Wuddup GitcoinDAOers.
TLDR - I want to meme the Quadratic Lands into existence, and I need your help.
Want to learn more? Read below.
In some ways the Quadratic Lands - a promised land where public goods are funded in democractic ways, already exists. We’ve funded $20mm worth of public goods on Gitcoin so far, and proven that it is possible to use programmable money to create better community funding mechanisms.
It is important to not The quadratic lands is NOT just the vision/preferences of the Gitcoin company, it is the aggregation of the Ethereum/Gitcoin community’s voices and visions.
Given an efficient mechanism for a community expressing commons funding preferences, eg Quadratic Funding - The Quadratic Lands could be defined as a world that is created as an aggregation of everyone’s preferences - optimally expressed through math/mechanisms.
Gitcoin/QF is just the mechanism through which its expressed.
And as someone who has been focused on Gitcoin for 4 years, I have to come clean about something - It’s still too long & hard to explain to people why public goods matter. If I get 10 minutes with you I can convince you of
- what public goods are
- public goods are good
- how programmable money can help / what Quadratic Funding/Voting/mechanisms that can help are.
- demo it for them
But I cant do it in 280 characters.
And even when you do, the explanation is not visceral enough. We all sound like economists when we run around talking about public goods & schelling points & the matthew effect.
I think we ever want to build the quadratic lands, if we want regen finance to go mainstream, if we want to hopepill 1000s of degens, we need to go more visceral.
The launch experience we dropped on May 25th was a start of trying to show people the world we’d want to see - a world where people are rewarded for contributing to community & public goods.
But it was also kind of like one of those false old western towns. Where if you try to go into any of the buildings, it doesnt exist yet.
To give credit where it was due, the GTC launch experience exists, but we are not yet in the quadratic lands! There is $500bn/yr in economic value created by Open Source Software (a public good) alone, and we are doing $13m/yr through Gitcoin. That means there is about 10,000x growth in funding public goods, just in Open Source, ahead of us at Gitcoin. And there are DOZENs of other public goods that could benefit from this technology.
But we’re not there yet. 10000x growth in OSS funding is possible, and then another 1000x growth in ALL public goods from there!
Right now, mainstream people don’t know this is possible! Anecdotally, I get the vibe that many people that I grew up with - friends from high school & college (UD Computer Science Class of 2006 wut wut), are dejected and without hope for their futures. They see the institutions that our parents cherished as unable to keep up in the modern world. They see inflation, they see crumbling infrastructure, they see politics are corrupt. As a result they do not have hope that the world is getting better. When you are dejected & hopeless, it is hard to play bento-style games.
Bento games = games that allow you to focus on low time preference outcomes and on outcomes that benefit your community & not just you.
There is hope; I just dont think people know that though. I believe that Ethereum, and Regen Finance can give this audience hope again. We just need to tell them that it is here. We need to tell them there is a Quadratic Lands - a place where community goods are funded, and people support each other.
I am curious if any of you will join me. Quadratic Shitposters wanted: Its time to meme for the public good.
How do you meme for the public good? Simple: Give people hope .
Here is why I have hope, your reasons may differ.
- Ethereum is here - a substrate for transparent economic games where the rules can’t be changed on you
- Quadratic Funding (and other programmable money mechanism)s are here, and they can help you pay your rent TODAY.
- There is a place for them in Ethereum, at GitcoinDAO, in the Quadratic Lands.
PS - if you need art to start, everything on QuadraticLands.com is open source / GPLv3 liscensed. And yoou can also borrow from our Figma1 and Figma2 for inspiration. We <3 vaporwave QL memes 
