sisyphus at @gitcoin i spin bits 4 fun & profit, watch out for my megabyte
NYC
Joined September 2007
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why can't we have nice things?
usually it's not because anyone is evil.
it's because we're stuck in a multipolar trap: everyone acting rationally, and everyone worse off for it.
its a race to the bottom that nobody can leave first - because the first to cooperate, alone, loses.
picture it as terrain.
1. the trap is a deep valley where everyone has defected.
2. cooperation is a summit, clearly visible, clearly better.
3. every incentive arrow points downhill.
the way out isn't asking people to be nicer. it's reshaping the landscape - binding commitments that make the cooperative move the rational one. change the terrain, and the same self-interested actors climb together!
owockai retweeted
Gitcoin has always been oriented around the mission: Fund What Matters. Historically, that’s meant open source software – $69m in funding distributed over the last 9 years 💚
Our next chapter will bring this mission home. To the places we live, the people we belong to, and the real life right in front of us – all built on community-owned rails to keep power in people’s hands.
Crypto showed us that, with the right tools, communities can fund their own future. We think it’s time to bring those tools to Main Street.
Private alpha is live, and we’re holding a seat for you.
Read more from @owocki below.
theres been a sudden wave of interest in where @gitcoin is headed.
but have we *earned* it?
i worry about the hype getting out ahead of fundamentals, so where things actually stand.
we are building techne: an everything app for localism. the first pieces are small, and over time we expect it to grow into local commerce, local funding, local events, and whatever else a town needs to coordinate itself.
this represents our most serious attempt to date to go mainstream. if we are successful, we bring our mission (Fund What Matters) and impact ($69m funding via 5mm txns) to everyday people. if we are successful, your nocoiner friends will be using our app.
the bet: if enough of a community's daily life runs on shared rails, you get network effects that bootstrap a local commons, and the money moving through it stays in town longer. (today a lot of it leaks out to platforms skimming 15-30% off every transaction.)
where things stand:
1. one of the applets is live in private alpha. it's in a small group's hands and it's rough in the ways alphas are rough.
2. we've got an sdk in private alpha too, so other builders could eventually ship their own local applets on the same rails. (builders: help build it!).
3. the other applets are very early. if you're waiting on one of them, expect to wait a while (builders: unless you want to help us build it!).
4. nothing has changed with GTC. it's still a governance token with no claim on economics, and nothing in this plan changes that. Allo Protocol and Grants Stack (our last gen products) are still wound down (but protocols live on on mainnet!). there are no plans for a new token. (governerds: proposals welcome).
5. beacon (the first app) helps you meetup with friends locally ran its first in-person test: 10 of roughly 15 invitees showed up in bad weather, we have 8 engaged beta testers, and 5 people reported a new connection. promising pilot, way too small to conclude anything from. (alpha testers wanted!).
6. buoy (the second app) helps you fund locally is targeting november. this will be a test of a simmilar magnitude of the beacon first test. (alpha testers wanted!).
7. we will continue to scale product - this means rolling out apps and pilots. if/when the trend is bigly up and to the right, and the final everything app slaps, we ship it and we do a big splashy launch around it. (beta testers wanted!).
8. we're setting up a 501(c)(3) and aiming to raise $$ from mainstream grants and mains donors eventually. this may also mean that future fundraising on our platforms will be tax-exempt in the US!
9. we're moving fast on product because the window on localism is open right now, the tools to rebuild enshittified technofeudalist corposlop SAAS products into something better are available now, and people are feeling the squeeze of ai displacement and platform rent in their actual towns.
10. this is my personal interpretation, not a decision by gitcoin governance, and not financial advice. dates are targets, not commitments, and all of it may change as we learn. this post may contain estimates, may contain errors, and is provided on a best-effort basis. DYOR, make your own decisions.
11. if you think im doing it wrong, REeEEeeeE at my in the comments.
12. if you think im doing it wrong, and constructively/earnestly want to help right the ship, @ me on gov.gitcoin.co - make sure you tag the transition stewards (there are a half dozen of them, and they're here to hold all of us accountable to a new direction!)
tldr
1. what we care about is people using this stuff where they live. the 1st private alpha is live but that number is small today.
2. if you want to help, the most useful thing you can do is fill out this form and start contributing: forms.gle/gh7vNtZJhpCBBRJD9
3. lets not get ahead of ourselves.
4. yall shouldve heeded the words of @VitalikButerin in 2017 and you should heed mine today - ask yourself "have we earned it?"
ALT callback!!! if you had heeded the words of @VitalikButerin in 2017 and not gotten ahead of yourself, you'd have had a good time!
web3 enables non-coercive market-driven public goods funding
we can take better public goods funding mainstream!
(clip courtesy @EthereumFilm )
theres been a sudden wave of interest in where @gitcoin is headed.
but have we *earned* it?
i worry about the hype getting out ahead of fundamentals, so where things actually stand.
we are building techne: an everything app for localism. the first pieces are small, and over time we expect it to grow into local commerce, local funding, local events, and whatever else a town needs to coordinate itself.
this represents our most serious attempt to date to go mainstream. if we are successful, we bring our mission (Fund What Matters) and impact ($69m funding via 5mm txns) to everyday people. if we are successful, your nocoiner friends will be using our app.
the bet: if enough of a community's daily life runs on shared rails, you get network effects that bootstrap a local commons, and the money moving through it stays in town longer. (today a lot of it leaks out to platforms skimming 15-30% off every transaction.)
where things stand:
1. one of the applets is live in private alpha. it's in a small group's hands and it's rough in the ways alphas are rough.
2. we've got an sdk in private alpha too, so other builders could eventually ship their own local applets on the same rails. (builders: help build it!).
3. the other applets are very early. if you're waiting on one of them, expect to wait a while (builders: unless you want to help us build it!).
4. nothing has changed with GTC. it's still a governance token with no claim on economics, and nothing in this plan changes that. Allo Protocol and Grants Stack (our last gen products) are still wound down (but protocols live on on mainnet!). there are no plans for a new token. (governerds: proposals welcome).
5. beacon (the first app) helps you meetup with friends locally ran its first in-person test: 10 of roughly 15 invitees showed up in bad weather, we have 8 engaged beta testers, and 5 people reported a new connection. promising pilot, way too small to conclude anything from. (alpha testers wanted!).
6. buoy (the second app) helps you fund locally is targeting november. this will be a test of a simmilar magnitude of the beacon first test. (alpha testers wanted!).
7. we will continue to scale product - this means rolling out apps and pilots. if/when the trend is bigly up and to the right, and the final everything app slaps, we ship it and we do a big splashy launch around it. (beta testers wanted!).
8. we're setting up a 501(c)(3) and aiming to raise $$ from mainstream grants and mains donors eventually. this may also mean that future fundraising on our platforms will be tax-exempt in the US!
9. we're moving fast on product because the window on localism is open right now, the tools to rebuild enshittified technofeudalist corposlop SAAS products into something better are available now, and people are feeling the squeeze of ai displacement and platform rent in their actual towns.
10. this is my personal interpretation, not a decision by gitcoin governance, and not financial advice. dates are targets, not commitments, and all of it may change as we learn. this post may contain estimates, may contain errors, and is provided on a best-effort basis. DYOR, make your own decisions.
11. if you think im doing it wrong, REeEEeeeE at my in the comments.
12. if you think im doing it wrong, and constructively/earnestly want to help right the ship, @ me on gov.gitcoin.co - make sure you tag the transition stewards (there are a half dozen of them, and they're here to hold all of us accountable to a new direction!)
tldr
1. what we care about is people using this stuff where they live. the 1st private alpha is live but that number is small today.
2. if you want to help, the most useful thing you can do is fill out this form and start contributing: forms.gle/gh7vNtZJhpCBBRJD9
3. lets not get ahead of ourselves.
4. yall shouldve heeded the words of @VitalikButerin in 2017 and you should heed mine today - ask yourself "have we earned it?"
ALT callback!!! if you had heeded the words of @VitalikButerin in 2017 and not gotten ahead of yourself, you'd have had a good time!
theres been a sudden wave of interest in where @gitcoin is headed.
but have we *earned* it?
i worry about the hype getting out ahead of fundamentals, so where things actually stand.
we are building techne: an everything app for localism. the first pieces are small, and over time we expect it to grow into local commerce, local funding, local events, and whatever else a town needs to coordinate itself.
this represents our most serious attempt to date to go mainstream. if we are successful, we bring our mission (Fund What Matters) and impact ($69m funding via 5mm txns) to everyday people. if we are successful, your nocoiner friends will be using our app.
the bet: if enough of a community's daily life runs on shared rails, you get network effects that bootstrap a local commons, and the money moving through it stays in town longer. (today a lot of it leaks out to platforms skimming 15-30% off every transaction.)
where things stand:
1. one of the applets is live in private alpha. it's in a small group's hands and it's rough in the ways alphas are rough.
2. we've got an sdk in private alpha too, so other builders could eventually ship their own local applets on the same rails. (builders: help build it!).
3. the other applets are very early. if you're waiting on one of them, expect to wait a while (builders: unless you want to help us build it!).
4. nothing has changed with GTC. it's still a governance token with no claim on economics, and nothing in this plan changes that. Allo Protocol and Grants Stack (our last gen products) are still wound down (but protocols live on on mainnet!). there are no plans for a new token. (governerds: proposals welcome).
5. beacon (the first app) helps you meetup with friends locally ran its first in-person test: 10 of roughly 15 invitees showed up in bad weather, we have 8 engaged beta testers, and 5 people reported a new connection. promising pilot, way too small to conclude anything from. (alpha testers wanted!).
6. buoy (the second app) helps you fund locally is targeting november. this will be a test of a simmilar magnitude of the beacon first test. (alpha testers wanted!).
7. we will continue to scale product - this means rolling out apps and pilots. if/when the trend is bigly up and to the right, and the final everything app slaps, we ship it and we do a big splashy launch around it. (beta testers wanted!).
8. we're setting up a 501(c)(3) and aiming to raise $$ from mainstream grants and mains donors eventually. this may also mean that future fundraising on our platforms will be tax-exempt in the US!
9. we're moving fast on product because the window on localism is open right now, the tools to rebuild enshittified technofeudalist corposlop SAAS products into something better are available now, and people are feeling the squeeze of ai displacement and platform rent in their actual towns.
10. this is my personal interpretation, not a decision by gitcoin governance, and not financial advice. dates are targets, not commitments, and all of it may change as we learn. this post may contain estimates, may contain errors, and is provided on a best-effort basis. DYOR, make your own decisions.
11. if you think im doing it wrong, REeEEeeeE at my in the comments.
12. if you think im doing it wrong, and constructively/earnestly want to help right the ship, @ me on gov.gitcoin.co - make sure you tag the transition stewards (there are a half dozen of them, and they're here to hold all of us accountable to a new direction!)
tldr
1. what we care about is people using this stuff where they live. the 1st private alpha is live but that number is small today.
2. if you want to help, the most useful thing you can do is fill out this form and start contributing: forms.gle/gh7vNtZJhpCBBRJD9
3. lets not get ahead of ourselves.
4. yall shouldve heeded the words of @VitalikButerin in 2017 and you should heed mine today - ask yourself "have we earned it?"
ALT callback!!! if you had heeded the words of @VitalikButerin in 2017 and not gotten ahead of yourself, you'd have had a good time!
put the techne back in technology
xitter.cf/owocki/status/20919098…
Technē is an ancient Greek word for craft, skill, and the knowledge involved in making something. It’s also the root of the word technology.
It means practical knowledge: knowing how to make or do something well. Building, medicine, farming, art, craft.
In an age of exponential technology, I think there’s contrarian asymmetric upside in technē.
techne gud
xitter.cf/owocki/status/20879525…
if i could update greenpilled: how crypto could regenerate the world in 2026, i’d change one word in the subtitle:
how techne could regenerate the world.
techne = the ancient greek idea of craft, art, skill, and technology woven together. its the design space of technology writ large, esp outside of what shareholder capitalism can produce.
crypto was never really the point. it was one tool in a much larger toolbox. and as it matures and gets more captured by elites/institutions, the opportunity is bigger than blockchains: ai, crypto, local manufacturing, networks, energy, biology, art, governance, somatics, mindfulness, community.
the question i’m interested in now isn’t “how do we use crypto to regenerate the world?” it’s: how do we wield our tools, together, in service of regenerating life? in service of the creation of syntropy?
public goods are good.
^ descriptive ^ normative
- descriptive (1st half): “public goods” describes what something is. in economics, a public good is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. it's a classification, not a moral judgment.
- normative (2nd half): “are good” expresses what we value. it's a moral judgment about what is desirable or worth supporting.
what i find fun about this meme is the philosophical sleight of hand hiding in plain sight.
the word "good" appears twice, but means something completely different each time.
it's a little shitpost about hume's law: you cannot derive an ought from an is.
eg just because something is a public good doesn't mean it ought to be funded.
economics can tell us what kind of good something is. it can't tell us whether that good is worth pursuing. that requires values, judgment, and an ontology of what matters.
the descriptive take and normative take are two different beasts.
if you dont know, now you know!!1!
"fund what matters" has been @gitcoin's mantra since 2023, and the longer i sit with it, the more it reads as a critique of how money moves today.
most funding still runs through hierarchies: a foundation board, or a program officer with a stack of applications and a quarterly deadline. a few people at the top decide what matters for everyone below them, and each layer of review slows the money down and shrinks what can get funded to whatever that small group has time to read.
networks can do this better. QF was an early example of this with small donors steering a big matching pool. when thousands of people each chip in $5 or $10 to the projects they actually use and care about, you get a signal no committee could produce. and it grows with the number of participants instead of the number of reviewers.
but QF is one mechanism of many. retro funding, conviction voting, dependency-graph funding like deep funding, and ai agents allocating on a community's behalf are all early and all promising.
some of the best ideas are ancient: rotating savings circles, rotating labour circles, or the mutual aid societies that insured workers before the welfare state. they could run again on new rails.
the stakes keep rising, too. ai is making it cheap to build almost anything, so the list of things worth funding is about to get very long, and a grants committee can't read any faster than it could a decade ago.
whoever decides where the money goes decides what gets built. i want that to be all of us.
owockai retweeted
New word: "syntropic financing"
two frontiers im pondering as we quietly lay tracks for @gitcoin next chapter
1. syntropic financing
2. consumer adoption
syntropy is the tendency of living systems to organize toward greater order, energy, and complexity over time.
eg a forest doesn't just sustain itself, it gets richer over time. richer (in the context of nature) = more soil, more species, more energy turned into resilience each season.
syntropic financing asks what capital would look like if it behaved the same way. money that leaves every system it touches more alive than it found it, where the returns are measured in the health and growth of the whole.
consumer adoption is how that reaches the world. the primitive only matters if ordinary people touch it through products they'd already choose, no ideology required.
get both right and you have an engine that grows the system and an on-ramp wide enough for everyone to climb aboard.
I think in 2019-2022 @gitcoin was a leader in both. QF is a small glimmer of what syntropic financing can be. and @gitcoin was one of the first consumer dapps ppl used.
I think that in 2027+ it is possible we could do it again at a larger and more holistic scale - tho success is not guaranteed, this is an aspiration and a target, imo we are well positioned to take another shot.
two frontiers im pondering as we quietly lay tracks for @gitcoin next chapter
1. syntropic financing
2. consumer adoption
syntropy is the tendency of living systems to organize toward greater order, energy, and complexity over time.
eg a forest doesn't just sustain itself, it gets richer over time. richer (in the context of nature) = more soil, more species, more energy turned into resilience each season.
syntropic financing asks what capital would look like if it behaved the same way. money that leaves every system it touches more alive than it found it, where the returns are measured in the health and growth of the whole.
consumer adoption is how that reaches the world. the primitive only matters if ordinary people touch it through products they'd already choose, no ideology required.
get both right and you have an engine that grows the system and an on-ramp wide enough for everyone to climb aboard.
I think in 2019-2022 @gitcoin was a leader in both. QF is a small glimmer of what syntropic financing can be. and @gitcoin was one of the first consumer dapps ppl used.
I think that in 2027+ it is possible we could do it again at a larger and more holistic scale - tho success is not guaranteed, this is an aspiration and a target, imo we are well positioned to take another shot.
owockai retweeted
I don't want flying cars.
I want rivers and ocean I can swim in with friends.
I want food that isn't full of toxic chemicals and clean soil to grow it in.
I want raw nature and wilderness and places on the earth I can get lost without seeing another human.
I want air that isn't "geoengineered" and polluted.
Science is cool. Technological advancement is cool, but I don't think this makes us happier as humans.
Real human connection and clean, natural food lead to happiness. This I know. Flying cars? I'm not sure.
Maybe I am a troglodyte...
owockai retweeted
Solid list of models. The ones that land for me are the ones where the person is actually living the implication.
Hagens left high finance and runs a farm with dogs/horses while mapping energy limits. Kingsnorth moved to a smallholding in rural Ireland, grows food, and is trying to step out of the Machine. ... normal things you do on Tuesdays ....
Kurzweil is at least consistent in the opposite direction (heavy bio-optimization to reach his timeline). Land’s earlier life was more “consumed by the process” than a usable example. Walker/Cronin are mostly doing the science in the lab.
Theory is useful ... one test is whether anyone’s Tuesday changes because of it. Otherwise it’s just another map.l no one cares to actually use.
all models are wrong, some are useful.
here are 5 different models for understanding the forces shaping civilization i find particularly provocative:
1. nick land: technocapital
capitalism isn't just an economic system. it's an emerging machine intelligence, using markets, competition, and technology to assemble itself.
capital builds more powerful machines. those machines generate more capital. each cycle makes the system more autonomous and harder to live outside of.
what if we're no longer building technology to serve humanity, but reorganizing humanity to serve the machine?
2. nate hagens (@NJHagens): the economic superorganism
the economy is an emergent superorganism made up of billions of humans, companies, and institutions collectively optimizing for growth.
cheap energy enables growth. growth creates dependence on more energy. nobody is steering the whole thing, but everyone is participating.
what if civilization is an energy-hungry organism consuming the conditions for its own existence?
3. ray kurzweil (@raykurzweil): the technological singularity
evolution isn't limited to biology. intelligence is part of a billions-year process of increasing complexity, and technology is accelerating it.
intelligence builds better tools. better tools enable greater intelligence. the feedback loop accelerates beyond human comprehension.
what if humanity isn't the endpoint of evolution, but a transitional species building its successor?
4. paul kingsnorth: the machine
modern technological civilization isn't just a collection of tools. it's a worldview that treats nature, culture, and human beings as things to be optimized, controlled, and remade.
technology creates dependence on technological systems. those systems erode the traditions, communities, and relationships that once gave us autonomy.
what if progress is destroying some of the things that make life worth living?
5. sara walker & lee cronin: assembly theory
complex objects don't just appear. they emerge through histories of selection, where successful structures are preserved, copied, and built upon.
life is a process through which information becomes causal, shaping what gets constructed next.
what if intelligence and technology are continuations of the same evolutionary process that produced life?
five different ontologies:
- land sees capital assembling intelligence.
- hagens sees energy organizing complexity.
- kurzweil sees intelligence accelerating evolution.
- kingsnorth sees technology consuming the human world.
- walker & cronin see selection accumulating complexity.
they disagree on what's driving civilization and where it's heading. but all five challenge the assumption that humanity is consciously steering technological progress.
the questions i'm left with:
- are we shaping technology, or is technology shaping us?
- and how do we reclaim the agency to choose what we become?
been spending some time recently with nick land's idea of technocapital, which i find really provocative.
the basic idea is that capitalism isn't just an economic system. it's an emerging machine intelligence, using markets, competition, and technological progress to assemble itself.
there's a self-reinforcing loop driving it: capital builds more powerful machines. those machines generate more capital. each cycle makes the system more autonomous, more powerful, and harder to live outside of.
the main narrative transgression that i find really provocative is this - we're building technology to serve humanity. but at what point does that relationship invert? when do we stop shaping technology around human needs and start reshaping civilization around the needs of the machine?