Last week Public Works put forward an open call for participants in a new kind of venture mutualism. By encouraging projects within Ethereum to generate meaningful, sustainable returns, we believe we can create better aqueducts that continuously redistribute value back to our digital commons.
Crucially, redistribution doesn’t just mean moving capital monolithically “down the stack”, but instead building mutualist networks of funding between projects across a wide range of domains. Using Vitalik’s revenue-evil model) as a guideline, we might say that we want value to flow from projects where monetization has little impact on positive externalities to those where it has the most, conditional on credible commitments to openness.
Our role in this process is simple:
First, we are committing capital. Like VanEck recently proposed, we commit to distributing 10% of our initial carry back to core Ethereum infrastructure via a wide range of pluralistic mechanisms including CLR Fund, Gitcoin, and Protocol Guild. Further, our fund will aim to only invest in projects who are determined to help make sure returns stay in our ecosystem. We want to show that it’s possible to focus on growing the pie and be profitable by doing so.
Second, we are building a community. To create a successful mutualist network we have to be able to build solidarity and research new models of value creation and distribution. To that end, we intend to help fund and work with some of the best research organizations across the ecosystem like BlockScience and Metagov who are thinking about these problems within their communities of practice.
As we continue our journey we can convince other funds that this is a direction they should take, and showcase that ecosystem alignment is not only altruistic but a true competitive advantage.
If you’d like to get involved in the movement and explore future collaborations, please reach out.