Mod of the Week

<aside> 📢 Mod Bio: Joel Miller is a computer science PhD student at the University of Illinois, Chicago. This summer, they’re working with Glen Weyl at Microsoft Research on mechanism design for Quadratic Funding.

</aside>

• Contact info: I’m on twitter (@CS_Synthesist) and you can email me at [email protected].
• Topic + context: Collusion-resistant Quadratic Funding and Pluralist Economics
  • Quadratic Funding (QF) is an appealing mechanism for funding public goods, but it’s vulnerable to attacks from colluding agents. In this talk I’ll review QF and explain the first steps Glen and I have taken towards improving its collusion-resistance. Along the way, I’ll also explain my thoughts on the function of economics research and why I think a pluralist approach to the discipline is best.
• Link to the slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wDZLo84unP0jkghgmo8-hj0FB_QEiGIk/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108756255587055369802&rtpof=true&sd=true

• Question(s) of the week: Theory aside, is Gitcoin’s use of QF vulnerable to collusion in practice? Should soulbound tokens be integrated into Gitcoin, and if so, what do you think the main challenges will be? Lastly, what do you think about economists?
• Format for your session (presentation, activity, discussion, etc): ~40 min presentation with ~20 minutes of questions and discussion after. Questions and comments are also welcomed during the presentation.
• A picture of you to be shared:

• Relevant article/insight to share:

  1. This paper imagines a decentralized society where soulbound tokens, QF, and other structures interact. The appendix contains several ideas for collusion-resistant tweaks to QF, which will be the starting point for the technical part of the talk. Decentralized Society: Finding Web3's Soul by E. Glen Weyl, Puja Ohlhaver, Vitalik Buterin :: SSRN
  2. This is a great talk by Yannis Varoufakis, a leftist economist, on some of the problems with conventional microeconomics research. He also argues that economists are not impartial observers but instead actively influence the systems they describe: Yanis Varoufakis: From an Economics without Capitalism to Markets without Capitalism | DiEM25 - YouTube
  3. This webpage has a few different videos on QF: Quadratic Finance | quadratic funding
  4. This paper gives an extensive mathematical treatment of QF. Section 4.1 is probably the most important — it contains a short proof that QF optimally funds goods under the assumption of isolated, selfish agents: Liberal Radicalism: A Flexible Design For Philanthropic Matching Funds by Vitalik Buterin, Zoë Hitzig, E. Glen Weyl :: SSRN

• Papers/ media referenced in the slides:

  1. "Too much Maths, too little History: The problem of Economics" - YouTube
  2. Algorithmic Realism: Expanding the Boundaries of Algorithmic Thought (harvard.edu)
  3. Towards a Digital Pluriverse
  4. Why I Am a Pluralist - RadicalxChange

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Meeting Minutes

Ops:

2. Ensure all roles are filled by community members and they can commit to the session. Tag the contributor in the session’s minutes under **Public Library Notes** before the actual session has begun. | | Session video recorder (contributor) | Before session: Set up OBS on your PC (set Window Source as 'Discord', Audio Output capture, etc.).

During session: Start OBS. Hit 'Start Recording'. Stop when done. You should produce a Youtube stream of the session.

Video tutorial for all these steps | | Facilitator (contributor) | Facilitate conversation in the #public-goods-library channel, consolidate links shared and discussions from the text channel and place them in the session minutes under Public Library Notes | | Scribe (contributor) | Document the session’s minutes under **Public Library Notes,** prepare a tweet summary (refer to session with Henry, session with Vivek, session with Griff) |

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