Plurality captures the symbiotic relationship between democracy and collaborative technology. Together, democracy and collaborative technology can power infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
ー Audrey Tang & Glen Weyl "數位 Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy
We will be becoming a beacon for digital public goods as Ethereum thriving sustainably. Fracton Research worked as an R&D institution of Fracton Ventures, and was researching and developing coordination designs for a positive sum world. "Beacon Labs" has just been born as a spin-out from Fracton Ventures.
Today, there are various funding mechanisms that support the Ethereum ecosystem: Quadratic Funding (QF), Retro Funding, Protocol Guild, Deep Funding, and grants from foundations or councils. These activities help address the free-rider problem and behave as mechanisms to fund public goods and their developers. However, since each public good pursues different outcomes, it's inherently hard to determine support based solely on specific value criteria. Beacon Labs aim to fill fileds which current public goods funding frameworks cannot cover, and to create a world that respects a diversity of values. We believe that it is essential to have multiple and distinct models in order to truly reflect such diversity.
Diverse funding mechanisms with diverse values are needed. Beacon Labs will bring pluralistic funding mecahnisms reflected pluralistic values into a public goods space. We enable funding based on diverse value systems through a statistical approach. Current public goods funding makes a decision based on a single value framework, even though public goods has different outcomes which they would like to achieve. We envision a future where each public good receives funding optimized for its own unique goals, and we aim to build protocols that support Ethereum to thrive sustainably.
Through evaluating and measuring the impact of public goods and funding mechanisms, we reflect the diversity of values they embody. While impact evaluation / measurement has been developed in recent years, most progress has focused on measuring the impact of Open-source software. In contrast, there is a lack of evaluating non-technical activities such as educational influence and contributions to local communities. We envision a future where public goods can grow sustainably toward their respective goals by using outcome metrics tailored to each project.
Beacon Labs will become new light to the Ethereum ecosystem by pursuing funding mechanisms that reflect plural values and provide a greater sense of fairness and legitimacy. Let’s build for a positive-sum world together.