Impact Evaluator Research Retreat 2025 Participation Report

The Intersection of Academia and Crypto

From July to August 2025, Shuhei Tanaka participated in the Impact Evaluator Research Retreat 2025 (IERR)¹ held in Iceland. At Beacon Labs (formerly Fracton Research), we have been continuously conducting research and development on public goods funding and impact evaluation². Participating in this Retreat was an important opportunity to expand our research activities beyond the Ethereum ecosystem and deepen collaboration with more specialized and academic domains. We would like to thank the Research Retreat organizers and participants for providing this valuable opportunity.

This first-ever IERR was led by members from Protocol Labs, GainForest, and Ethereum Foundation - organizations at the forefront of impact evaluation and public goods funding mechanisms. What was particularly noteworthy was the diversity of participants. Not only developers, researchers, and data scientists from the blockchain space, but also experts with academic backgrounds such as mathematicians and university professors - 25 people from 17 countries across 6 continents (excluding Antarctica) came together.

During the two-week residency, participants deepened their understanding of the Impact Evaluator mechanism³ published by Protocol Labs Research in 2023, while discussing ideas for extending Impact Evaluator, challenges in current Public Goods Funding mechanisms, and ideal approaches to impact evaluation in the blockchain space. Additionally, participant-led sessions were held daily after lunch, and relevant papers were shared, fostering vibrant knowledge exchange among participants⁴.

What We Built

Participants were required to submit either a paper or prototype as their Retreat deliverables, and the two-week program concluded with a demo day (part of which was streamed on X⁵). I participated as a developer and released a prototype called ScaffoldIE. ScaffoldIE was inspired by Filecoin Public Goods Funding⁶, enabling grant operators like Filecoin and Optimism to host IE rounds based on different custom strategies while allowing adjustment of fund distribution ratios between IEs. Other participants' outputs included analyses of donor behavior in Gitcoin Grants that highlighted issues with Quadratic Funding mechanisms, analyses of the Impact Evaluator system as a public goods game, and implementation proposals for Hypercerts v2. There are many other excellent outputs that I highly recommend exploring⁷.

The next step of Beacon Labs

This IERR was our first event participation following the establishment of Beacon Labs, providing a valuable opportunity to energize our future activities. While Beacon Labs (formerly Fracton Research) has primarily operated within the Ethereum ecosystem, we will now extend our activities beyond the blockchain ecosystem to create more opportunities for dialogue and collaboration with those working in digital public goods, academia and the public sector, as we work toward building a positive-sum world.