Vitalik's Blog: Replacing Public Goods with Open Source to Create Shared Value for Humanity

Author | Vitalik

Compiled by Wu Says Blockchain

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Vitalik published an article stating that we should talk less about public goods funding and more about open-source funding. Shifting the focus from "public products" to "open-source" seems to be the best choice. Open-source should not mean that "as long as it is open-source, building anything is equally noble"; it should be about building what is most valuable to humanity. However, distinguishing which projects are worth supporting and which are not has become the main task of the public goods funding mechanism.

Who will fund public goods? The conflict between individual interests and collective values.

I have long been very concerned about how to fund public goods. If there is a project that can benefit one million people (and it is not possible to precisely determine who can enjoy the benefits and who cannot), but each person only receives a tiny benefit, then it is likely that no single individual will voluntarily fund the project, even if the project as a whole has extremely high value. The term "public goods" has a history of over a hundred years in economics. In digital ecosystems, especially in decentralized digital ecosystems, public goods are particularly important. In fact, there is ample reason to believe that the vast majority of products created in this field fall into the category of public goods. Open-source software, academic research on cryptography and blockchain protocols, publicly available free educational resources, and so on, all belong to public goods.

1. When the term is expanded: The political and social misunderstandings of "public goods"

However, the term "public good" itself has some obvious issues.

1. In public discussions, the term "public goods" is often used to refer to "goods produced or provided by the government," even if the good does not possess the characteristics of public goods from an economic perspective. This usage leads to misunderstandings, making people's judgments about public goods less dependent on the qualities or attributes of the project itself, and more dependent on who is constructing the project or the intentions claimed by the builders.

2. It is widely believed that the funding process for public goods lacks rigor and is easily influenced by social desirability bias — that is, the amount of funding a project receives depends on how well it aligns with social expectations rather than its actual objective value. In addition, this mechanism often favors insiders who are skilled at gaining an advantage in social public relations.

In my view, the two issues mentioned above are actually interconnected: the term "public goods" is easily exploited by public opinion largely because the definition of "public goods" has been overly broadened.

For example, based on the results of my recent search on Twitter for the phrase "building a public good," here are some of the search results I saw:

If you continue to scroll down, you will find that many projects are using descriptions like "We are building a public good" to promote themselves.

I am not here to criticize specific projects; I actually do not know much about the projects mentioned above, and they may indeed be outstanding. However, the issue is that the two projects mentioned in the examples above are both commercial projects with their own independent tokens. While there is nothing wrong with being a commercial project itself, issuing one's own token is not necessarily a mistake. However, when the concept of "public goods" is overused to the point that today the term often only represents the "project" itself, this phenomenon indeed indicates some problems.

2. From Public Goods to Open Source: The Shift of Terminology and Clarification of Concepts

As an alternative to the term "Public Goods," we can try to think about the concept of "Open Source."

If you look back at some very typical and clearly defined cases of digital public goods, you will find that they all have a common point - they are all open source. For example:

● Academic research on blockchain and cryptographic protocols;

● Document and tutorial resources;

● Open source software (such as Ethereum clients, software libraries, etc.).

From another perspective, open-source projects seem to inherently possess the attributes of public goods by default. Of course, you might propose some counterexamples: if I create software tailored specifically for my personal workflow and publish it on GitHub, most of the value generated by this project may still be primarily enjoyed by me. However, at least the act of "making this software open source" (as opposed to keeping it closed source or privatizing it) does constitute a form of public good and has very broad benefits.

One important advantage of the term "Open Source" is that it has a clear and widely recognized definition. The Free Software Foundation (FSF)'s definition of free software and the Open Source Initiative (OSI)'s definition of open source have both existed for decades and have gained full consensus. At the same time, it is natural for us to extend these definitions to other fields beyond software (such as writing, academic research, etc.).

In the field of cryptocurrency (Crypto), due to the inherent statefulness of the applications and the characteristics of multi-party participation, these characteristics introduce some new centralized risks and control vectors. Therefore, we do need to make some extensions based on the original definitions. For example, adding some new standards or tests, such as:

● Open Standards

● "Insider Attack Test"

● "walkaway test"

These extensions can better adapt to the actual needs of the cryptocurrency field based on the definitions set by the FSF and OSI.

So, what is the difference between "Open Source" and "Public Goods"?

We can first try to analyze through some examples of AI:

3. Extension of public goods: How "open source" covers the field of physical governance

1. I personally do not agree with the statement in the first category that excludes certain open-source projects with a certain participation threshold from the category of public goods. Just because a project has a high entry threshold does not mean it is not a public good; at the same time, a company's benefits from the project do not hinder its characteristics as a public good. Furthermore, a project itself can be a public good, but some products or services surrounding it can still be private.

2. The second type of situation is even more worthy of attention. First, note that the five examples mentioned above are all objects in physical space, rather than digital space. Therefore, if we want to extend to the realm of digital public goods, these examples themselves cannot serve as reasons to restrict the concept of "open source."

But what if we also want to cover public goods in physical space? Even in the field of cryptocurrency, there is a passion for governing physical space matters, not just limited to digital space. In a sense, the core idea of "network states" is precisely to achieve better governance and management of physical world matters.

The end of global promotion of public infrastructure — open source

Here, we can draw a conclusion:

Although providing the aforementioned physical public goods (such as infrastructure construction) at the local level can be achieved through both open-source and closed-source models, when we aim to efficiently realize these goals on a global scale, we often cannot do without genuine "open source". A typical example is "air purification": there has been a significant amount of research and development work worldwide (many of which are open-source) that helps people around the globe more easily access cleaner air.

The open-source model allows any type of public infrastructure to be more easily and efficiently promoted and deployed globally. Of course, how to effectively provide physical infrastructure locally remains an important issue, but this issue is not limited to communities of democratic governance; it is equally applicable to scenarios of corporate governance.

1. When "national defense" becomes a public good: Moral considerations between open and closed source.

National defense is a relatively special case, so I propose the following views regarding national defense:

If a project developed for national security purposes doesn't give you the peace of mind to open source it, then the project may be a public good locally or nationally, but most likely not on a global scale. The most typical example is the innovation of weapons technology. While it is true that in war, there are times when one side has significantly stronger moral legitimacy that makes it reasonable to help that side improve its offensive capabilities, in general, technological innovations that improve military capabilities do not make the world a better place. Defense projects that can become truly public goods on a global scale (i.e., those that can be open-sourced) are often truly "defensive" capabilities. For example, decentralized agriculture, electricity, or internet infrastructure, these technologies can help people maintain basic food supplies, daily operations, and communication connections in crisis situations.

2. The true meaning of open source: creating shared value for all humanity.

Therefore, at this point, we may also find that shifting the focus from "Public Goods" to "Open Source" could be a better choice. Of course, this does not mean that every open source project has the same value; the real significance lies in that we should develop and open source those projects that are most beneficial to all of humanity.

However, determining which projects are worth supporting and which are not is itself a core issue that the current public goods funding mechanism needs to address, and this has long been a consensus among people.