# It's easy to poke holes in Retro Funding, it's hard to make it better Source: https://paragraph.com/@cerv1/its-easy-to-poke-holes-in-retro-funding-its-hard-to-make-it-better Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Its-easy-to-poke-holes-in-Retro-Funding-its-hard-to-make-it-better?index=0x681d65c51d4dc8bb1e24b662fb45869d1c39106ba94b8890e397219021b1f9f069a7ead6 Submitted by cerv1.eth on 2025-05-09 UTC, 3 upvotes, 2 comments ## Summary The author argues that criticism of Retro Funding, Optimism's retroactive public goods funding program, has become intellectually lazy, and that critics should propose better designs and show evidence rather than rely on anecdotes or outrage. The piece notes that every Retro round publishes its full scoring equation and raw datasets on GitHub, so critics can open issues or fork the coefficients. It says that departures of delegates or contributors are normal and should be met with support for new contributors, not rage-quitting, and that questions about dropping "PGF" from the name or changing voting should be answered with budget data before and after the change. It also argues that Optimism's continued funding during a down market is a harder path that deserves respect. ## Article I’ve written before about why I think Retroactive Public Goods Funding is one of the most interesting economic experiments happening in the world right now, and why even people with zero stake in Optimism should be watching it closely. Lately, I’ve been spending less time on X/Twitter and more time heads down, trying to make public goods funding work better. When I poke my head up, the sentiment seems to have gotten more negative, especially toward Retro Funding, and increasingly toward the whole idea of public goods funding in crypto. Criticism is good. I’ll talk all day about the immaturity of the mechanisms or the fragility of governance. I even miss the days when people earnestly debated what is and isn’t a “public good.” What’s frustrating is how intellectually lazy so much of the bearish commentary has become. There are three common critiques I see over and over. They all miss the point. This is bias masquerading as principle. Every Retro round publishes its full scoring equation and raw datasets on GitHub. If you think the current formula overweights developer history or underweights utility, great. Open an issue. Fork the coefficients. Publish your own analysis. Pointing to an anecdote isn’t analysis. It’s like saying the scale is broken because you feel lighter than your friend. Yes, there will always be noise. Yes, there will be Type II errors. That’s the cost of using an open filter. The way to improve it is by proposing better designs, not arguing from vibes. 2. “So-and-so left governance, therefore the whole system is broken.” This confuses star power with governance power. Delegates churn. Contributors burn out. Politics get messy. That’s life. What matters is whether there’s enough continuity and commitment from the people doing the work. If your trusted delegate or thought leader steps back, the adult move is not to rage-quit. It’s to support the next rising contributors and give them room to find their voice. People love to complain that consensus governance is slow. They also love to complain when hard decisions are made without a vote. Yes, process matters. But what matters just as much is the impact of the decisions. Did dropping “PGF” from the name dilute the public goods mandate? Show the budget allocation before and after. Did a voting change skew outcomes? Point to the data. Governance doesn’t evolve through outrage tweets. It evolves through analysis, iteration, and amendments backed by evidence. If you think something’s broken, show receipts. The right question isn’t “Did the results match my priors?” It’s: Are we laying better rails each season? Especially in a down market, the easy move would be to slash budgets and fund only “core” infra. But Optimism keeps choosing the harder path: running a live experiment in how to allocate protocol revenue to the people who had the most meaningful impact, direct and indirect. That choice deserves respect. Doing the hard thing means mistakes. It means tension. It means testing assumptions, measuring impact, and iterating in public. That’s the whole point. Retroactive public goods funding isn’t a static mechanism. It’s a rare, live experiment in economic design—one of the only ones still running, still adapting, still trying. You can debate the models. You can audit the process. You can propose changes. But if your reaction to a single funding round is to declare the whole thing a failure, you’re not helping - you’re heckling from the cheap seats. This space doesn’t need more quick takes. It needs more people in the arena. ## Comments **macbudkowski.eth**: I once heard that "Ethereum needs better critics", and I guess the same is true for Retro Funding. I criticized it a few times, but never went deep enough to open an issue on GitHub :) Wondering how realistic this ask is, though. Would people really stop working on their projects to spend 5-10 hours doing analysis of Retro Funding to have maybe 10% chance of impacting the process? Maybe it makes sense for bigger projects, where a lot of money is at stake? Last time one badgeholder asked me for my take, and I did write a mini-essay for them, But it was mostly to wrap up the 'Retro funding chapter' in my head - I didn't expect it to have any impact. **cerv1.eth**: I think it depends on what their motivations are. If their motivation is to get more money for their project, then yeah, that's probably not a good idea. My post was directed at the broader community who have strong opinions about what should / should not be funded. I want those people to bring sharp criticism and ideas, not lazy takes! I'm paraphrasing heavily, but there was a specific exchange that happened yesterday where someone I respect said: "Chains should stop paying the Superchain tax" And someone from OP said "But we use it to fund public goods" And they said "But you gave X to a VC-backed project a year ago" And the OP person said "But we also gave 10X that amount to dev tooling just last month" And they said "But you used to fund XYZ and now you don't anymore" And the OP person said "Here was the discussion and the analysis about why we made the change" And they said "But a person who I trust and was involved in governance was unhappy with that decision" --- What I will say is that people who put in the effort to analyze things that are wrong and submit a practical idea for how to fix it get a lot of airtime. So yeah, if you have a good idea, like how to get project attribution from call data or logs, share it! If you think the status quo of whale projects competing with small bootstrapped projects is demotivating, propose a new mechanism!