2. Radicle Drips: The Latest Mechanism Design - Bogota 2022

hey how we doing everybody yeah are are you guys all psyched to be here I'm I can tell you I'm super super hyped to be here after going to a couple of these shelling event uh shelling Point events earlier this year um I really just think that they're the best events in web 3 and um I mean what what great topics right funding experiments and um and you know positive Visions to the Future so um so yeah can we get a round of Applause for all that or just thank you awesome sweet well um so as as Evan said um I'm Andrew um I'm here with radical uh and um I've been working I've actually been working with them since 2018 but um been working on drips for the last year and radical funding and uh I'm excited to share a little bit about some of the funding experiments that we've been that we've been working on with that so uh yeah let's just jump right into it um first I want to just kind of introduce a few things um for folks who might not be familiar with radical and a few of the concepts that that we'll be talking about so what is radical uh radical is a web three Community with with kind of two main missions um the first one is to develop Sovereign infrastructure for code collaboration and um that's kind of a mouthful so the easiest way that I usually explain that is just as uh decentralized GitHub um you know GitHub is great I think a lot of a lot of amazing open source projects are building on GitHub probably a lot of the projects you guys are working on are building on GitHub but you know a lot of people um I mean mean GitHub has certain problems right it's we're building all this open free decentralized software on top of a system that's ultimately a closed um centralized system owned by you know everyone's favorite tech giant so we're trying to build some alternative to that um built on git and open protocols um and and free open to tooling so that's kind of the first part of the mission and the second part is the part that I'm going to be talking a bit more about here today and um it's really to do with um creating Funding Solutions that allow fast developers to thrive financially while releasing their work in the open and um we we want to emphasize the Thrive part because I think too often there's kind of this idea of folks working in open source um you know like celebrating them be able to survive it's like oh you you were able to make enough money to like pay rent um and that is better than not being able to pay rent but we really feel that you know open source and F generally is just such a important public good and makes such a big contribution to our society and and particularly to the Future that uh folks who contribute to to successful Frost projects should really make enough funding to be able to thrive as as kind of an alternative to working for like big web two companies or or you know like um defi projects or something so uh quickly for those who you don't know what is Foss um this is you could if if you want you could just think of this as almost like open source software it's but it's a more general term that also includes free software um free here refers to Liberty not to price so it's really kind of the Union of software from the free software movement and the open source software movement um but just like to Define that term since often people haven't heard it as as I hinted at a minute ago the reason that we're so excited about Foss is that um is that you know there's some small disagreements about this but I think generally most economists and most people that have looked at Foss feel like Foss is a public good and it's I think one of the most interesting public goods when you look at how much the power of technology is kind of gaining control over our lives you know Evan talked a bit about a bit about that this a few minutes ago but um you know this idea of software eating the world well if software is going to eat the world then um it seems pretty important that as much of that software as possible can be open and free uh so we really feel that this is an incredibly important public good for all of us to be thinking about how to to fund and incentivize versus again like the closed proprietary versions you know that I think we're all concerned about um I have a little definition of public goods there but I think probably a lot of people here are familiar so I'm just going to kind of keep moving to try to get to some of the more the more fun exciting stuff um and but there's this problem right so alluded to this earlier as well but um many fost devs are still underfunded so I'm I'm just going to read this quote from um uh Nadia egal who's an incredible you know maybe some of you have read her work she's an incredible journalist and researcher in this space um and I think she's just done some of the absolutely best writing and thinking around funding for for f so uh she writes many open source projects are experiencing a difficult transition from selfless creative pursuit to critical public infrastructure today infrastructure works is being cobbled together by freelance developers or those with day jobs doing unrelated paid client work for part of the month and working on open source projects in their spare time while this is a viable way to pay for one's lifestyle it does not adequately reflect the social value these projects deserve um so again I I I suspect that like a lot of you guys in the audience are probably pretty sympathetic um and just out of curiosity like little show of hands who who out there has contributed to a Foss project of some kind yeah nice awesome almost everybody and who's um has how many of you have contributed to a fast project um unpaid or like minimally paid okay cool yeah like a lot of people as well so I guess um I probably don't need to spend too much time on this slide but you know it's it's it's great that people again can kind of like scrape by um and you know work a different job and be able to contribute to F but wouldn't it be a better world if people could like more people could focus their full energy um on on building this important public public good that's essentially going to define a lot of the future so this is really the mission of radical funding or this second mission of radical um we're working to deliver web 3 native Funding Solutions that will allow fast developers to thrive financially while releasing their work in the open um and I'm going to now I'm going to jump into a little bit of kind of like what those experiments look like and and and how we're doing this and um you know maybe some of the tools that you can even incorporate into your projects to to to you know collaborate with what we're doing and and um get involved so um a lot of this for the last year we've been doing kind of under the banner or brand of the drips protocol and um so what the drips protocol is is when when we sort of set out on thinking about how would you get funding to fast developers um we started thinking about like okay like what is the toolkit that you would need and um you know one thing that Nadia has written a lot about and others who have you know talked to people in the in the fos Community is a lot of people from open source are actually pretty uneasy with the idea of money in open source and I think that's a fair concern um and particularly sort of like large amounts of money um kind of cash grab type things uh so you know particularly some of the like the crypto things from 2017 I think a lot of people from the open source world are are understandably and reasonably concerned with you know bringing this kind of element into into the world the Foss and so one of the mechanisms that we wanted to add right away was something much more like like a patreon style model of support where it would be like small recurring payments where there would be much more accountability um so versus like just massive amounts of money sort of thrown at developers or projects and so you know nothing nothing um you know we looked around the space and there was um uh sa. Finance had done some kind of things around streaming and super fluid but there was nothing that really had the kind of like design um the design elements that we were looking for and so the first thing we did was build an ethereum protocol that allows um what you could think of as recurring payments but in web 3 they're really streaming payments um so these are essentially like monthly continuous payments from one from one ethereum user to another we felt like that was like a fundamental building block for building a patreon style model of support or a crowdsourced model of support so that's the first thing that drips does any user can create a drip which is a recurring continuous stream of funds from their account to any other user uh or smart contract and this then the second kind of primitive that we felt like was really necessary was um was something for sharing or what we call splitting and uh this was something again that you know mirror had been playing around with they have a concept of splits there's zero splits actually came out kind of around the time the same time that we introduced uh drips splits but um but drips also includes a um a primitive for splitting so this is a way to share a percentage of any funds dripped to a user with anyone they wish and I think one of the easiest ways to kind of like understand the power of this is um when you look at some of these things that have happened in the sort of traditional Financial world like um you know 10% for the planet or 1% for the planet these kind of things where people will commit to donate a percentage of any revenue or profit coming to them to um to third parties that they believe in or that they depend on and uh we felt like this was a really important piece so um so you know we're going on to build radical funding which is a set of experiments and experiences on top of drips but we're we've also just put drips out there as essentially Public Funding infrastructure that we we hope more and more projects will build on we're talking to a bunch of projects um we're talking to gith uh talking about integrating with grants Hub um and a number of D projects so uh but but please you know if you're interested in building on drips uh come find me and or come find us on Discord um we'd love to connect with more projects looking to build on these on these uh on this infrastructure so you know very quickly it's a free public open protocol um you know that any dap or smart contract can build on we have a JavaScript SDK so you can build it into your web apps um and drips version one is live on ethereum mainnet drips V2 is in test on Gorly and it's coming to mainnet very soon and uh drips V2 includes all sorts of new powerful features um like streaming any rc20 scheduling you can schedule drips in the future or have them ends and um also unlimited nft based sub accounts so those were kind of the building blocks but this is this is like the it sort of gets more exciting now we've we're starting to run experiments and we've been running some funding experiments for um you know can we really make this work and the first funding experiment that that we ran and that we will be building into the other part of radical is this idea of of kind of like a fundme button um so you know the big Vision here is to give any developer or open source project the option to turn on a funme button on their project profile page where you know anyone who wants to support them can just immediately uh fund them through cryptocurrency any erc20 token you know across borders um you know really know you know from from anywhere so they could be they could be anyone and they can do it anonymously if they want to um just kind of like blow the doors off funding for any open source Dev if they if they want to do that um and so we actually ran a first version of this experiment on the drip. Network website you can go check it out there's um there's a number of of communities raising funds there but this screen actually kind of shows so this shows the radical doxyz app which is actually um so this project RX is a open source pixel editor written in Rust that is building on the radical code collaboration stock and right now there is no funme button there today but we will be adding this so essentially any project building on the radical code collab uh tooling will have the option to just flip a switch and turn on a fundme button so that anyone can fund their project um we also are going to continue to build out the the the drip. network um the drips web app so that any project even if you're not if you're just like on still on GitHub or gitlab or even you know you're doing like a proprietary closed code collab environment um you can still just create a public profile page for your project and um and and raise funds crypto natively um with with essentially no no barriers or upfront things to set up no no bank account needed um and no documents so uh and then this kind of shows what that would look like you you would you know the the supporter would click fundme and then they would they' be able to configure a drip going to the developers of RX and they could set any amount of of die that they want to stream per month um or actually any other rc20 token um and boom they'd be supporting them in kind of a patreon style setup so that's really the first experiment we've been running um and and uh yeah we're like I said we're excited to kind of weave it into the into um the the rest of the radical experience um the the second part or the second experiment that we've been running over the last year is this notion of splitting that I was talking about earlier and um we also think this is really important a lot of I think one observation is that a lot of the most prominent open source projects have a lot of funding now you know Google is funding a lot of Linux distri butions and you have particularly in crypto right you have these big crypto projects that have open source software that are incredibly well funded but then often um you know there there's something like 25 million open source projects or probably more now on GitHub um so down once you get into kind of low-level libraries a lot of times they're not as well funded um Nadia eggball has this great example from uh from her from her paper about um like I think it's open SSL but it's one of the projects in the SSL kind of ecosystem and how uh this is a few years ago but it was sort of like the whole internet was running on SSL um for its security and it was maintained by like a single developer who had gotten very sick and was had no funding at all and um and it's it's kind of crazy how much of this infrastructure is is crumbling and and unsupported down low so we see splits as a real way to try to address that where um you know projects can contribute to their dependencies and so this screen that's shown here is actually from the the drips B1 app at drip. Network you can go see this if you want to um today and you know when we created the first version of drips we reached out to a number of teams in web 3 one of them was the solidity language team the team that develops the solid solidity language probably a lot of you have used it um and you know we asked them hey participate in this this kind of funding game and um what was really interesting was they said you know we actually are pretty well funded you know we're close enough to a lot of successful projects that that we don't have a problem with funding um so we don't need to actually receive direct funding ourselves but we would love to kind of participate in this and we depend on a number of projects that are not well funded so we would love to kind of play the splits game and uh they actually set up this splits configuration with um about 10 different projects and folks that they depend on and they're splitting actually 100% of their funds to those to those dependencies and so um I don't know what the current total is but you can go and see I think some thousands of dollars have been streamed through this contract to those supporters and um we thought this was like a really neat uh kind of validation for this idea but also um pretty amazing to see that you know a project a team like solidity would actually share 100% of the funds donated to them so um so yeah we we see just a lot of potential and in you know coming up in in the next version of this in drips V2 and and radical funding um we're going to be building tools to kind of help people automate this process of figuring out who their dependencies are I think um one of the cool things about uh about Foss is that you know if you work with like a package manager like npm you can pretty actually pretty easily see uh all the different projects that you depend on and um and maybe get some hints at who could use support as well um so you know trying to pull some of this together and and connect it to some of the some of the kind of themes for this event um made me think about a a novel that I read back in the 90s um maybe some of you have read it it's called The Diamond age by Neil Stevenson and it's a it's a pretty incredible kind of like look at the future um which now is is not that different than the future that we're living in in so many ways both technologically but also economically and um you know the the kind of I guess spoiler alert the the sort of short version of the story is that um you know it's a it's a there's massive wealth inequality but access to um ubiquitous free educational technology ends up kind of leveling the playing field and a lot of a lot of people gain access to the ability to to program and to technology ultimately and it kind of turns the tables on this control that um that the oligarchy had uh over the world and so um you know in today's world we kind of have that free technology I mean anyone can get online and take MIT CS classes essentially for free I mean there's incredible resources to learn to code I mean I think about comparing it to when I learned to code and um and yet um you know so so we kind of have that part of it but I think opportunities in Tech are still very limited for many communities as as we've all seen um so why is this well there's lots of reasons um that I'm sure you know many of you are very familiar with it can be hard to get your first job or gig without experience you know I think we all have probably experienced reading some of these job postings where it's looking for like 10 years of experience in something that's only existed for 3 years um but then for people really on the margins I mean there's two billion people that are still unbanked um there are major regulatory challenges around standard employment models you know even if I wanted to support someone as an employee you know in India or um or really any other country doing that is not straightforward I would have to set up you know a very specialized type of Corporation deal with lawyers I can't just pay someone what might be a life-changing amount of money for them and a relatively small amount of money for me um you know to do important public goods work um and so but the question I want to ask is I guess could could web 3 native crowdfunded Foss offer way for Debs from underprivileged communities to finally break into Tech and get paid well for contributing to building important public goods um I think many of these mechanisms and solutions we're building kind of get around some of these challenges uh you know one neat thing that I that I've been thinking a lot about is that the donation model sort of Skips a lot of the traditional um these these kind of employment constraints that I just mentioned like you know if I want to employ someone to do something that's a huge there's just a million hurdles and Regulatory risks but if I want to just give someone $10 or $100 um you know that's something that you can go out into the streets of Bogota and do today right there's no there's no uh constraints around that or there's much much less and so I think that just kind of turning the tables on that if you could imagine um large amounts of funds flowing into some of these these open source projects and then them getting contributors who you know could be a kid living on the streets in India could be a kids a kid living on the streets in Detroit it could be um you know it could be anyone in the world um you know I guess I have this Vision that that maybe some of these things could be put together to try to um really open up access to these incredible opportunities for a lot more people um so now let's see um how many minutes do we have left do we have any minutes left awesome okay so yeah we have about five or six minutes left and I really wanted to try to kind of make it a bit more interactive I mean first off I would love to just continue this discussion with all of you and I'd love to have you all connect with our team as well um you know after this five minutes is over but even just now here I'd love to kind of pose all of these questions to to people here in the crowd um and let's have a little discussion you know feel free to just take any of these questions in any order um you know how can we use these tools and others to extend opportunities to marginalize and underprivileged communities to be paid well contributing to Foss what next steps would you like to see us take the web 3 Community take to try to make this reality what are the next experiments we should run kind of in the spirit of what we've been doing and uh what issues or roadblocks do you see so I guess like raise your hand if you have um and I think someone will oh great thanks great talk so similar to patreon where uh a big reason people contribute uh continue to contribute is getting a narrative back from the artist or creator that they're supporting I'm wondering how you're thinking about uh the people that are receiving these drips uh informing the people who are giving the drips what work they've been doing so they can feel like they're part of that narrative and confidence that their money is going to Foss as opposed to something else yeah fantastic question so we're doing a few different things there and um and uh yeah I'm really glad you mentioned that so um in drips V1 the first thing we did was try to give certain types of access that you often get so I guess broadly we think about this as in two parts one is trust anchoring which is like first of all just making sure that you're supporters are giving funds to like the right person um because we don't want like sort of people coming in and pretending to be someone else and getting funding so for that we're actually working with the radic or the the gitcoin passport team right now to create like um you know uh hopefully fully trustless or not entirely trustless but trusting very trustworthy actors to create verifi verifiable credentials of um other types of identity like uh Twitter handles or GitHub accounts or essentially anything that you you have ooth for you'll be able to attest that you're like the right person so it's kind of the first thing is like can you trust that this person you're donating to is actually who they say they are um and then the second part is kind of I think more what your question was about which is um what we think of as broadly as benefits so like what can the what can the um the developer kind of give back to the folks who are supporting them um you know even if it's just like Badges of support or um and this is something we played a bit with in in drips V1 in drips V1 um like I said we had this idea of nft Badges of support So if you were a supporter you would actually get an nft associated with your membership that would kind of show like hey I'm a supporter of of this particular developer um we also played with the idea of like gated access to private Discord channels where maybe they would give like support um and um and a number of other things we're actually going out right now and interacting with so we have someone from our team uh going out and and connecting with a bunch of fast projects who are looking for funding to try to actually drill down on this a bit more and see because I think there's so many different types of benefits you could offer and I think the ones that are with like patreon probably aren't as may not be as applicable to this so we we we want to do some kind of like user research and for the next version really drill down on what is going to have the biggest impact but those are kind of some of the ideas that we're playing with so in fact that's actually another good kind of call if anyone here in the audience knows a fast project that's like looking for funding or if you're like a developer for such a project please come and connect with us we're looking we're like actively looking to connect with projects to try to get set up on the platform and and help you know give us ideas about um about what sorts of benefits would make the most sense for you and your supporters sweet all right let's see um let see someone back there hey great presentation I was curious so I know that one sentiment in the fast Community is around many contributors already being intrinsically motivated and the hardest work in these projects is actually the main main work so if you want to focus on extratic motivation it should be on maintainers as opposed to contributors so I'm just curious what you think about that sentiment and what the radical team thinks about that sentiment and if you've Incorporated that type of thinking at all into the designs and experiments you've run yeah thanks yeah I think that's a great point I think I think um yeah it's it's a fantastic point that like often there's a lot of motivation to initially create something for a whole variety of reasons but then it's the maintenance that is both um um the most difficult uh but but the most but also um you know the most necessary if you think about these things becoming like infrastructural components so yeah this is something we thought a lot about I think um I I I would say though that we are somewhat um we're trying to say stay essentially somewhat agnostic to how people want to use these tools and so far we're sort of trying to run it more as a series of MVPs and see see what folks are interested in um but yeah I mean based on the based on um I guess just the need for maintainers more I think more of the funding will gravitate towards that as people look and say you know oh my gosh um you know this project that's very important I mean you can actually see this in some of the risk Tooling in like npm right where you like you like you like run your I forget what the exact flag is but you you run like your npm like security scan and it's like you have you know 20 high high security or high-risk security vulnerabilities like in your dependency tree below you I think that that can be a real good kind of mechanism to like connect funding to because a lot of projects building on those projects would be like very motivated to like all right I'm willing to you know split you know 10 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month down to that to support to support those so I think I think there are mechanisms like that that we definitely are interested in and that I think would motivate supporters thanks um do we have more time or are we okay well um yeah like I said please um we'd love to continue the conversation after this so please come find me and the rest of the team thank you so much