Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin, a funding platform for Web3 projects that are building for the public good. He’s on a mission to accelerate funding toward the most impactful world-positive projects. To that end he’s written a book called GreenPilled: How Crypto Can Regenerate the World.
I recently sat down with Kevin to discuss the book and his journey as a founder in Web3. This interview was condensed and edited for clarity. If you’d like to see the full video interview, click here.
Kyle Westaway: What is the Green Pill, and why should I take it?
Kevin Owocki: It’s up to you whether or not you want to take it. But the green pill is a story of how crypto can regenerate the world.
How do we build a world in which we've solved our contemporary challenges with sustainability? I believe that crypto can be sort of a shelling point to build more information-age institutions that deliver funding to everyday people and help support our commons. What if we could use blockchain technology to create more coordination and solve coordination failures? That’s the idea behind the book GreenPilled: How Crypto Can Regenerate the World.
I'm the founder of Gitcoin, which has delivered $63 million worth of funding for open source software projects for our digital infrastructure. So, we're actually putting these ideas into practice at Gitcoin. The book is intended to educate people about how they can put it into practice in their own projects.
Westaway: Help me understand quadratic funding.
Owocki: Gitcoin grants are built on top of this mechanism called quadratic funding, which sounds scary, but it's actually very simple. It is a way of matching contributions from the crowd with a pot of matching funds. Every quarter on Gitcoin grants, we have $3 million that we're giving away, and we're matching contributions from the crowd.
The way quadratic funding works is that dollars matched are based off of the number of contributions to a project as opposed to the total amount raised. So, if you had a grant that raised $100 from 100 contributors and I had a grant that raised $100 from one contributor, you would actually get 99% of the matching pool because you're supported by a broader base of contributors. This is really powerful. Even $1 contributions can be matched with $10, $100 or sometimes even $1,000 from the matching pool because of the quadratic funding formula.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylewestaway/2022/06/16/how-crypto-can-regenerate-the-world/?sh=5d6274892fd3
I recently sat down with Kevin to discuss the book and his journey as a founder in Web3. This interview was condensed and edited for clarity. If you’d like to see the full video interview, click here.
Kyle Westaway: What is the Green Pill, and why should I take it?
Kevin Owocki: It’s up to you whether or not you want to take it. But the green pill is a story of how crypto can regenerate the world.
How do we build a world in which we've solved our contemporary challenges with sustainability? I believe that crypto can be sort of a shelling point to build more information-age institutions that deliver funding to everyday people and help support our commons. What if we could use blockchain technology to create more coordination and solve coordination failures? That’s the idea behind the book GreenPilled: How Crypto Can Regenerate the World.
I'm the founder of Gitcoin, which has delivered $63 million worth of funding for open source software projects for our digital infrastructure. So, we're actually putting these ideas into practice at Gitcoin. The book is intended to educate people about how they can put it into practice in their own projects.
Westaway: Help me understand quadratic funding.
Owocki: Gitcoin grants are built on top of this mechanism called quadratic funding, which sounds scary, but it's actually very simple. It is a way of matching contributions from the crowd with a pot of matching funds. Every quarter on Gitcoin grants, we have $3 million that we're giving away, and we're matching contributions from the crowd.
The way quadratic funding works is that dollars matched are based off of the number of contributions to a project as opposed to the total amount raised. So, if you had a grant that raised $100 from 100 contributors and I had a grant that raised $100 from one contributor, you would actually get 99% of the matching pool because you're supported by a broader base of contributors. This is really powerful. Even $1 contributions can be matched with $10, $100 or sometimes even $1,000 from the matching pool because of the quadratic funding formula.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylewestaway/2022/06/16/how-crypto-can-regenerate-the-world/?sh=5d6274892fd3
