ReFi Generation
Ep. 3 Exploring the Future of Public Goods Funding with Sophia Dew
In today's episode with Sophia Dew we dive into the future of public goods funding and explore the Public Goods Network, Gitcoin, and Funding the Commons. Sophia illuminates their collective efforts to develop a more transparent and efficient system for funding public goods.
We discuss retroactive funding models and the role of hypercerts, a tool that has the power to verify and reward impact in a multitude of use cases. Sophia explains the distinction between the foundational protocol behind a hypercert, and the practical applications being built upon it.
We finish by contemplating the future of public goods funding, while stressing the need for an open evaluator ecosystem and a bottom-up approach to system design. Enjoy!
In today's episode with Sophia Dew we dive into the future of public goods funding and explore the Public Goods Network, Gitcoin, and Funding the Commons. Sophia illuminates their collective efforts to develop a more transparent and efficient system for funding public goods.
We discuss retroactive funding models and the role of hypercerts, a tool that has the power to verify and reward impact in a multitude of use cases. Sophia explains the distinction between the foundational protocol behind a hypercert, and the practical applications being built upon it.
We finish by contemplating the future of public goods funding, while stressing the need for an open evaluator ecosystem and a bottom-up approach to system design. Enjoy!
This is what it means. It means that communities who have problems that they care about and are just upset because the system we live in right now, all the capital and all the resources flows top down and it's really hard for communities who know the best way to solve these problems to get to coordinate and solve them, because the system is just not designed for that. How can we create frameworks and systems where communities can fund what matters to them, all the problems that matter to them, and when we can unlock that little puzzle, we really can create a giant, giant impact at scale.
Speaker 2:Welcome to ReFi Generation, the podcast that talks to experts and leaders in the new frontier of regenerative finance to examine how blockchain technology is creating the next generation of environmental and humanitarian initiatives. I'm your host, cash Upton. In today's episode, I talk with Sophia Dew about the public goods funding ecosystem. I especially enjoyed this conversation because Sophia is a builder in the space who's also incredibly passionate about in real life sustainability initiatives. Thus, she sits at the fulcrum point, or the bridge, of web two and web three. We talked about the public goods network, how Gitcoin is supporting public goods funding and, lastly, about the nuances of hyper certs and the new applications for hyper certs that Sophia is helping to build with funding the commons. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hi, sophia, good to have you on today. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:Great. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Yep, I was really glad that we got to do a deep dive together after our ReFi roundtable. When you're at the traditional dream factory- yeah, that was so exciting.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad to be able to talk.
Speaker 2:How was ReFi week, by the way?
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it was incredible. I think there was just so much that was packed in to that week. But I think what was really exciting is we had a big mix of people who are just really excited about regeneration. We're on the land because of that not a big background within the whole web-free movement and then we had a bunch of us techie folk who are just so excited about the tooling, what it could do. It was one of these first places where it combined for the first time with a lot of people. That was really exciting seeing people who had no idea what web-free was get excited about this movement, get excited about what this tech can empower. That's the whole point. It's a bottoms up tech, so we need people to care. I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:I didn't want you to want to build a bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, was there the permaculture people who weren't familiar with Web3, refi, learning about the space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly that's specific week at TDF. It was people who were already at TDF because of their interest in permaculture, their interest in agriculture regeneration, and then ReFi was hosting their ReFi event at TDF. Then they brought in a bunch of people from ReFidow who were connected to ReFi and we all got to merge. It was a beautiful, beautiful synergy. I didn't know how I was all going to play around, but I ended up being super special, one of the best weeks.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. I'm glad to hear it. In today's episode I will dive into public goods funding ecosystem as a whole. I know that you're wearing a few different hats. Maybe just start off telling our listeners the different public goods funding systems that you've got your hand in right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to share. Right now, the biggest hat I wear is within public goods network. That's part of Gitcoin. They are a layer two where the sequencer fees that are generated from using this layer two goes back to fund public goods. It's part of the bigger ecosystem which is Gitcoin, which is those of you who are familiar. It's a way to fund what matters.
Speaker 1:I'm sure a lot of the listeners here are familiar with them. They run grants rounds using a variety of different tooling. Communities are able to fund what matters for them. Then also, apart from that, I was really involved in funding the Commons. I was one of the residency and their Berlin residency. I did a lot of stuff with them. They are trying to bridge the gap between the Web3, web2, academia, government, whole world of how do we align and build public goods funding infrastructure. Then my last little role is also working with hyper-serts and trying to figure out specific applications of hyper-serts to enable impact funding systems for public goods. We're a few different hats all within this space. Overall, I'm super excited about what Web3 can enable for the future of public goods funding. Super grateful for you having me on.
Speaker 2:Really excited because I do think this is, like you said, the intersection of a lot of the traditional grant funding that is maybe opaque, not as transparent, has some friction, and bridging it to this digitally native seems to have a lot of benefit. Let's start with the public goods network. For our listeners who contribute it to the latest get-going grants round, they would have noticed that it took place on the public goods network, correct? That's the layer two.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is. I'm happy to share a little about that too. That was launched six months ago. It's a new layer two on the optimism super chain we're tech. For anyone who's a tech, maxi is the same as OP stack. He's the same, the optimism that face Zora some others also use, meaning in the future we can have a lot more interoperability between these different chains. That's some little tech alpha for anyone who's really curious.
Speaker 1:What that essentially means is when we think about where the money is coming from and we have all of these new platforms that enable grants and different abilities. Like that, the funding is really finicky if we're just relying right now on donors and grants for all the funding to come in. So it's really important that as an ecosystem, as a Web3 ecosystem if we wanna continue funding our ecosystems, public goods that we have revenue and consistent and stable sources of funding. And one of the ways that we're experimenting with right now is public goods network. So as people use that network, the sequencer fees that are generated can go back to public goods and this creates a loop so that we're not always relying solely on grants and donations forever, because that is finicky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then it also opens it up like there's the conversation of retroactive public goods funding versus maybe the get coin model where they're funding ongoing projects or kind of seed funding projects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 1:And so one thing I don't know whether this is fully publicized yet with the get coin, but they're also exploring retroactive funding model on their grant stack so that grantees are able or anyone running a grant rounds, can decide between direct grants, quadratic funding or retroactive funding.
Speaker 1:I think that's something that will slowly be rolled out, but what we're seeing as a new funding system that is available in the Web3 universe that hasn't truly been around before is this whole idea with retroactive funding, and the idea behind that is it's a lot easier to fund public goods that you know have created an impact, rather than funding public goods ahead of time, hoping they make an impact and then you're kind of sending it to these anonymous people just seeing and then tracking, and people send a lot of time writing grants and creating metrics so that you hope it goes into something good.
Speaker 1:That's really difficult. It's a lot easier as an ecosystem to retroactively fund things that were useful and things that were impactful and where that really plays in and where you can really see that is within the Web3 ecosystem and funding are right now what I'm most familiar with Ethereum public goods and or EDM public public goods and how, after you see what created an impact, then allocate money backwards. And so I think it's a writing framework that we can use and that we can test out the exact rails right now and our little ecosystem and, if that's something that is efficient, and we figure out how we can actually begin expanding the same framework to apply a whole new set of public goods and IRL public goods. And you know, that's what I'm excited about and that we chatted about before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now I really love that it's starting with open source software as the Ethereum public good and having the impact verified to then do retroactive funding does incentivize people to build things that are good for all, and that kind of makes me think about how the hyper cert plays into the equation, because then it is an actual verification of impact and so maybe that's a good segue into where the hyper cert would play in. And you had a nuanced take when we were chatting right before. I was just listening to the Carl Savone interview with Kevin O'Walkie on GreenPill and you're saying there's a difference between the protocol level of hyper cert's foundation and then the actual like practical applications that are happening. So maybe we can go down that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to talk about that rabbit hole and it's what I'm really excited about from our last podcast, as people know, super excited about hyper cert, super excited about hyper cert applications, and writing piece is or one thing to understand is hyper certs and hyper cert foundations. You know they're in charge of the protocol and so at that level it's a protocol for tracking and rewarding impact and it's like this open data layer, this data layer for different impact claims, and that on its own is a protocol. Right, there's nothing insanely special about just that and just this ERC 1155 semi-fungible token. But what is really exciting is the application layer of how is this actually being used? How is it being used within different use cases to create impact funding systems for a certain use case or for a specific ecosystem. So, as we described with, like open source software, say, you have a specific project and they create a hyper cert for that specific project.
Speaker 1:As you have initial funders who are initially funding, they can get little pieces of that hyper cert later on as they create, as they create new impact and as the project evolves and that is say, theoretically, another hyper-cert. You now have these data layers of their project over time, their impact over time, who contributed to the impact, who was involved when they did that impact, what they did, who maybe financed some of the impact, and you get this really collective data layer overview of what that actually means and what's exciting about it. Another really exciting thing is this protocol has an SDK that anyone can build upon. So if people have interesting ideas and applications for how hyper-certs could be relevant for impact funding systems and their own ecosystems, you can start building that now, right away, and there's group chats on Discord, telegram to help and collaborate with. But that's the whole idea. Anyone can start building applications for their specific use cases. So, yeah, that's a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, and from my understanding one of the first use cases was when the Gitcoin round in May, where someone, a grantee of Gitcoin, could issue a hyper-cert to the people who donate it. So then it's almost a certification of support of that public good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sort of. So, exactly, so people who were a grantees were able to mint a hyper-cert and then fractions of that hyper-cert could be allocated to those who donate it. So it's still a one-mic hyper-cert and then fractions are given to donors. What's exciting about that is, on its own, like you could just be like look, I donated, this is really cool. But what gets really exciting as well are the applications that can be wrapped around that. When it comes to, for example, retroactive public goods funding and we want to say someone later on wants to either reward or gift early donors, early contributors you can now clearly see who, or people that supported that impact and supported that specific claim, supported that project and they can be rewarded. Maybe with I don't know some NFT or you go to some event and then everyone who is an owner of that gets early access to some project or retroactive funding or a piece of retroactive funding, who knows? But before there was a way to track.
Speaker 2:They're also like if the project was sequestering carbon or participating in some other ecological benefits framework which I want to jump into in a second and let's say that project was earning passive income, then because of that positive externality on the environment, then in theory maybe that fractional ownership could go, could be seen by those rewards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So that's a big theory around it and again I want to emphasize that these are the different applications that hyper-serts can enable and it really ends up being what are the specific use cases that communities find it useful in and how can specific communities and ecosystems build out those use cases and test it? But I am personally really excited about what you just said of how it actually creates a new funding loop where you can not just donate and not just give perspective funding just from social pressure or virtue signaling, but rather as a way that this can be economically beneficial, maybe down the line in theory.
Speaker 2:Yeah, someone could make a living around supporting positive public good projects, and then that was the whole. Like what we talked about with Basin Dow is they're trying to have real estate investment not just be something that's in that traditional kind of extractive model, but something that is regenerating. And then it's not like charity, it's not like you're just giving away money, but you're actually investing in something that has a positive benefit on the world.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly, and I'm a huge fan of that because, ultimately, when it comes down to how we want to solve problems, it's incentive design. And when it comes to really big, scary problems like climate change, it's hard to just tell people, hey, we should do better. I mean, you can, and that says a little bit. But really what's going to enact change at scale is when you change up the incentives so that there is an incentive to do better. When you protect the planet, when you create a lot of impact and positive change, there's incentive to do that and you can receive rewards for doing that. And that's what I think is going to be the key to unlocking the future to get a lot of people to come together, coordinate and work on problems that matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And then the retroactive comes into play because, hey, thank you for doing this in the past, we want to reward that because there's this public funding grants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I think that is another piece that is really huge the retroactive funding, Specifically when you can start tying in who are going to be this people who want to retroactively fund based off a certain impact.
Speaker 1:So right now we see one model with optimism where they're excited they want to retroactively fund projects that have contributed a lot to their own network, their own ecosystem, I think specifically, maybe take up a lot of block space on their network, use their network a lot and that's an impact that they care about. And when they see that they retroactively reward, Using that same framework. Say, you have a big donor who they just really care about carbon sequestering and they or ecological benefits, framework those specific, those specific impacts. And as a donor, you know what I don't care like how I'm not going to pay you money to plant a lot of trees, but I will. Or I'll pay you a little bit of money to pay a lot of trees, but I'll pay you a lot of money if I can see that the impact of those trees based off of in a few years are still alive or have created some ecological benefit, then I'll retroactively fund and reward.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And this whole tracking of like, intent and claims based off certain impact. When you create that connection and that loop, what that framework will create for the whole ecosystem is really exciting.
Speaker 2:That is really exciting and it gets me to think back onto the ecological benefits framework and how. That's not just carbon, right. There's soil health, biodiversity and a few other metrics that they're tracking. So it's not just we planted X amount trees and they're estimated to sequester this much carbon, but a hyper-cert could show the actual quantifiable data of the water retention. Was this much better? Species diversity increased by this much, soil health increased by this much? So it sounds like there's a way to differentiate projects as well and really reward the ones that are having the biggest impact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one little technical nuance there. It's an application of hyper-cert where you can start seeing how all these things together. A hyper-cert on itself will only store the actual intended impacts when that impact that works scope, the impact scope.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool.
Speaker 1:Who owns it, an application. You can have different evaluators pointing to that hyper-cert and saying look, we evaluate that, that was true, and another evaluator says it's a little true, or something like this. And all of that, all of this external data and information about what's going on, just creates more value for that specific impact claim right, okay, great, yeah, that's a good differentiation.
Speaker 2:So, like the hyper-cert itself is like an NFT, it has data on it and then the application layer that you're kind of working on, that sounds like, is then like a dashboard or a validation system to really prove and show that data.
Speaker 1:Exactly so the application layer can be made up of, like anyone can make any application layer using the hyper-certs protocol for their specific use cases. But what I'm really excited about is, since I also have another dual role within Gitcoin right now they already have all of this tooling and to create ecosystems to fund what matters for their specific use cases, and now they've also created retroactive tooling on their grant stack as well as direct grants and quadratic funding grants, and so what this can enable. When you add write all the grantees create hyper-certs for their specific projects. As people donate, as they keep grants, they get a fraction of that hyper-cert.
Speaker 1:Later on, saying, a few years, someone wants to make a new project, saying I want more money to plant trees. Go look at all these past hyper-certs that I've created. Go look at who donated and what they think. Go look at all the evaluators that also point to this hyper-cert and say that these trees are still alive and are doing really well. I'm probably a really good bet that if you give me $1,000 to plant more trees, I'm probably going to do really well planting trees. And it starts building up that social graph, that data layer, to really illustrate the impact that this may have and the value of that impact claim.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds like the accountability goes up a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and so that's just what we're saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah in the era of greenwashing, this is needed right, exactly. This isn't just a claim. This is a verifiable impact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and yeah, and that's just one example of an application of hyper-certs, and that's what I am really excited about, and I think that's also the nuance that people get a bit tripped up on is like wait, what exactly is hyper-certs? Like I said, I heard it mentioned here for this, this case or that or that. The applications of it can be different, depending on what you want to see them for. I have a feeling maybe in the future we'll see a few main applications and that's the way that they're being used within the ecosystem. But right now, since it's early, there's still room to explore how we really want to see those applications be played out.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, the consensus kind of needs to still come together. A little bit on the use cases yeah, is one of the applications that you're working on have to deal with the funding, the Commons work that you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yes, a little bit, and I'm actually going to meet later with Beth, and now you're talking about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she'll be on later this week.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, so I'm going to give it a little bit more alpha there, but one of them there is exactly what you mentioned, and so the idea behind that is funding the Commons incubates a bunch of really cool public goods funding infrastructure, and one of the things that's tricky is how do we continue funding builders who are creating this infrastructure and how do you just create an impact funding system within funding the Commons is public goods or just larger public goods for a whole, and we're creating an application layer using hyper certs to figure out how we can, early on, state the claim that people, the impact that someone wants a builder or a group of builders want to make, and then, as that project grows and it grows out how potentially we can continue tracking the impact through hyper certs and theoretically retroactively reward and create a full impact funding system.
Speaker 1:So super and beta. Right now these are just ideas that have been floating around, but I would love to use get coin grant stack to actually build this out, or alo protocol, which is the protocols and tooling that the coin grant stack runs on to experiment with this. So that's a little bit what I'm playing with this week. So you got you copy early while I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this all is yeah, no, I love the kind of synthesis of it.
Speaker 2:Would if it wasn't in real life? Public good that's being tracked? Would that hyper cert then have like communication or data coming in from like Internet of natural things, like sensors or satellite data or other ways to show the progression of the impact? Is that kind of how you would?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and and how you connect that data to a hyper cert is still a bit of a question mark that I think a lot of people have different ideas for, and it could be a UI, where a UI you point and you see, or what idea that I have is, as a retroactive funder, what you mainly care about is the impact right that you, that you personally care about.
Speaker 1:And so say, I'm a retroactive funder and I care about biodiversity and I'm not an expert at what that specifically means, like what sensors or what data metrics you need, but rather I trust John, this big person, to handle that, because John is an expert in ecological benefits and knows the exact data to track, and so instead I'll prospectively fund John, give him a little grant, and then he goes through all the projects, all the different hyper-serts that I've done, and then attests to each of them and makes a test to each of the hyper-serts for certain things, and then my retroactive funding gets diluted that way.
Speaker 1:I think that would be a really interesting marketplace between retroactive funders and expert evaluators. It does rely on this web-to thing of trust, right, because that wouldn't be happening on chain and which it depends, and that's one of application I have. I think everything has to be on chain. That's my personal design philosophy and I actually think this trust system would be effective because John wants to make sure that it's doing a really good job so that I can continue evaluating things effectively and getting paid to evaluate. And now you create a marketplace for evaluators where originally it didn't really have ways to get paid before, and that's one of the huge pieces for unlocking and seeing if we're leading to a world that's gonna create a lot of impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like the on chain versus off chain philosophy right, and you always need some work done off chain. But then how does it get bridged and the viability of it is an interesting conversation.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and my opinion a little bit too, is what does the hyper-sert need to track chain? And this is another right now, it can't really track evaluators. And is that a bad thing? Like shouldn't it be able to track evaluators? And my opinion it shouldn't. It should be an open evaluator ecosystem and it's up to the retroactive funder of whoever's funding it or any of them to decide if they wanna own a piece because they think it's valuable. And, in my opinion, seeing like oh, there's a hyper-sert that has funders from all these things consistently, over and over and over again, that's probably gonna show that it's because they've created a lot of impact. And then you have this dashboard or you have some UI where you can see who the evaluators are, what they evaluated for them and why they said that, and then you can track the money that's being allocated and where it's going. I think that creates this nuance when it comes to the actual data in the evaluators that is necessary for creating strong impact, because evaluations is really difficult to just be like this is the right evaluator.
Speaker 2:That's a lot there. I love it there. I mean it goes to show there's a lot of thought going into this space and that's what's exciting. Like that's what really gets me excited, knowing that there's these projects there and they're all trying to build on each other too right, it's not like copying and forking. They're trying to build on each other to have that interoperability.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is what I am also incredibly excited about and that's what I really was.
Speaker 1:My big takeaways from DevConnect and in Istanbul is a lot of us within the public goods funding ecosystem are trying to do the same things and are building similar tooling, and I really think leverage off of each other's toolings when you can and build off of what people have already been thinking.
Speaker 1:That's the best part is some of these ideas and still some of these ideas I've been having on my own or in a silo in small conversations, but I think how they can really happen and change and make a difference is when we all start working together and be like okay, grant Stack, you built out an incredible UI and tooling, and Aloe Protocols built out a really interesting way for that money to actually get allocated. Hypercerts has built out this really cool like impact claims certification protocol. You have funding the commons, who've aligned the people who care about these problems and want to see it happen. And then I can just go on and on listing all these other different toolings in the ecosystem. Instead of building something from scratch and from bottoms up, how can we start taking these toolings, integrating together and figuring out the application that actually is going to create impact and figure out how they can all work and create IRL impact, which I'm excited about too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Now I think that's where the public goods of the Web3 open source software is kind of like what you're saying it's building on the shoulders of giants and continuing to progress in the software needed, but again it's all funneling towards real life impact. At least that's what we're all hoping for in this era of climate emergency. So it's very-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's my specific interest as well, is designing frameworks. That again, and I think this is the key piece, it's bottoms up and I think the whole point is it's not we don't have to rely on okay. When will Gitcoin build out a way to create an impact funding system for climate regeneration? We don't have to wait. Anyone can build it. Gitcoins made all their toolings in the grand stack public. Anyone can use those. Anyone can create it for their own ecosystem.
Speaker 1:That's something you really care about and wanna see. Build it, you can create it, you can do it, and there's a lot of people who will help you and support you on the way. And I think that's what's really huge, because, ultimately, when we try to design systems, like we've done in our regular world, we just wait for these companies or governments to top down, design the solutions and help. It trickles down to us. It's going to be slow and it's going to be inefficient and bureaucratic, and we now have rails where we can use these tools as communities right now and start designing it right now for what we want to see and what we want to be solved, and so I encourage anyone listening to this. If you have ideas and you're like God. This is what they should focus on instead. Do it, you can do it, build it, see it. And if you get stuck, there's a whole community of people who wanna help and want to see your vision come to life that you can leverage.
Speaker 2:Well said and the leverage right. It's all about that find that fulcrum point and, using physics, any like in real life applications or any kind of like direct project applications that you'd point our listeners to to check out, or anything specific like that you're working on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right now I again this is super early, so we'll probably honestly have a lot more intel on this by the end of the week, but Beth and I have been exploring what this will look like for funding the comments and how you can create systems where, when you're funding the commons, is this event series, incubator series and it brings it's a shelling point that really brings in a lot of people who care about these issues to gather in person to talk and communicate, and the impact that that has like I said at DevConnect and Istanbul is you start seeing all these synergies.
Speaker 1:You start seeing, oh my gosh, this is where I can create. These are the applications that would be really interesting for me. This is what I want to create a building. This has this kind of flywheel effect after this shelling point that all converges and so a way that we can start supporting and pushing and funding funding what's being incubated from. That is something that's really really exciting to me, and when I say like specific IRL use cases, it really is just the framework right now. And then seeing how that starts to to support anyone who comes to the conferences, anyone who has ideas, who incubates these projects, how it helps them support their own ecosystems needs to build us out for their specific use case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I imagine we'll start to see a lot of the get coin awardees, grantees start to implement these hyper cert applications and really start to see them get more integrated into the ecosystem.
Speaker 1:That's the goal especially if you're creating another grantee for the same project or a past project how you can have your hyper certs and, like, have a whole hyper board I think I talked about this a little bit which is a collection of hyper certs that all visually represent the story of your impact, and that's really been created and that is a hope that I think we can start seeing Honestly soon. All these things are moving fast. It's hard to get a grip on like what's happening. So much has changed since the last month I've talked to you.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so exciting. Yeah, and did it find the comments? Just have a Taipei event.
Speaker 1:They did. They just went for a Taipei and I'm sure Beth can talk more about that, but it was really exciting and hyper certs foundation was there, open source observer was there.
Speaker 2:A lot of really cool octant, a lot of amazing public goods funding, ecosystem projects were all there Sharing with the work and on Well, it's really exciting just in the last month, since we talked, to hear the progression of it, and I'll definitely want to lean in on some of your expertise because Kevin Milwaukee will be on the podcast in January. So, for your just knowledge of the public good space and what you're doing with public goods network and get coin, definitely keep in touch over the next few weeks, yeah, of course, kevin's the ultimate, he's the smart, like he's been in this space for so so, so long.
Speaker 1:Like ultimately, I am new to the whole ecosystem. I really started filing when I first joined funding the funding, the Commons residency. That was my first intro to public goods, funding, infrastructure and then it really just expanded and continued like snowballing from there. And while I'm new new to this whole ecosystem I definitely learned that it's super possible to use the tooling that already exists to build out applications that you want to see to solve problems that you care about. And while I'm new and don't have as much like wide history ecosystem knowledge like Kevin Milwaukee does, I think my perspective is really valuable for other people who are also new, who maybe also been in this ecosystem but have problems that they genuinely care about and want to see how you can change up the economic incentives to create systems where you can really work on these problems and enact a lot of change and create that tie between impact and profit, so that you don't have to just be worrying about profit, profit, profit, but you can worry about impact, impact, impact.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah Well, I think having that fresher perspective on the space is really vital and I'm trying to make this podcast digestible too for people coming into the space and being able to help onboard more sustainability nerds into Web 3 to see the tools that blockchain is creating. I think it can. You know, in the post FTX world, people think of crypto as like Ponzi schemes a lot of the time and they don't actually recognize the legitimate blockchain technology that's helping a lot of like environmental and social good projects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and I know a little bit today when we were talking is doing this like high, high level overview, very tech, focused on what this different pieces are.
Speaker 1:But that's my exact goal, too, of how anyone can really understand and make that click of like, oh, this is what it means. It means that communities who have problems that they care about and are just upset because the system we live in right now, all the capital and all the resources flows top down and it's really hard for communities who know the best way to solve these problems to get to coordinate and solve them because the system is just not designed for that. How can we create frameworks and systems where communities can fund what matters to them, solve the problems that matter to them, and when we can unlock that little puzzle, we really can create giant, giant impact at scale and move, move the needle fast, because the problem for facing as a human, as a wide scale humanity, are urgent and require everyone to coordinate and work as much as we can to create impact. And yeah, and I think this is this is really huge. I love what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I'm so glad you came on. I mean, I think you just summed up the refi thesis right there. Talk to you at the top level why we need refi.
Speaker 1:Woo yeah, super exciting Awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, if there's anything else we didn't cover today, let me know. Other than that, I think you know I covered everything. I want to ask you today.
Speaker 1:Amazing, I think anything else, while I'm still trying to figure out the exact details of what an application can look like for IRL use cases, I, yeah, I would love to just like continue sharing that with you and especially my learnings. I think what's really huge is my learnings for others who want to start building applications for their use cases, and I think that's what I'm personally most excited about. And I personally feel, like Web3 has done I mean, obviously, because it's a new and emerging tech has done a really good job at building cool technology, building cool protocols, and that's very, very exciting. But what ultimately, is going to make the difference is the applications of these protocols. How does it come into our everyday lives? How can people use them for? To enact change, to create the impact, to build what they want to see. And I'm testing out, I'm testing out that right now and trying to build it out, and I'm happy with that and I would hope that those learnings help others build out.
Speaker 2:Yes, please, yeah. Well, let's keep the conversation going offline and, you know, on the Twitter, refi space is very big, even though people have their own opinions about the issue, who shall not be named. But, yeah, let's do like collaborative, you know, ask our listeners to share their feedback on what applications would be most impactful and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1:So, problems you want to see solved, solve them, or try to solve them and ask wherever you need support, you know.
Speaker 2:I love it. Well, thanks so much for coming on today, Sophia. It was really great talking again.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, so cool. Thank you again for having me on, always a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thanks to Matthew Patrick Donner for the ReFi generation production, including the music, mixing and editing. As a reminder, none of this is financial advice, and feedback is the breakfast of champions. Please subscribe to our show and send your thoughts, critiques and ideas for future content. Be well, take care of each other and do something good today.