Funding the Commons | Networked OKRs & Milestone Bounties

[Music] [Applause] is the head of product of protocol labs and she'll be talking about networked okrs and milestone bounties protocol labs approach to aligning and funding ecosystem progress in a more decentralized fashion welcome fuji hello how's it going awesome all right let me share a screen okay so as carla mentioned um i'm going to be talking about networked okrs and milestone bounties um and again my name is puja and i work at protocol labs so today just to give a brief sort of road map of the this conversation i'm going to talk a little bit about why we think these mechanisms are important uh and then dive into a little bit how we think about networked okrs and milestone bounty specifically so giving you some definition since these may not be familiar terms with for a lot of people and then diving into how they can be useful in aligning decentralized ecosystems and some of the experiments we're going to be running here within the protocol labs ecosystem um so i wanted to start by taking a step back and looking at some of the differences between centralized companies where a lot of product and engineering work in our world has been done for the last several centuries versus decentralized ecosystems um so you know i was comparing on a number of different dimensions when you think about centralized companies often these are organizations where you can you can think of the actual organization as a graph that has a single route the direction of growth of these types of organizations tends to grow with increasing depth and of the graph but when companies tend to um want to grow in new directions sometimes they can struggle to expand the breadth of focus that they that they have um these companies also sometimes can uh their the impact that these companies can achieve can be constrained by head count so how many people directly work for this organization um how centralized companies orient the massive uh set of folks that are working within the company tends to be through centralized planning um but on the plus side you know these sorts of structures have historically been very effective for hard engineering efforts that require really tight coordination between a number of different people where there are dependencies between lots of different groups within the organization but they can all collectively coordinate together in order to have some really massive impact um obviously all of us are here today because we're really excited about decentralized ecosystems and the direction that these ecosystems will go in in the future um and you know the potential that decentralized ecosystems have to really have some incredibly massive impact um as the arrow of time moves forward so uh just to contrast against some some of these dimensions with decentralized ecosystems we you know an org chart is not really a reasonable concept but if you were to think of the ethereum ecosystem or the ipfs ecosystem for example as an organization it would look like many different graphs of different companies that have many roots who are the leaders of the various different groups within an ecosystem um the the way the decentralized ecosystems can grow i believe can be in both deepening in particular directions but also experimenting with new use cases and just really growing in terms of breath as well um the impact that an ecosystem can can achieve is not really constrained by this notion of head count of or the people that are within the ecosystem today but it really looks a lot more like what is the latent talent in the industry um so the people that are broadly within this particular ecosystem we're working on adjacent projects or that might be interested in working in a similar space in the future and especially as an industry grows this can become extremely massive like a massive force of people that are oriented around similar directions um in terms of direction setting for decentralized ecosystems to date a lot of what we've seen looks like you know soft influence like people writing blog posts and having really big um followings on on twitter and other places where people are interested in hearing what leaders of these ecosystems have to say um but one of the downsides that i believe we have seen so far is that sometimes decentralized ecosys systems can be a little bit less effective when work when um projects are are active that require really tight coordination and have lots of dependencies and so one of the big questions that we think about a lot within protocol labs is how do you align participants in a decentralized ecosystem we really want to be able to lean into some of the benefits that i mentioned before but we don't want to lose the benefits of really tight coordination and efficiency when it comes to difficult engineering challenges that we have seen centralized companies be really successful with um and so one of the like core principles that kind of underlines underlies this entire um underlies this entire set of experiments that we're looking into is this belief that in decentralized ecosystems teams are often doing really really valuable work that ultimately accrues value to the protocol layer um and here's some examples within the ipfs and fileclean ecosystems one really great example is we just announced that within within the filecoin protocol we are soon going to be launching the fileclean virtual machine which will enable user generated smart contracts um and so things like this which are you know not necessarily revenue generating projects but obviously anyone can see that they are extremely valuable and they will drive a lot of new use cases and development and experimentation within the protocol ecosystem um and so when we think about you know how do we align participants in an ecosystem funding mechanisms are really really important obviously um and there are two core needs that these funding mechanisms need to achieve so the first is making sure that participants um have in the ecosystem have the upfront working capital that they need to go after these really high impact projects and then on an ongoing basis they also need additional funding to reward the impact that they were able to generate some of the principles that have been guiding us as we've been thinking about different funding mechanisms include um you know we need to make sure we're delivering really significant and proportional upside for teams um these primitives need to be really modular and flexible this is sort of i i think this entire conference sort of shows a number of different ideas and different ways in which we can accomplish similar objectives and so this is you know one set of experiments and one set of ideas um which we expect to change and grow over time another core principle is that you know this should feel really abundant as we're all doing extremely impactful work this is a rising tide that really is going to lift all boats and so there shouldn't be this feeling of scarcity or competitiveness within uh within the ecosystem and then another principle here is that we're aiming to reward impact not effort so the set of mechanisms that within the protocol labs network that um we've been thinking about are designed to fund teams working on impact generating work that doesn't necessarily need to be revenue generating although it can be um and to collectively these mechanisms should be able to create an environment where teams can pursue opportunities faster achieve higher impact and earn many more rewards than they would today in a more centralized sort of setting so one framework that we've been using to think about the set of mechanisms is this this chart here which sort of has two main dimensions the first dimension is um is whether the impact was something that was predicted to be impactful or whether it was just a creative new project that someone came up with and that ended up being very impactful but that um as direction setters in an ecosystem maybe it wasn't recognized up front that this would be a very impactful project so that's kind of the the row at the top um predictable impact versus unpredicted impact and then the column on the left um talks about whether the funding is up front so it's you know um upfront working capital that's based on impact that is expected to come down the road versus funding that is based uh on realized impact so some of the retroactive funding um examples that people we have heard about and we'll hear about in throughout the rest of this conference so when we think about funding that is um this sort of upfront working capital there are many different kinds of grants that we think are really the right uh like there's so many creative um iterations and and different uh nuance nuances to how you can implement grants that um achieve a number of different objectives here but grants really are the primary mechanism that we've seen be really successful when it comes to funding based on perspective impact um but when it comes to funding based on realized impact um there are two mechanisms that we've been iterating um around that we think are very interesting and we wanted to present today and i'm going to talk a little bit about this concept of mild stone bounties which is uh rewarding work that has been completed the impact has been realized and it was something that was predicted to be impactful up front okay so before i start talking a little bit about milestone bounties i want to talk about this concept of network okrs and this goes back to this idea of how centralized organizations and decentralized ecosystems um can orient groups of people so within centralized companies um many many folks are probably familiar with okrs not every company in the world uses okrs but it's become increasingly a very common mechanism to do central planning for uh for organizations and so in a company like google you know you would see something like this massive okr tree where there's a set of objectives that are set by the executives and each of the various different groups within google will take um we'll take that top level set of company goals and then interpret what that means for their organization and it'll sort of like hierarchically trickle down throughout the rest of the organization um so this is a pretty effective mechanism for companies but there are some challenges to planning um in this way the first thing is that this is a really insular way of um of doing planning for an organization often these okrs at the company level or at the organization like sub organization level is very opaque to the broader ecosystem and so therefore it's difficult to tell other people what are some of the goals that this organization is planning to achieve in this year or or whatever the time frame is um another challenge is that often this sort of planning process is scoped with head count capacity in mind so um that ends up being a constraint for the impact that this organization can have more broadly and then the last challenge um is that this type of planning works pretty well but when you compare it to alternatives that look much more like market-based planning this this as a solution looks very inefficient when you're talking about expressing the massive breadth and depth that exist across um an entire ecosystem so thinking about not just google itself but you know the massive ecosystem of products that have been built around google's suite of core products uh this sort of like structure is very difficult to use to express that complexity and diversity um in contrast there's this idea that we've been calling networked okrs and this is really because you know the core principle when when we're talking about organizing work and coordinating with others in a decentralized ecosystem we want to make sure that we're engaging as many people as possible on the top priorities in an ecosystem and really growing the size of that ecosystem overall um so it's not about you know the the head count of one particular company but really who is is available you know or interested in the set of challenges that these projects are are trying to accomplish and can we get them aligned towards those priorities um the other really great benefit here um with with thinking about this from the decentralized ecosystems perspective is that we don't want to be limited with what an ecosystem can achieve by just looking at the headcount constraints of a particular organization and so there's a potential to achieve much more as an overall ecosystem if we are able to set network goals without thinking of headcount constraints and then the last goal here is that we want to be able to create a system that is sustainable and scalable especially as an ecosystem grows and so the mechanisms that we've been leaning into are this idea of networked okrs and milestone boundaries so networked okrs are really just an open way to express priorities for an ecosystem one kind of cute way i've been thinking of this is as a marketplace for high skilled work um and really this is you know you can imagine um really anyone in an ecosystem that is a funder that deems some priority to be very important for the for the ecosystem overall can set an objective for for the ecosystem and any participant can work against that objective and as they are doing so earn rewards for for participating in achieving an objective across the entire ecosystem um and so one of the things that's really important here are that these are you know meaty really crucial big goals for an ecosystem um and it's it requires participation from a number of different individuals and groups in order to accomplish that particular objective um so that's network okrs and so let's talk a little bit about milestone bounties um milestone bounties are the very general definition for this concept is um a reward that you that anyone can attach to complete a specific milestone where a milestone really can be anything a milestone could be a networked okr like we just mentioned it could be a very specific project it could be a multi-stage multi-year roadmap working towards advancing a particular kpi that some funder cares about there really can be a number of different things but one thing that's very important when we're to know when we're talking about um milestones in the context of orienting decentralized ecosystems is that they're not just small narrowly scoped projects like bug and issue bounties which is how most people think um i think today about bounties but really milestones are intended to be sort of these like media crucial projects that are really important to push an ecosystem in a valuable direction and we were you know when we talked about milestone bounties we're talking about a very broad swath of high impact activities so it includes protocol research and implementation building developer tooling ecosystem development and much more and one of the core ideas here too again going back to this idea of a marketplace of okrs or goals for an ecosystem the idea is that anyone with any an ecosystem can set and fund the bounties for that ecosystem and anyone can work on bounties uh on vancouver milestones as well and these are some use cases for milestone bounties which i won't go into but i'll send these slides out as well so those can take a look at this in more detail later um so just dumping jumping into a couple of case studies which are i think really informative and i know we just had kevin on so i'm sure he talked a lot about um the amazing impact that the git coin team has been able to accomplish and the ecosystem has been able to accomplish over the last few years but i think these are really instructive because they sort of give um a view into how these you know the loose structure of something like milestone bounties has been used in the past and where the potential could be for this type of idea going forward um so one quick case study here hacker one i'm sure a lot of folks are familiar with um it's a it's a platform where uh where hackers can earn rewards for solving issue and uh bug bounty specifically focused around security for the most part um and hacker one was founded in 2012 i believe and since since its founding it's awarded something like 82 million dollars total in funding it's mostly used by a lot of web 2 companies and has pretty low penetration in web3 but one of the things that i think is really really interesting about hacker one is that of a significant majority of hackers that are that are participating in bounties on the hacker one platform are doing it because they're interested in learning new skills and they're doing it because they think it will help them from a career growth and advancement perspective um so i think that that's like really interesting and inspiring when we think about also the potential for an open marketplace of high skilled work to attract new people into an ecosystem provide them with an opportunity to learn new skills and develop a portfolio and then from there use that as a launch pad to do more impactful and meaningful work than within an ecosystem going forward so that's hacker one as one quick example um also looking at bitcoin and i took a look at the bitcoin results page which is really inspiring folks should go and take a look at that um but it's really interesting to see that you know across a number of web three ecosystems bitcoin has already funded something like 200 and almost 230 000 fundees across a number of different projects and there are also like many different use cases for bounties and grants that get coin supports um and it's been really interesting to see kind of the diversity here and how people are using bitcoin for for different types of projects um the other two case studies they wanted to quickly talk about are uh grants so far within the protocol labs ecosystem and um ethereum foundation grants so to date and i believe this is over maybe the last like three or four years it hasn't really hasn't been that long um but protocol labs has awarded over 70 million uh dollars or uh in in grants over the last several years and i think the very interesting thing about this is it's a the grants start to look really big so the average size and again of course they they're really different it's like the distribution looks um is not at all uniform but the average grant in the protocol labs ecosystem over the last few years has been pretty big we're starting to see you know hundreds of thousands of dollars that are awarded in the average grant size and um and the sorts of projects that have been awarded in our ecosystem over the last few years include really meaty big things like additional file coin implementations um really critical integrations into important partners like getting ipfs into browsers um and core services that are necessary for the ecosystem to really thrive like pinning services and decentralized identity services and so on cross-chain integrations um things like this so it's you know the projects are starting to become like really significant um in terms of the the scale and impact that they can have and similarly within the ethereum foundation um a lot of the grants that we've seen you know they have been really massive and it's also for for really critical projects like additional implementations and so on security audits things like that um we've also been doing a number of interviews with folks across different um across different ecosystems and some of the things that have really jumped out are that um well-structured grants and bounties can be extremely empowering and motivating for teams to you know just have a focus and enough runway that they can go after some really critical network priorities and then just like be energized and go and accomplish those goals um also what i mentioned before with hacker one uh as an example that you know these types of projects can be really impactful for new teams that are looking to enter an ecosystem that are really excited about the potential but maybe don't have the legitimacy yet within the ecosystem to go after uh to go and build like new products and feel confident that they will be successful and so it can be a really powerful launch pad for for new teams that are looking to enter an ecosystem as well we've also seen a lot of grant funded teams and you know effectively what we're calling milestone bounty funded teams that have ended up growing and becoming really successful independent businesses and also this type of structure can be really valuable to help orient an ecosystem around a particular set of goals that different funders think are really important um so you know we're we're still iterating on exactly what the the structure of networked okrs and milestone bounties will look like we're running a number of experiments this quarter to dive deeper into this but really the goal is for these mechanisms to become a highly effective means of decentralized work coordination in the protocol labs network in the short term and then going forward in other ecosystems as well and so some of the core kpis that we have been focusing on are things like you know how many teams have won these types of bounties how many teams are able to sustain themselves primarily through bounty funding um how long does it take to match make between a published bounty or rfp and a fundee team um how valuable is this as you know for for people who are setting direction in ecosystems how valuable is this for funders it should be the case that funders love bounties because they help make amazing useful things happen um so this is some of the stuff that you know we're really hoping to use to orient our uh our project and see how successful this is and just to kind of give you a view of where we are in the process right now we're running uh several different projects that some of which are you know actually like core dev um and core protocol upgrades things like that through this process some of which are a little bit more auxiliary uh depth tooling and things so just trying to get across a number of different use cases we're launching a number of milestone bounties this quarter and we'll be shepherding them from uh start to finish and in parallel use leveraging the learnings from these experiments and from conversations we're having with a number of other folks to design a v1 process and platform that we're going to be launching next year um so in summary you know there's a broad set of experiments that people are running i think this is such an exciting space and we're really really excited to get to participate in running some experiments ourselves um but yeah this is you know one one area where we think um it will be extremely valuable to help set priorities and direction for decentralized ecosystems in a way that feels really consistent with a lot of the values and ethos of web 3 and you know just like the idea of marketplaces where anyone can participate and they're fully open we think that that's a really powerful mechanism and so we're really excited to lean into networked okrs and milestone bounties and report back on the learnings from these initial experiments and that's me i don't know if i have enough time for questions um but if not then feel free to reach out to me on twitter and always happy to chat about these ideas in more detail thank you thanks puja for a look at the future of okrs and networked incentive alignment i don't think we have very much time for questions right now there was one question about whether the presentation will be available and i believe the answer to that is yes and as puja mentioned she'll be available to take questions at the twitter handle that she shared ah and she shared in the chat yes the presentation will be made available we'll get that posted and i'd [Music] [Applause] [Music]