ReFi Generation
Ep. 16 Public Goods Funding with QZ from Clr.fund
In today’s episode, QZ gives us a refreshing look at the ETH London conference, what the blockchain space is like in Singapore, and the quadratic funding mechanism of Clr.fund
Clr.fund has a permissionless quadratic funding tool, primarily focussed now on retroactive public goods funding, QZ discusses how it can also be leveraged to fund what specific communities want. This allows for a more forward looking funding tool that can be iterated on when a communities’ goals and needs change.
QZ talks about the nuances of grant funding, and how by nature grants are not designed to be sustainable and perpetual, so how do you create a perpetual funding process for impact and nonprofit work? Quadratic funding can be a tool to plug these gaps and democratize the grant funding process.
I especially loved a question QZ posed, "who are the agents that are playing the game, and what are they optimizing for." Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to optimize for profit, thus we have a linear extractive economic model that has gotten us to where we are now.
QZ is a systems thinker, and got me noodling on a lot of profound mental models. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, I hope you do as well.
QZ's Twitter
Ethereum Singapore Twitter
clr.fund Twitter
clr.fund Website
In today’s episode, QZ gives us a refreshing look at the ETH London conference, what the blockchain space is like in Singapore, and the quadratic funding mechanism of Clr.fund
Clr.fund has a permissionless quadratic funding tool, primarily focussed now on retroactive public goods funding, QZ discusses how it can also be leveraged to fund what specific communities want. This allows for a more forward looking funding tool that can be iterated on when a communities’ goals and needs change.
QZ talks about the nuances of grant funding, and how by nature grants are not designed to be sustainable and perpetual, so how do you create a perpetual funding process for impact and nonprofit work? Quadratic funding can be a tool to plug these gaps and democratize the grant funding process.
I especially loved a question QZ posed, "who are the agents that are playing the game, and what are they optimizing for." Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to optimize for profit, thus we have a linear extractive economic model that has gotten us to where we are now.
QZ is a systems thinker, and got me noodling on a lot of profound mental models. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, I hope you do as well.
QZ's Twitter
Ethereum Singapore Twitter
clr.fund Twitter
clr.fund Website
So I think the whole idea of retroactive funding when you read, like Vitalik's blog, is that it's easier to decide when something is good after it's already done. Therefore, retroactive funding is you know it's easier right, but QF as a tool can be used to fund anything that communities want, because you know it lets communities express their preferences.
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, QZ gives a refreshing look at the ETH London Conference, what the blockchain space is like in Singapore and the quadratic funding mechanism of Clearfund. Clearfund has a permissionless quadratic funding tool primarily focused on retroactive public goods funding. This means that they are funding open source projects after they have already been implemented and shown to have impact. And, again, for our listeners, quadratic funding is a tool that gives the voice of the many more weight over the voice of a few when looking at matching grant allocations. This tool allows for a more forward-looking funding model that can be iterated on when the goals and needs of a community change.
Speaker 2:Qz talks about the nuances of grant funding and how. By nature, grants are designed to not be perpetual and thus are unsustainable. So how do we create perpetual funding processes that work for non-profit and impact-driven work? Quadratic funding can be a tool to plug these gaps and thus democratize the access to grant funding. I especially loved a question that QZ posed who are the agents that are playing the game. And what are they optimizing for? Corporations, for instance, have a fiduciary responsibility to optimize for profit. Thus we have a linear, extractive economic model that has gotten us to where we are now. Qz is a systems thinker and got me noodling on some really profound mental models, and I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1:I hope you do too. Hey, qz, how are you doing today? Pretty good. I just came back from London. I think it was a pretty interesting circuit. Being from ETH Denver, eth LetM and ETH Global London, to see the entire Ethereum community across like three continents is a pretty refreshing experience.
Speaker 2:All right, yeah, and then back in Singapore now and you're involved with ETH Singapore, huh.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely, I think over my trip this year, there's been quite a lot of interestTH Singapore. Huh, yes, definitely, I think over my trip this year, there's been quite a lot of interest in Singapore, mostly because the entire world seems to be converging around September. So there's going to be Ethereum Singapore, of course, hackathon with ETH Global Singapore, a large kind of like crypto conference called Token 2049, and also Solana Breakpoint, but I think all that is actually considered fringe events to what Singapore is actually hosting, which is actually F1 weekend and this has been ongoing for, I think, maybe a decade already, where you know race enthusiasts and I think, even like music enjoyers, because there's always an f1 concept, right and so it's going to be an amazing weekend every single year.
Speaker 2:Do you mean formula one f1?
Speaker 1:yes, yeah, okay, okay cool.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, that's what I thought. Okay, all right, nice. Yeah. Oh man, I was in mexico city a year ago and I didn't get tickets, but the f1 race was there and it was quite fun to watch in the city it was happening in. So, yeah, meeting you at Ethereum Denver was great, so it's exciting to have you on the show. We'll dive in a little bit to like quadratic funding and what you're doing at Clear Fund, but I'd love to just hear a little bit more about how your trip was the last few weeks and what that ecosystem across Ethereum was like, because you're just in London and, yeah, what's your takeaways?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's my third time in Denver this time, and it's interesting to see how people have grown over the years, like people that I've met three years ago, right First time, in Ethereum, and then now they are like leading projects, you know, getting started working in different ecosystems. I think it's interesting to see, like the level of growth that is almost right in your face and you can see year after year when you go to different events and you meet people. That's really amazing. Also, around that same time was DEF CON, bogota, and that was, you know, when the Latin American community was galvanized and to kind of see them still doing well after two years. This year it was at Honduras. It's really heartening for the resilience of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Speaker 1:Eth Global London being the first ETH Global event of the year, I think the energy was really exuberant. I haven't been to London in many years, so it was just great to take a look and be back and also to see the kinds of projects that come out of EVE Global London. I think they were all pretty technically strong, which is really amazing, and I feel like this year, you know, with what seems to be some kind of upcycle, there is a lot of prizes and lots of hackers are pretty happy that they managed to win something. And to talk to these hackers to happy that they managed to win something and to talk to these hackers to hear from them like the encouragement for them to go for a hackathon and to win something right that's actually really incredible. I don't think many careers or industries have anything remotely similar to this kind of experience.
Speaker 2:All right, yeah, what were some of the projects that were being developed there, and was there a regenerative finance movement kind of happening like there is at the Denver event? Not that.
Speaker 1:I know of or I took note, but I think one interesting thing was that the ETH Global Risk Bans this year were NFC chips and like for me, one project that really stood out was somebody turned into a wallet and like that's interesting because in the traditional conference space this is also happening, like at the singapore fintech festival. I think the wristbands were also nft wallets, but that took like I don't know, I'm pretty sure it took an entire fleet of consultants or something to make it happen. You see it done, you know, in the middle of like the e-global hackathon over 40 plus hours. It's really incredible and a testament to like the technology that we're working with yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 2:So um would, would people be getting nfts through scanning the near field communications? Um, like bracelets, and then would you was it kind of like a, a po-app kind of you met this person, or what did that look like?
Speaker 1:so I think at the start it was just a way for the organizers to kind of keep track of, like, what people were doing at the event, like whether we check in whether you eat the food, you know things like this, um. But because nfc chips are programmable, right, so you could easily put a wallet on it anytime you want I'm not sure about the security of it. I guess it's kind of like walking around with your private keys on your wrist, but I think it's probably something that we didn't realize was possible or we already knew, I suppose. And with this new kind of paradigm I think it'll be easier for different communities to participate, rather than always having new risk bands each time. I think it'd be interesting to come up with a way to track community participation across different meetups also and different communities. I think that's kind of the real benefit.
Speaker 2:Cool yeah, be able to incentivize community building and engagement and impact in a way that kind of links it to a person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:Cool. Well, I also want to kind of dig in on the quadratic funding side. So what are you involved with at Clearfund?
Speaker 1:So Clearfund is a project that's been around for some time. I joined it about two years ago after DEF CON. Clearfund is a project that has been around for some time. I joined it about two years ago after DEF CON. So generally what we do is we try to encourage quadratic funding initiatives. Clearfund itself is a marketplace tool. After E-flatM, the Honduran community, the Latin American community, you did a quadratic funding round. I'm sorry it's ongoing. There's an ongoing quadratic funding round which uses Clearfund right. So I think that's kind of what clear one is going to be, or supposed to be, right.
Speaker 1:Qf itself is a tool that is used for, I think, somewhat specific instances. I feel that you kind of need like a community that is, that is well, there's some kind of identification to kind of prevent civil attacks that have a common experience. I suppose that people want to promote or encourage and that's a good time to apply QF. But to do QF is not easy. Right To do it properly, especially, and therefore having a tool that's available for different communities to pick up and use when they want to or when they need to, and to work with existing round operators that have been doing QF for their local communities, is probably a good kind of outcome, as Ethereum is very much when you look at the ecosystem of communities. There are so many of them around the world. A good kind of outcome.
Speaker 1:As you know, ethereum is very much when you look at the ecosystem of communities. There are so many of them around the world. You go to ethereumorg there's a community page and you can see like there's just so many of them and a lot of information is kind of lost. You're not really sure, like you know where, like, a lot of these projects come from. Like I think some people didn't know that, say, open zeppelin is from, like, latin america, right? People don't know that ether scan is like from malaysia, right? I think there are probably good ways to highlight some of these different companies that come from countries that are not just, like you know, in Denver or FCC or something, yeah that's a good reminder, like it's a world ecosystem, and then are a lot of what's being funded.
Speaker 2:Is it like a more? It's retroactive right, because it's for a lot of, like, existing projects that are considered public goods in the space it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1:I think it's just so. I think the whole idea of retroactive funding when you read like Vitalik's blog is that it's easier to decide when something is good after it's already done. Therefore, retroactive funding is, you know it's easier, right. But QF as a tool can be used to fund anything that communities want, because you know it lets communities express their preferences. If communities find that, hey, you know, maybe there's no particular project that I like now, then they'll be incentivized to fund projects that are more forward-looking.
Speaker 1:Qf itself doesn't discriminate whether it's retroactive or proactive or whatever active, and I think that's kind of the benefit of it. What it does is it kind of the benefit of it. What it does is it kind of decentralizes not really decentralize but to. I wouldn't say remove, but in a sense democratize. I suppose, yeah, democratize the roles of what are traditionally grand committees. So if we look at the traditional kind of angle of how these kinds of projects are funded, a lot of them will find it very difficult to get grant funding, and also grant funding is not designed to be perpetual. That's bad. Eventually these grantees should kind of figure out a way to make revenue or to figure out some kind of angle, and so QF kind of plugs in this gap because, well, maybe this project should be funded perpetually. Who knows, right, Maybe this project is so important in the ecosystem that, like everybody agrees that I want to fund them.
Speaker 2:Then okay, this is something that you can do.
Speaker 1:Right. If there is no such project, well then the funding needs to be directed somewhere, or it might not. It's also possible for communities to just choose not to vote and be like, nah, I think these cohort projects are not good, and then just not vote. So all that kind of democratizes the grant funding process Also. Another thing that maybe I've been trying to think about is whether we should frame them as grants. I think when you frame them as grants, there is usually a grant giver and there's a grantee. It's almost like a one-way kind of thing. I think it's better to kind of look at it as a source of community funding, a bit like how you know I don't think it's communes, right, I think it's another word for it like collectives, maybe, like. Maybe like how worker collectives or like housing collectives can pool their funds together to kind of like support initiatives that they generally benefit from. So that's why like this as a model matches directly to the goals of such a funding program.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like that take. And talking about the grant ecosystem is a really interesting one because yeah, so much of that funding is hard to come by and not every grantee is equal and they don't all have the same resources to put towards grant writing or sourcing of funds. So yeah, that's a really interesting take. I like the democratization and kind of the collective aspect of it and I guess that's kind of what quadratic funding is built on right and the voice of the many is given weight over the voice of a few who maybe have more money to throw at something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly and like. What you will notice is that, like if you study or if you look at governments, right, a lot of them are facing all societies are facing what we call wicked problems, problems that are multi-layered and cannot be solved by any one particular problem, that have social, societal, cultural, historical things that make it very difficult to resolve and therefore there's a lot of pressure on governments to do something, or that there's nothing that they feel they can do. Well, that's when you come from like a top-down lens, right. I think the potential of such funding models is that maybe you don't try and solve the whole problem at one go right, you try and support projects that are tripping away at it in reasonable amounts.
Speaker 1:It's hard to imagine a government maybe trying to give up $400 grants. That just wouldn't be a useful opportunity. Allocation of your civil service resources Like somebody needs to be there to evaluate the grants, right. Well, instead, what's kind of stopping these organizations from putting up matching pools right To certain districts? That has a track record of, you know, these kinds of like ground up initiatives and that will be interesting to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like that. Take it's calling into question, you know, these kinds of like ground up initiatives and that will be interesting to see. Yeah, I really like that. Take it's calling into question the whole debate of what is a public good, and different cultures and societies will put different emphasis on what's important and what needs funding, and the quadratic funding tool lets that be echoed by the people in a way. So, yeah, it is bottom up, I guess, right? Yeah, you're not just looking for one big solution from a government, you're looking for multiple solutions that are expressed by the people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly yeah, exactly, and like. I feel that the promise of Web3 is that permissionlessness is very core to our ethos here. Right, like, if you want to build something, I mean this is good and bad. Yeah, when you look at the whole meme coin mania, yes, you know, sure, you can build a meme coin okay, carry on. You know, but you can build a meme coin Okay, carry on. But you can also now build payment systems on your NFC chips.
Speaker 1:I think the promise of Web3 is to kind of unshackle a lot of this potential where people closest to their problems can now try to solve them themselves without having to wait. I feel this is something that is particularly Singaporean, even right, like when, say, taxes went up. I think over the last two years, we increased our goods and services tax. As a society, what we did was we kind of just like complained. We were like, oh, this is really bad. And then the government was like, okay, fine, I will put aside an endowment to subsidize the tax for the lower income. Amazing, right, it's incredible. But I can guarantee you none of the other 174 countries or something can pull off something like this, right, where the government can set aside an endowment in perpetuity to pay for the lowest incomes, like consumer tax, right, yeah, right. So there has to be a better way for people closest to the problem to be able to solve these things. You don't have to wait for a gigantic endowment, right? There might be better ways of figuring out how to support these lower income citizens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you mentioned Etherscan earlier as one example of a public good which people know will be a scrubber of the blockchain to scan what's been going on a layer of transparency. What else have you seen getting funding? What else matters in the space? What's some of the projects that you've seen get quadratic funding support?
Speaker 1:Well, I think for me, what I really like is the local communities, to kind of see different communities stepping up. I think what makes Ethereum different is that you know we have organic meetups as much as possible. These meetups shouldn't be commercial, but just meeting doesn't make you amazing, right, just hanging out together, anyone can do that. In the end, I feel it's kind of the responsibility of these stewards that have the power to convene communities to be able to figure out a way to direct resources to help those that need them, and QF is a good way of doing this. So, as much as possible, I'd like to definitely encourage more of these more mature communities that have a good sense of their community mapping, like who is there, what is going on, what are their needs, and then figuring out a way for like organizations that want to support or to participate in some of these community activities. I think that's as like regenerative as it gets right. Like in the traditional model not traditional per se, but like in marketing as an industry. Right, when you look at what some of these corporate social responsibility organizations do is that they are given a budget and their goal is to spend it on something that makes their company look good, right, like. In the end, you kind of just go for the biggest brands that don't necessarily need the funding already and the goal is to kind of make your company's brand look good. I think in Ethereum, the potential is that, like Protocol Guild, I think different organizations acknowledge the role that these different communities play. Protocol Guild is a community, if you think about it. It's a virtual distributed community that builds Ethereum and maintains the protocol and upgrades the protocol. That is a community. If something like Protocol Guild didn't exist, what do you think is going to happen? We've already seen this happen with Linux, with other open source projects. You end up requiring to go to sponsors, you end up requiring to go to set up some kind of non-profit where you have to offer up maybe a board seat to a tech company in order to get continuous funding. I think Ethereum promises us something different, or holds the promise of something different, where maybe communities can start to fund themselves. We're starting to see ideas like this.
Speaker 1:I think that was quite inspirational. I think there are some ideas where what is the closest thing to some kind of geographical community? Oh, stakers. It's interesting to see, like some ideas where stakers can benefit from that collective knowledge of being in the geographical region, because they will face the same problems, right, like your bandwidth sucks or something I don't know right, or your ping is horrible or I don't know things like this that are geographical challenges and they might, and they need a community. Well then you have this kind of like virtual cycle where running these meetups have to support these communities of stakers who could direct some staking revenue to keep the meetups going. I think I like to see more and more of these kinds of virtual cycles. Right, I wouldn't say they are flywheels, I think they're more of like equilibriums, where you can kind of see very positive loops that don't spin out of control also. Yeah, I think that's something that I would like to dive a bit more into this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like that about the sponsorship or big brands and just throwing money in places where they maybe think it looks the best, but not actually engaging their communities to actually fund what matters, and so it sounds like, yeah, with quadratic funding, that's just another tool for more bootstrapping of smaller projects and more community, local based initiatives that, at the end of the day, will be more regenerative, because it's all about place based, right like there's not one solution for the entire world, it's all local regeneration that we need to really solve a lot of these social economic climate issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, if you look at the core principle of regeneration, it's just like putting it back where you found it right. If you took something, you should just find a way to bring it back. I think that's the most simple idea. I don't think you have to overcomplicate it. If I took a tree from the forest, then it is kind of my responsibility to figure out how do I plant it back. I think if more people can think of it that way, it's actually quite simple. So, similarly, if I'm running a community and I go to the event, you're taking something, you're eating the food, you're taking up time, taking up organizers' resources, so how do you give it back? Well, the simplest way is to volunteer next time. You already have such modalities that exist.
Speaker 1:But well, this doesn't solve the problem fully. That's why some events have paid ticketing, but because there isn't this habit of paid meetups in a sense, then you have to rely on sponsors. So you end up in this really weird situation where you are kind of stuck. It's like a treadmill where every single time you run a meetup, you increase the expectation of it, you get more people that rely on you, but there is no kind of way for you to figure out how to cater to that Right. You have to always find support, you have to find venues, you have to find food and you need to be at a certain scale before people actually listen to you, because that usually falls under the marketing budget. All right, so this is a very pragmatic view of how this ecosystem kind of functions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really interesting to think about that reliance on sponsorship and how that can co-op sponsorship and how that can co-op events often and take away from some of the original meaning or intention behind it. And incorporating quadratic funding models could really make for more stable, sustainable community, smaller driven kind of atmosphere. Yeah, it could have more. It could increase the impact right and not the meme greenwashing, regeneration washing type stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and like I think the closest things that meetups are like student clubs. But student clubs can just request for a venue, right, they can just like ask the school or ask the university to like help to fund them. Right, they have never. Oh okay, until they want to do like a bigger hackathon and they realize that, oh, actually, the school can't fund this, right, they've got to figure out a way to sustain it. Yeah, but this applies to many things, right.
Speaker 1:Once you can see you what is being taken out, what's being returned, then you kind of get this view of how the system works. If you look at any ecosystem, it's really just individual, almost self-optimizing agents. This is very game-theoretic, but it actually works as a mental model which is like, who are the agents that are playing this game and what are they optimizing for? You look at traditional corporate structures. You're optimizing for balance sheet and shareholder value. I think legally they have to. I forgot what exactly it was, but at one point I think a judge ruled that the role of an organization is to kind of increase shareholder value or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, their fiduciary responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's actually written into law or something. I forgot where this was, but I remember reading it and I was like, okay, that makes a lot of sense. So that's different from, say, a government whose goal is Actually. What's the role of government? It really depends on the country.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, what power has the people given it or have they taken for themselves? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I really like that idea of looking at what agents are playing the game and what are they optimizing for. I think that's a really powerful thought experiment for us to all keep in mind when we're looking at everything in life, from elections to corporate sponsorships. Yeah, that's a really good thought experiment right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, I think that's good because it gives us one more tool to see the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, QZ, you're really knowledgeable on the space. I'd love to get any feedback from you on where you see improvements still needed, kind of in the broader ecosystem, Any feedback from you on where you see improvement still needed, kind of in like the broader ecosystem, what sort of feedback you'd give to the space where you need it to kind of still see it improve.
Speaker 1:I think very pragmatically, like Regen as a movement is very positive, but it's not very cash flow positive. You get what I mean, right. I think there is definitely a universe out there where both are possible, because if you're optimizing for an organization, survivability being regenerative is actually something to optimize for also right, and I think we can definitely be creative about this in Web3. I'm starting to see more attempts at it. I think that's great, but it's very easy to be distracted. I think one big thing that attracted a lot of people into the Regen space was. I think one big thing that attracted a lot of people into the weekend space was Heimerdau two years ago, and the refrain here was yes, it's a Ponzi, but at least we're helping the climate. That's not sustainable by definition and therefore the system itself is not regenerated. It takes from the people that put money into it, right. So ideally, I think we can figure out practical models about how we can sustain the resources that we have in the real world, which is the gigantic gap here, right, like in Web3 and the real world, which is the gigantic gap here, right, like in Web3 and the real world. The big problem that I think we kind of acknowledge is the Oracle problem, which is how do you reflect real world states onto the blockchain which you can do anything with? Right?
Speaker 1:If we can't figure out that one piece in a reliable kind of way, what we're going to get is mostly refi stuff, which I haven't seen too many of, but most of them are centered around being able to trade and to apply financial instruments on carbon credits slash natural resources that are much more finite. I'm curious to see like what some of these like traditional green funds or like sustainability funds have been funding over the last 10 to 15 years. Right, like I think there's a lot that we can learn from that, and especially from where they failed and all the limitations. My guess is that probably they had to overcome the skepticism that you can be responsible and profitable. I think that's probably the biggest thing that people had to overcome. Or that I think it's probably okay to not have like 400 returns if you can have 40 returns for 15 years. Maybe, I don't know, like long-term profitability versus moon today, you know something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more realistic time horizons. But I really liked what you're saying about cash flow positive and making it not just philanthropy, where people are throwing money at something, but an actual sustainable business model that is also not harming the world. I've seen ReFi be able to maybe give some of those tools. I don't think it's the silver bullet. I think it's a combination of real world and blockchain technology that's going to do it, but it does seem like you're kind of getting at something where it's allowing for a broader tool set to be able to monetize some things that are traditionally just externalities.
Speaker 1:I think that's good. I think that's something that might finally be possible with the ability to create network effects that are not physical. If you look at historically, what are some of the most important public goods? Roads and railways and internet and I don't know what else like these things that improve the overall health of cities, of economies. And yeah, I don't okay, I do pay a bit of road tax, I guess, if I drive, but I'm pretty sure that that's not enough to sustain the road itself. But what it does is that it brings people, it brings talent, it businesses and the positive externalities of all of that sustains the transport authority or the government's taxes that you're able to get to be able to fund and maintain these roads. Now what is probably missing is that when the roads are well maintained, people forget to maintain them and then eventually, you know, people get complacent. So that's probably the missing piece. But with Web3, with smart contracts, you can build that in. Like, once again back to Protocol Guild you literally can't adjust the what do you call it? The allocation unilaterally. Right, it's built into the splits contract.
Speaker 1:When you look at so many societies that are like doing things like defunding education or something I don't know, defunding schools or hospitals, I don't know what else, like important public goods that have been running for decades. And then they're like maybe we should like fund something else now, because things are going okay and because I, a fairly privileged class, is doing okay. Right, you get these kinds of like almost fickle funding mechanisms, right, you get, I guess, from an American context, you get like government shutdowns even, which is unheard of, unheard of to me. I don't know how a government can shut down, but I'm like, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:Right, don't they have an obligation to the people?
Speaker 1:Well, how do you shut it down, like, literally, there's money coming in. I assume that you collect on a yearly basis, like you just like stop using it Now, if this was automated or automatic, you can't. By the time the money goes in, it's ready to disperse.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a good reminder of why smart contracts are so monumental and what they bring to the world as a broader ecosystem of that immutability. You know, like in the united states right now, people are talking about defunding the department of education. It's like, yeah, why, how, how can we even be talking about that? It's, it's education, but times change, uh, sentiments change and um, there's a lot of anti-fragility that you get when something is baked into a smart contract on the blockchain.
Speaker 1:Right, because the people that kind of designed the system at the start or built the system that everybody's enjoying, went through the process of not having the system, and so they know that it's important. Yeah, I think that it's important. Yeah, I think that's probably quite crucial Now.
Speaker 2:Qz, this has been a really fun conversation. I love where your head is in terms of just the granularity as well as the broader kind of big picture. That was most of what I wanted to kind of dive into. Anything we didn't cover. How can our listeners also support the work that you guys are doing?
Speaker 1:Well. So I think participating in the conversations will be helpful. I think participating in your communities will be helpful, right, I think that's probably the best way to get started in any ecosystem. And if your community is running a QF round, try to observe. I'm not saying you should support or donate or anything, but at least observe, take a look at it. There is definitely a lot that can be improved and there will be for the foreseeable future, regarding the execution of the rounds, the projects of the rounds, evaluating them. Even dispersing the rounds might also lead to some challenges, right, I don't know if that's possible and, specifically for Clarifund, I think we occasionally take part in some grant funding with Octon, for example. I think getting some support there would be great when we run QF rounds with local communities. If some of you would step up to help, to share or to just let people know. That would be great, probably.
Speaker 1:If I think another thing is learning to have more calmness in the ecosystem is probably good. Like we as an ecosystem in Web3, slash crypto, slash Ethereum or any kind of like blockchain related ecosystem has a very short goldfish memory, taking some time to learn the history of things will avoid a lot of pain, I think, and until you fully understand why some things didn't work before, you don't have to try it again, right? But what's great is that we do have a very open culture and people are generally okay with just telling you why things went wrong, which I think is very appreciated. There isn't so much of a covering-up culture, especially when it comes to hacks, which is great. I think it took a decade for Enron to show up. Only when Enron failed to pay its debt or something. Then they realized oh, actually we have no money. That's incredible In crypto, the minute your treasury goes down like a dollar or something you know, which is great for transparency and accountability.
Speaker 2:No, that's really great, qz, and we'll definitely direct our listeners to the links for the Ethereum Singapore coming up and also the next Clear Fund round, because, really echo what you said, we need to participate and observe and keep building the momentum and the conversations right, being able to have those nuanced, even disagreements, and then be able to still, you know, talk collaboratively and as a positive kind of goal of regeneration right.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. Helping communities express their interests and encouraging them to participate in their own communities is very underrated. Apathy is the biggest problem of our time, I think, not just voter apathy or something, but when you walk down the street and then you see a bottle on the floor, how many people actually pick it up? I used to have a colleague of mine he was my boss when I was interning and he had an entire Instagram page of him like picking up trash when he runs. He's the only guy that has ever done it and it's very inspiring. Sometimes I do it when I'm not in a rush, but like, if everyone does that, then like the streets will be cleaner.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah, apathy, we got to do our part. Every day counts, right. We make a decision every day when we wake up of how we're going to give back, and if we can give more than we take, we'll be regenerating?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. In fact, you'll be positive, even more than regeneration. Yeah, I love it. Well, thanks again, qz it more than regeneration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it Well. Thanks again, qz. It was really fun talking to you today and appreciate your time.
Speaker 1:No problem, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. 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.