Nadia Asparouhova: on public goods & peer production

Here is my conversation with Nadia Asparouhova: intothebytecode.xyz/nadia-asparouhova/

Nadia 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 between the first wave of open source communities and crypto
54:42 different classes of stakeholders
1:05:00 research methodology and tools for thought