Quadratic funding

A distinctive feature of public goods is that a significant number of people benefit from their use, and limiting their use is impossible or impractical. Examples include public roads, security, research, and open source software. The production of such goods, as a rule, is not profitable for individual people, which often leads to insufficient production ( the free rider effect). In some cases, governments and other organizations (such as charitable foundations) take over their production, but the lack of complete information about the preferences of consumers of public goods and other problems associated with centralized decision-making lead to inefficient spending. In such cases, it would be more expedient to create a system where consumers of public goods would have the opportunity to directly vote for certain options for their provision. However, when voting on the principle of "one person - one vote", the votes of all participants are equal and they cannot show how important this or that option is for them, which can also lead to suboptimal production of public goods.

Quadratic funding (or CLR funding) was proposed in 2018 in Liberal Radicalism: A Flexible Design For Philanthropic Matching Funds as a possible solution to the listed problems of public goods funding. This approach combines the advantages of market mechanisms and democratic governance, but at the same time is less susceptible to their disadvantages.It is based on the idea of counter-financing (co-financing), in which people make direct donations to various projects that they consider to be socially useful, and some large sponsor (for example, a charitable foundation) undertakes to add a proportional amount to each donation (for example, double him). This creates an additional incentive to participate and allows the sponsor to effectively allocate funds without having expertise in the area being funded.

The peculiarity of quadratic funding is that the calculation of the added amounts is carried out in the same way as the calculation of results in a quadratic voting . This type of voting implies that participants can buy votes and distribute them to different options for decisions, and the purchase cost increases in proportion to the square of the number of purchased votes:

This allows participants to express the strength of their preferences, which is not possible with a one-person, one-vote vote. And at the same time, this approach does not endow excessive influence on participants with significant resources, as is the case with voting on the basis of proportionality (which is often used in voting by shareholders ).

- . , $$$i$ $$$p$ $$${(c _ p)} _ i$. $$${(w _ p)} _ i$ :

$$

$${(w _ p)} _ i = \sqrt{ {(c _ p)} _ i }$$

$$$F _ p$, $$$p$, :

$$

$$F _ p = \left( \sum _ {i} {(w _ p)} _ i \right) ^ 2 = \left( \sum _ {i} \sqrt{ {(c _ p)} _ i } \right) ^ 2$$

$$$B$, :

$$

$${F _ p} ^ {\prime} = B \left( \frac{F _ p}{\sum _ {p} F _ p } \right)$$

, . , , ( ), ( , , , ).

: https://qf.gitcoin.co/.

Gitcoin

2019 Gitcoin Grants Gitcoin, . 132 26 Ethereum. 13242 , , , 25000 . , , Ethereum, , , «» «». 2020 6 , 700 2 , 4.7 .

Gitcoin Grants , . , , , :

• . , , .
• . , Ethereum. , , , .

GitHub, SMS. ( , ). , , .

, , . , . , . , Gitcoin Grants. Gitcoin , .

clr.fund

clr.fund, , c Gitcoin Grants. . , -. , , .

, . clr.fund zk-SNARK MACI (Minimum Anti-Collusion Infrastructure, ). , , . , , , , .

, EdDSA - MACI, . , - : , , , . c , ECDH , . , , , , . , EdDSA , , . , , , .

, - : . , .

, , . BrightID, , , . , , BrightID . , , . BrightID . SybilRank, , , . , , , , , .

, . , . , , . . .

Kleros, -. , . . : . , , , — . , , . , ( ) , . , , .

. , .

, Gitcoin Grants, , . , Zcash Decred, : is directed to the development team to support further their work on improving the infrastructure. If a quadratic funding mechanism is created that works reliably and does not require centralized administration, then part of the block reward can be sent to it for subsequent distribution with the participation of the community. Thus, an autonomous ecosystem will be formed, where the production of public goods will be a completely self-sustaining process and will not depend on the will of sponsors and governing organizations.