Nadia Asparouhova: on public goods & peer production

Into the Bytecode

Nadia Asparouhova is an independent researcher. She previously wrote about her research on open-source communities in "Working in Public", and more recently, has been researching the history of and approaches to philanthropy - which she defines with this phrase “if venture capital is risk capital for private goods, philanthropy is risk capital for public goods”.

In this conversation, we talked about public goods from this broader perspective. We talked about how previous generations have thought about this question, and how the tech ecosystem outside of crypto are grappling with this today. We talked about the second-order effects of wealth booms which have happened in both tech and crypto, how peer production happens, and the role that intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards might play in the development of crypto protocols.

Timestamps:

0:00 intro

2:01 working as an independent researcher

6:09 understanding wealth booms in tech and crypto

13:01 the unique perspectives of each successive community

25:46 the right (and wrong) question to ask

34:41 the landscape of public goods provisioning

39:22 innovative philanthropic funding models

45:35 the first wave of open source communities and crypto

54:42 different classes of stakeholders

1:05:00 research methodology and tools for thought

Relevant links:

Nadia Asparouhova - https://twitter.com/nayafia

Nadia’s website - https://nadia.xyz/

“Working in Public” - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578675862/

Gitcoin - https://gitcoin.co/