The Unsolved Mystery of How to Fund Public Protocols

Gitcoin, BCash and Zcash all try different paths to fund public protocol development, plus the latest in CBDCs from Japan and Cambodia and Andrew Yang on crypto.

The best way to fund open-source projects remains a question,and one that – in the context of crypto protocols – has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches. 

Gitcoin Grants used a quadratic funding program to match grants to technology builders and media creators in Ethereum. 

After months and months of concerted community debate and conversation, Zcash will implement a new Dev Fund of 20 percent of the block rewards after the Founders Reward runs out in November, splitting it between the Electric Coin Co (7 percent), Zcash Foundation (5 percent) and third-party developers (8 percent).

A consortium (cartel?) of the four largest bitcoin cash (BCH) mining pools tried to insist upon a 12.5 percent block reward diversion to a new dev fund, with a threat to orphan blocks that didn’t comply. The plan ran into a barrier when Roger Ver’s bitcoin.com backed away. 

Also in this episode, @nlw looks at the latest in CBDCs – including Japan’s continued hedging that it is preparing for the possibility of needing to move quickly and Cambodia’s announcement it will be implementing a CBDC this quarter. 

Finally, Democratic presidential contender Andrew Yang took a few minutes to talk about cryptocurrencies and why regulation with the intent to stop them would be doomed to fail.