Hypercerts: Decentralized Impact Funding Networks at Scale

Transcript

[Music] There we go. Once upon a time, political economists actually discussed what value is. They discussed land, capital, labor, utility, and purpose. and they discussed who actually are the value creators in society and how we should account and recognize for their contributions. And then along the way we actually just replaced this with like this whole discussion with a simple formula where it said profit equals value. Everything that is profitable was valuable and if

it wasn't it didn't really value much. And I'm lucky now that I don't actually have to convince anyone anymore that this is just plainly wrong. Um, and if you want to understand the details about this argument, you can uh read the book uh the value of everything where Marina Mazukato, a UCL professor, um laid out how we kind of blurred the lines between um value extraction and value creation and how we kind of undervalue shared infrastructure, care work, open source infrastructure and many other things that we actually really value in society.

The hopeful case for kind of the emerging technologies that we are working on is for me that we can actually work on this and have a real discussion again what is value in the society and then link that together with the financial allocations of resources. So, and I think this is actually what the one of one of the most important things that we could work on and I think um we really should emphasize this as a challenge um for for kind of the financial system that we are kind of rebuilding right now. From my perspective, there's actually like a fairly simple recipe. Um we have to identify the work that is supposed to be impactful.

We have to then say, okay, what what do we actually know about the work? What are the objective measurements that we know about it about the output and the outcomes? Then we have to add subjective evaluations, judgments about this work and the outcomes. Do we actually value it as a society? Do some groups value it and others don't? We actually want to know those those things and then if we know it, we can redirect financial flows towards the things that we actually collectively value. at the Hypersuit Foundation um where I'm the director and the founder of um we actually want to contribute to this um with like one kind of simple building block. This building block are

hyperserts. Hyperserts in the essence are just a digital record of who did what when and where. So fairly simple just a a record of the work. And this is important because that allows us to say this was this work this was a different different work. It's not overlapping. So we don't get later on into double spending and other problems. So this is like the the key component. It's kind of an anchor for the whole discussion that then is happening in the second step. In the second step we can um submit at the stations and evaluations and additional data um to the um to the work that has been identified. And then the thing that we are actually like pretty good at

building financial instruments directing the flows of capital to these things that we have identified. Um so what hypersets are are not a full new funding mechanisms. It's more a primitive to build impact funding networks. Impact funding networks um are then based on kind of the hypers on the bottom. than the open evaluation system which is important because it's nobody is just in full control of of who can um submit evaluations and additional additional data. Um then we have multiple different funding platforms. I will go more into um hyperserts.org and eosertain.xyz XYZ, but also Marth is

building on top of um hyperserts to um fund regenerative land projects and um we also have connected hyperserts with bitcoin and then there are a bunch of projects that actually are in control of their own hypers um and have kind of the ability to receive the evaluations um and the platforms um are not not in control of this data because it's a shared data layer across different platforms which really makes is a um funding network. All right, let's actually look at how this looks. And um Eosertain has been built by Gainforest.

David and Shy are actually in the audience. Big shout out to them. Um here we see bunch of land projects um from the Gainforest community. Um and we will pick just one, the bees and trees. Um what we can see there is um also the map. It's a project in Uganda. Then we will further down um see further information the description of the work a proof of impact. This is like one of the evaluations that has been add added to the hypersert um by the project themselves. Below we also saw some um some supporters and now we are kind of um buying um parts of this hypersert for 10 uh USD

and then the process is basically um like buying a an NFT. So very simple in that way and then when we complete the transaction um we actually can look at the hyperserts that we own. Um and so this is also a mechanism where when we tokenize the impact now people can actually own the impact and can communicate to their stakeholders what they have contributed to either financially or with their work. So this is in that way just like one of the platforms building on top of of hyperserts. Um and then um why this is a funding network is that we can now go to

hyperserts.org which basically is just a different front end to the same shared database about the these impact assets. We see the same same hypersert here. The last row is actually the address with which I um bought the hypersert. um also in the profile here we see in the marketplace that um we bought this we bought this hypersert and we can go further down and also um add like buy more on this platform. So this is really similar to suppose you could watch YouTube videos on different front ends you could buy Amazon products on different front ends and it really takes away the platform power. So and in this case I think this is really important

because if we want to build kind of impact markets or different governance mechanisms how to distribute funds to impactful projects no platform should actually be in like full full control um over your data. Um and there's like a recent uh anecdote of a friend of mine. She runs a business and Google just suspended her account. So she lost all her reputation from um the work that she has done and this shouldn't happen to impactful projects. Um they should be in control of their reputation um in this way.

Um I just showed it now for the buying process but it's the same for when we look at here the additional information. This is the information that you also saw on um eosertain.xyz um we see it here on the right side. um and um also the evaluations and the additional data. So it's it's really like a shared database um of impact assets and here this is how you can create a basic evaluation. Then um the third part um hypersets for nature steward um is a round that um we ran with gainforest. So gainforest was actually leading this round um in Gitcoin round 23 and all the projects um that raised funds on Gitcoin then

distributed some parts of their um hyperserts to the donors the bitcoin donors and then also the matching funds were distributed based on um based on buying um hyperserts. So this is kind of like just a first view on what we imagine because we imagine many more um platforms that can integrate with this either new platforms or existing platforms. We also want to integrate like um web two platforms that we really have a shared database about what actually happened um like what is the good that happened in the world and um having this discussion about what is that we value um out in the public. Um

and then we also believe that this is not only something for regenerative work but it's also something for journalism for open source software for community service and many other domains that are today underfunded. So ultimately um we really don't want to have data sets for these impact funding mechanisms. we would don't want to have excessive platform power and what is also important for this this infrastructure would be AI ready already um because um we basically just would need to replace kind of the mechanism here and um then um kind of allocation mechanisms that build on this data can link the projects

with the shared infrastructure and this is important because today already whoever applied to a grant already knows like you use an AI to help you. On the other side, the funders are kind of today already kind of doing a first screen. Um with the help of AI taking that this two steps further, we will have um just AI agents talking to each other um about like what is it um that should be funded. And in the hopeful case, we actually get rid of the marketing narratives of funding um because the AI just like doesn't care about it and because it can see it and everybody has a good narrative. Um and then it's important what is actually the verifiable data underlying this where AI agents can make real decisions on what

is your reputation that you have built up um over time. Um then what we are working on today is hypers v2. I don't have time to get into it but we need to simplify this further. Um this is what we want to work on. If you want to work on this as well if you want to get involved or if you want to build on top of it and have requirements um for this please get in touch. Um you have a little bit more information on the bottom right um about hypersets v2. Thank you. [Applause] [Music]