the health of
the system where people can be informed
about what's going on you know is this
is this thing working do we need to
change something we need constant
monitoring for these Commons to work but
I'm going to focus on the incentive
layer that's the whole point of this
talk I see four main solutions for
incentivizing the Commons within the
blockchain space the one that most
people can think of is initial
allocation right the the pre mine the
the founders reward this is actually
it's a great solution it works as long
as you add vesting or some kind of
long-term sustainable incentivization if
you just give them tokens at the
beginning you'll see huge problems
because they will they'll be in the same
situation where they don't have this
constant incentive and constant reward
for doing good they they'll burn out
it's like hey I got all this money why
am I not enjoying myself in Hawaii or
something inflation is the first one
that's the one Bitcoin uses and the one
most blockchains use including aetherium
and and it's it's solid but it doesn't
have that initial seed fund if you do a
what they call a fair a fair release of
like a blockchain like a aetherium
really nailed it
had a seed funding round and then they
had continuous funding through inflation
and that's what we want to do with token
bonding curves it can provide that same
kind of scenario but before I get there
let's talk about harberger tax harbor
attacks is a really interesting solution
for incentivizing the Commons
how many people have actually heard of
this good hand race okay so Harbor
attack and not many people let me just
say that for the cameras
however attacks is pretty interesting
instead of owning something and hatta
lean right you actually if you want to
buy this artwork is always on sale which
was the first implementation of this on
etherium you have to buy it from someone
else who set the price and then you set
the price yourself whatever price you
set you're gonna pay a constant tax
every block a small amount of whatever
the deposit is what ether or dye will
end up being allocated to the underlying
Commons for this artwork is always on
sale it just goes to Simon who is that
who's the artist that created it but he
now has a constant stream of funding
that can incentivize him to create more
art and death is implementing it so that
you can actually be the the person who
sells the crypto in a certain area and
then if someone else comes in and buys
it from you then they're the the main
producer or the main person to go to to
buy and sell crypto with and that's and
and wild cards is doing it in the way
that we're really excited about where
they're funding a support for endangered
species by little tradable collector
cards so you buy a collector card it's
maybe it's a gorilla named Vitalik and
then you set the price and you have a
constant stream of funds going to
support saving the gorillas I wish I had
I really wish I had more time but
harberger tax is an amazing tool and I
really I
give it justice in the one minute I had
to do so go check it out there's a lot
of research on it that it's very
promising but what most people are
working on in this space or token
bonding curves is a little bit more
developed there's lots of actual
implementations the biggest one being
Bank or that's what a lot of these
groups use although a few people are
starting to roll their own token bonding
occurs and to really describe what a
token bonding curve is I'll use the one
I'll use the one that we're actually
building which we're calling the
Augmented bonding curve so a bonding
curve at its core is just a smart
contract and you could think of it as
representing ownership in the community
and if it's just a pure bonding curve
you can buy the tokens whenever you want
from the smart contract and they will be
created and when you want to sell the
tokens they'll be destroyed and the
price of that token is determined by the
amount of collateral in the pool this
usually correlates the actual supply of
the token but it doesn't have to so when
you are buying or selling into this
curve the price is determined by how
much collateral is in the pool and this
allows you to start this economy for
micro economies there's this huge issue
that token bonding curve solves which is
liquidity within small market cap points
if you have to if you want to create a
token system for your community you need
and you don't use the token bonding trip
you actually have to sell it on the open
market you have to find someone to buy
your token and there's not always a
buyer and if there's not a buyer the
tokens worth nothing and so if it's a
small market thing if you're trying to
incentivize a small open source project
you're probably not going to have very
many buyers and sellers and are gonna
have a liquid market well with the token
bonding curve you can have it's a one
sided market the smart contract will
always buy and will always sell tokens
and can really scale with the supply and
demand of the market what we do in
music planning curve is we take this
this pure bonding curve and we add
another we basically added Dow to it and
we it we implement almost like taxation
into this economy so you are opting in
to supporting the common good and you
have this little micro economy that
really cares about providing this
open-source software we're actually
going to use it first to incentivize
token engineering research and unite the
community around developing more tools
like this next year I hope that I don't
have to just talk about Augmented
bonding curves and harberger tax I want
to see five ten other ideas that can
come out and we just need these token
engineers to stop to be able to avoid
having to sell out and do client work
and start doing the research that they
really want to investigate and and dive
into their ideas and prove them out so
what we're going to do is we're going to
build the trusted seed we're going to
find people who care about adding value
to the token engineering community and
we're going to get them together and
we're gonna have them effectively crowd
from themselves to do their own research
what they'll do is they will send their
funds into a token bonding curve and if
you will need to know if you know
anything about token bonding curves you
know you want to be the first person to
buy into a token bonding curve because
the price is super cheap and to mitigate
that we do two things first we make
everyone bolt by so they all get the
same price and then we also take a huge
cut of that bolt buy and we send it into
a dowel
you can imagine it like amalek dowel
where it's a decentralized grant funding
organization in that way they know that
they're donating the people who are
buying into this token bonding curve and
buying into this Commons they need to be
altruistic because if they're not
altruistic you'll have a prisoner's
dilemma issue and they'll start to
escape but if you know that they care
more about the value of the token
engineering commune
themselves then it will actually thrive
and they'll have these tokens that will
allow them to decide how to support each
other and which grants to give so anyone
who has the token will actually decide
which grants to give and if they do a
good job at making those decisions other
people will want to participate and they
can actually build an economy around
supporting token engineering because if
you're a donee donating if you're the
etherium foundation for instance you
have two choices now you could either
send money to the token engineer that
you want to support directly and lose a
hundred percent of your value it'd be
completely altruistic and
self-sacrificing or you could actually
buy tokens in the token engineering
Commons use those tokens to allocate
funding to that same organization and
receive a financial asset in return you
may lose money I mean you're set to lose
money but you may also make money and oh
the collateral pool this this hatch
tribute as we call it the tax at the
beginning for the trusted seed that's
the seed funding round but as people
sell the token it will actually there
will be a tax there too
we call it the exit tribute in homage to
Molech who's really done a great work
with their tributes so when you sell the
token ten percent is going to that
funding pool so anytime someone leaves
the economy they're supporting the
common good and that's the whole point
of token engineering it's to align
incentives so that when you're
supporting the economy you are rewarded
and when you are when you are taking
from the economy you are you you are
disincentivized
and you but in a way you are always
supporting the economy so we have an
amazing team we're very lucky it's
basically a giveth plus block science
endeavor and we have incredible advisers
including Simon daily Rivia
who is one of the my favorite token
engineers of all time and Geordi who's
in the crowd right there Thank You Jody
for coming we also have a good legal
team because this stuff is sketch and we
don't want to make any wrong moves but
we're looking to build a trusted seed we
want to build a trusted seed for all of
the Commons that we're producing and we
need people who are altruistic that
actually care about funding open-source
projects and basically I'm looking at
you guys okay if you care about funding
open-source please go to our website
Commons org and click apply and tell and
let us see we're gonna filter people
because the trusted seed is very
important and we're gonna find token
engineers and people that we can trust
that really care about funding open
source projects we're gonna get them
well together and we're gonna start this
thing
join us on telegram to learn more we're
actually kicking off on November 5th
remember remember the fifth of November
it's happening the common stock is going
to start this process is going to start
this chested seed so become a member of
the common stack and we'll talk more on
telegram thank you guys
you