Quadratic Funding in Ethereum | Vitalik Buterin Interviewed by Pia Mancini

The Ethereum ecosystem has been an excellent initial testbed for quadratic funding, through the Gitcoin Grants project, which has directed over a million dollars of funding to Ethereum projects over five rounds in 2019 and 2020. It has effectively demonstrated the basic effectiveness of the quadratic funding mechanism; it has funded projects that are genuine public goods, and often projects that previous funding mechanisms missed. At the same time, the tests have shown some of the more subtle non-economic properties of the mechanism: how it affects people's feeling of being part of a community, how it helps the community learn more about itself, and how different variations affect these issues. In this presentation I go through what the Gitcoin Grants quadratic trials are, and what we've learned from the results of the last five rounds.

SPEAKERS

Vitalik Buterin is the creator of the Ethereum Foundation. He first discovered blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies through Bitcoin in 2011, and was immediately excited by the technology and its potential. He co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in September 2011, and after two and a half years looking at what the existing blockchain technology and applications had to offer, wrote the Ethereum white paper in November 2013. He now leads Ethereum’s research team, working on future versions of the Ethereum protocol.

Pia Mancini is a democracy activist, open source sustainer, co-founder & CEO at Open Collective and Chair of DemocracyEarth Foundation. She worked in politics in Argentina and developed technology for democracy around the world. YC Alum, YGL (World Economic Forum).