二次融资如何为你的梦想提供资金 | TED

In the summer of 2020,
COVID was ravaging the world,


and in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado,


businesses were having
a hard time staying afloat.


I worked with the community
to raise money for these businesses


to help get them through this trying time.


But it wasn't a normal funding campaign.


It was driven by a new vision
and way of funding


that is ultimately more democratic,


called quadratic funding.


Quadratic funding is really, really new.


It was invented by Glen Weyl at Microsoft,


Vitalik Buterin of the Ethereum Foundation


and Zoë Hitzig, a PhD economist.


In September 2018,
they set out to write a paper


that would have a new vision


for a mathematically optimal way
to fund community goods.


Quadratic funding is basically
a crowdfunding campaign,


but it's not like a Patreon
where creators sell subscriptions.


And it's not like a Kickstarter,


in that it leverages
a matching funds mechanism


to match contributions
from everyday donors.


It's a mathematical formula


that results in a fairer way
to distribute funds.


Here's the formula.


Maybe it looks a bit daunting to you,


especially if you
don't like Greek letters,


but it's really powerful


and I'm going to show you
why it's so cool.


It's basically a matching campaign.
So how does it work?


Someone who's civic minded


raises a pool of funding
to stimulate a community.


This could be a local philanthropist
that wants to give back,


or a civic leader that wants
to stimulate economic recovery.


Second, projects sign up
for a crowdfunding campaign.


This could be local businesses
that have a civic-minded mission,


or it could be any group of neighbors
who wants to help out the community.


And then third,
you run a crowdfunding campaign


in which the everyday citizens
in these communities


contribute to the projects
that are in the campaign,


and those contributions
are matched by the matching pool.


Now here's the cool thing
about quadratic funding


that makes it into a funding power tool.


When the contributions from the crowd
are matched by the matching pool,


they're matched more on the basis


of the breadth of contributors
to each project


as opposed to the depth
of their contributions.


And this is really, really powerful.


Let's run through an example of how.


Let's say you have
a million-dollar matching pool


for a seaside town's restoration campaign,


and the first project, a marina,
is favored by wealthy donors.


It raises 500K from one contributor.


The second project raises 500K
from 10,000 contributors.


Let's say it's something
that's more popular


in everyday members of the community,
like revitalizing the downtown.


With quadratic funding,


that second project will get
way more of the matching pool,


even though they raised
the same amount of money,


and in one-to-one matching,


they would get the same amount
from the matching pool.


With quadratic funding,


99 percent of the funds 
will go to that second project.


OK, so this is what makes
quadratic funding a tool


for funding what everyday members
of the community want.


It leverages a matching funds mechanism


that disproportionately rewards projects
with a broader base of support


over the ones that are supported
by small donors.


Alright, so now that we have
an intuition for how this works --


many small donors are more powerful
than one large donor --


let's take a look at the math.


This equation basically says


that the amount
coming from the matching pool


is proportional to the sum
of the square roots of each contribution,


all of that squared.


Now, that might sound like a mouthful,


but basically the reason
why we call this quadratic funding


is that it leverages squares
and square roots


in order to determine
the matching amounts.


So let's run through an example


so that you develop an intuition
for how this math works.


Let's say we're running a QF campaign
for two different projects.


And the first project raises 10 dollars
from 10 contributors.


So ten contributions of one dollar each.


And the second project,
favored by wealthy donors,


raises 10 dollars from one contributor.


Let's apply the quadratic math
to this campaign


and figure out who's going
to get the most matching.


The first thing we have to do


is we have to sum the square roots
of each contribution.


So the square root of one is one
and one plus one plus one equals 10.


So that's the first project.


The second project received
one contribution of 10 dollars.


We take the square root of that.
And that's roughly three.


So you can see
in this portion of the formula


how it starts to break down
the contributions of the larger donors


with the square root,


but it doesn't affect
the small donors as much.


Next, let's take the sum
of the square roots


and let's square those.


Ten squared is 100,


and roughly three squared is about nine.


Here you can develop an intuition
for the second half of this formula,


and how it's widening the distance
between the projects


that have a broader base of support


and the one favored by a large donor.


And finally we have
our matching proportions.


90% of the funding
is going to go to the project


that has a broader base of support.


OK, so that's how the math works.


Many small donors are more powerful
than one large donor.


And there's a counterintuitive implication
of this that is extremely powerful.


If we were doing a 1000-
or 10,000-dollar-matching pool


in that example,


then when you give to that first project,


you are allocating tens or hundreds
of dollars in the campaign.


So this gets lots of people
off their butts


to contribute to quadratic
funding campaigns.


What's better? You give a dollar
and a project gets a dollar,


because of no matching.


You give a dollar
and a project gets two dollars


because of one-to-one matching.


Or you give a dollar
and a project gets hundreds of dollars


because the matching pool was well-funded


and that project got
enough small donors supporting it.


OK? So because of these matching multiples


we're starting to see lots of people
contribute to quadratic funding campaigns


when we run them.


And because of that, we're able
to develop a high-resolution view


of what constituencies
that run quadratic funding campaigns


actually care about.


This is what we call a preference map


from a recent quadratic
funding campaign that we've run.


And each circle is a donor
or a grant that they gave to.


So we see in high resolution
what communities actually care about,


and by care about I don't mean
that they hit a like button.


They actually gave a dollar
of their own money


to the projects in their community


on the basis of what they see
in their community.


In analog democracies,
we get a signal every couple of years


and an up or down vote
of what people actually care about,


but with quadratic funding,


we can get it more frequent


if we run these campaigns
every three or six months,


and more high-resolution view
of what matters to everyday citizens.


And then we can take the projects


that are supported
in the quadratic funding campaign,


and build relationships
between those in power


and those who are doing
the most good in their communities.


Quadratic funding isn't just for downtowns
that want to revitalize after a pandemic.


And it's not just for seaside projects
that want to revitalize themselves either.


Any community that wants to fund
what matters to everyday people


can use a quadratic
funding campaign to do so.


The cycle can be kicked off
by a philanthropist


that wants to give back,
but isn't sure to what,


a digital community that wants to fund
what matters to everyday people


can use quadratic funding,


and it can be used
by cities, states or countries


that want to revitalize their democracies.


Know any of those?


Quadratic funding scales.


In just about six years,


it's been used to fund 60 million dollars
worth of community goods


through 270,000 unique contributors
and four million unique contributions.


It has funded 4,000 creators,


extending a civic lifeline to the people


who have the most legitimacy
in these communities.


The tech to do quadratic funding
is available today.


In the last year, my team at Gitcoin
has developed open-source software


that anyone can pull down
and run a quadratic funding campaign


in their community today.


Now I've got to address --


Thank you.


(Applause)


I've got to address
the elephant in the room for a second.


You may have guessed
by the name of my startup,


Gitcoin with a G,


that I am indeed a crypto bro.


(Laughter)


I plead guilty.


Crypto doesn't have the best reputation,
and probably deservedly so,


but I'm a part of the crypto movement
that cares deeply about community goods,


things like open-source software,


and we want to see those things funded.


You wouldn't throw out all of the internet
because of a couple of bad websites,


so please don't throw out all of crypto
because of Scam Bankman-Fried.


(Laughter and applause)


My flavor of crypto bro
cares deeply about community goods


and quadratic funding.


It's an example of something good
that was pioneered in crypto


and is now starting to go mainstream.


If you want to run
a quadratic funding campaign


in your Ethereum-based community,


you can use Gitcoin Grants,
our software, to do that.


But if you don't care
about the whole crypto thing,


we've built a tool called SimpleGrants.xyz


that will allow you to fund
what matters in your community


using quadratic funding
in US dollars, euros, Japanese yen


or any of the hundreds
of currencies that we support.


This tool is available
as open-source software,


which means that anyone can download it


and run it without needing
anything from me.


But if you need something,


me and my team are available
to talk about best practices


and to help you support your community.


Now I don't want to oversell
quadratic funding.


It's not perfect,
or I guess said another way,


it works under very specific scenarios.


First, you need someone
who's going to put up the matching pool.


Second, that person has to be comfortable
with other people distributing the funds.


Third, we need the ability to stop people
from falsifying identities.


And fourth, we need to stop the ability
to collude with each other.


Basically, situations where
if you contribute to my project,


I'll contribute to yours.


That's collusion.


But these are solvable problems.


And I know that because
I've solved them hundreds of times


through trial and error


in the quadratic funding
campaigns that I've run.


American sociobiologist
Edward Wilson once said,


the real problem with humanity
is we've got Paleolithic emotions,


medieval institutions
and godlike technology.


I think that with all
of the amazing technology


that we've got available today,


we should be able
to upgrade our institutions


and use technology for the civic good.


Fund what matters to everyday people.


Quadratic funding
is one way we can do that.


It's not the only way,


but it's part of an ecology
of 21st-century digital democratic tools


that are going to allow us
to support the voices


of a general, diverse population


and create community engagement
and collective action,


and all in a way that feels
more like using a slick app


than going to the DMV.


I want to see us fund what matters
to everyday people in the 21st century,


and upgrade our institutions
to be digitally native.


Quadratic funding
is one way we can do that.