Web3 Capital Allocation Tools
Public goods funding / Co-Founder at Giveth, q/acc & Unicorn.eth
Max SemenchukCode Is Law (2025) ⭐ 7.8 | Documentary
1h 30m
m.imdb.com
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Key Ideas:
- Background:
- Working in Web3 capital allocation since 2016
- First project: The DAO (caused Ethereum fork, created Ethereum Classic)
- Theory of change: Nonprofits are free market solution to government failures; need to make nonprofits profitable
- Mission: Build "something better than governments"
- Why Web3:
- Bitcoin (2009) = first public good funded not by government/nonprofit/business, but by economic system
- Ukraine raised $100M+ quickly via Bitcoin/Ethereum at war's start
- Bitcoin/Ethereum issue own currency to fund public infrastructure providers
- Creates new way to underpin value of governments and nonprofits
- Public Goods Defined:
- Private goods: Excludable (cell phones, movie theaters) - businesses excel here
- Public goods: Non-excludable (air, radio waves, fish in bay, homeless-free downtown)
- Governments had monopoly on public goods until Bitcoin (2009)
- Web3 enables funding public goods through economic systems vs. just taxes/donations
- Two Categories of Web3 Public Goods Funding:1. Taxation Games (Donation-Based):2. Economic Games (Supply & Demand Based):
- Quadratic Funding (Most Battle-Tested):
- Democratic matching pool distribution
- Small donations get amplified (e.g., $1 donation → $200 match)
- Formula: Square root of donation value
- Giveth example: $300K matching pool + $40K individual donations
- Creates powerful incentive for thoughtful participation
- Used in Denver for distributing funds locally
- Example: Parks funding - different playground/amenities projects compete, citizens vote with small donations
- DAOs: Small voting groups for local community decisions, more independent than hierarchical systems
- Deep Funding:
- Maps dependency graphs between projects
- Experts do pairwise voting on importance
- AI agents compete to match expert rankings
- Scales expert opinion across hundreds of thousands of projects
- Distributes funds to infrastructure that core projects depend on
- Originally designed for open-source development, applicable to government projects
- Create entrepreneurial opportunities, not just incentives
- Three Requirements for Success:
- Issue digital tokens
- Reward value creators with tokens
- Ensure demand for tokens (90% of effort should go here)
- Market participants: Producers, consumers, speculators (actually helpful in regenerative markets)
- NFT Examples:
- Rainbow Rolls: Sold toilet paper NFTs, wiped away $7M in US medical debt
- Public Nouns: Membership DAO, ~$1M+ funded in public goods, members vote on spending
- General use: Land titles, membership, creative communities
- Blockchain Examples:
- Zcash: Funds cryptographic research
- Namecoin: Arbitrary domain registration
- Primecoin: Mining requires finding prime numbers (found 4M+ new primes, 4x previous total)
- Curecoin: Proof-of-work creates other value
- Regen Economies:
- Giveth's Givebacks: "Block reward" for donors instead of miners
- $2,000 in GIVE tokens raffled every 2 weeks to donors
- Tokens used for platform curation (staking determines project visibility)
- Replaces traditional pay-for-marketing model
- Retrofunding (Optimism example):
- Pay projects AFTER they do good work, not before
- Projects get investors upfront based on future retrofunding potential
- Optimism: Sell block space, revenue rewards builders who made space valuable
- Creates X-Prize style reward system
- Enables bottom-up innovation vs. top-down government funding
- Anyone can pitch ideas to investors, get funded, be rewarded if successful
- Liquid Democracy:
- Potential to remove politicians
- More democratic than normal politics
- Huge opportunity for better voting systems
- Could work at community level in Ukraine, potentially national level
- Encourages deep research into this approach
- Key Insight for Rebuilding:
- Ukraine's reconstruction requires enormous public investment
- Traditional centralized approaches create trust issues
- Decentralized funding mechanisms provide transparency, accountability, entrepreneurial opportunities
- Can attract international investment while empowering local communities
We're thrilled to present another distinguished speaker joining the IEEE 2nd Ukrainian DLT Forum: REBUIDL: Griff Green, Co-Founder at Giveth and a pioneer in public goods funding and decentralized governance.
Griff Green will share insights on public goods funding, quadratic funding mechanisms, and the evolution of decentralized philanthropy. As Co-Founder of Giveth and a key figure behind initiatives like q/acc (Quadratic Acceleration) and Unicorn.eth, Griff has been instrumental in developing innovative funding models that empower communities to support public goods through blockchain technology.
With extensive experience in the Ethereum ecosystem and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), Griff has dedicated his career to building infrastructure that makes philanthropy more transparent, efficient, and community-driven. His work with Giveth has pioneered donation traceability and helped establish new paradigms for how blockchain can facilitate social impact. Through his advocacy for quadratic funding and public goods, he has influenced how Web3 communities allocate resources to projects that benefit the broader ecosystem.
His presentation will provide valuable perspectives on the future of decentralized funding mechanisms, the role of blockchain in supporting public goods, and practical approaches to building sustainable funding models for community projects — drawing from his hands-on experience creating and scaling impact-focused blockchain platforms.
Sign up: https://luma.com/ophiykvy
Full agenda: https://luma.com/dltforum