Sustain

Guest

Trent Van Epps

Panelists

Eriol Fox | Victory Brown

Show Notes

In this episode of Sustain, host Eriol Fox and co-host Victory Brown are at the Devconnect Conference in Buenos Aires with Trent Van Epps, an organizer of Protocol Guild and member of the Ethereum Foundation. They discuss the vital role of Protocol Guild in funding core protocol developers, addressing systemic issues of under-compensation in open-source projects. Trent also explores the similarities and differences between funding in the open-source community and the Ethereum ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of collective representation and the unique financial structures of blockchain technology. The conversation highlights the necessity of diversity and inclusion within the Ethereum community and shares insights on the impact of adverse regulatory pressures and funding challenges. Press download now!

[00:00:29] Trent explains Protocol Guild and he connects Guild work to his EF role coordinating network upgrades and ensuring stable funding and continuity.

[00:02:35] Trent tells us why core contributors are under compensated and notes there’s a “hot ball of money” problem.

[00:05:21] Eriol and Trent discuss discomfort around money in open source. the myth of pure altruism, and the reality that “you can’t eat your code.”

[00:06:28] What can open source learn from Ethereum? Trent points to classic charitable giving practices and highlights Ethereum’s difference and stresses that funding can be used as a political lever.

[00:11:07] Trent contrasts different contributor needs and points out diversity/heterogeneity as essential to Ethereum’s robustness and security.

[00:15:40] Trent describes tight social bonds in Ethereum formed by “youth of the ecosystem” and shared regulatory pressures, which push the community to cooperate defensively, and he talks about how Protocol Guild operates like a loose union/syndicate.

[00:20:03] He outlines their funding vehicle called the 1% Pledge.

[00:22:07] Trent acknowledges high-profile scams and speculative excess get media attention, overshadowing serious work, like the technological waves with railroads. He points to Argentina, Kenya, and other places with weak institutions.

[00:24:59] Eriol closes the discussion with a call to widen your bubble.

[00:26:08] Trent’s project spotlight is ZKP2P and a great book by Benjamin Birkinbine. Also, he shares where you can find him on the internet.

Links

[email protected]

[email protected]

SustainOSS Discourse

SustainOSS Mastodon

SustainOSS Bluesky

SustainOSS LinkedIn

Open Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)

Richard Littauer Socials

Eriol Fox X

Victory Brown X

Trent Van Epps X

Devconnect- 2025, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 17-22 November

Ethereum

Ethereum Foundation

Protocol Guild

ZKP2P

Incorporating the Digital Commons: Corporate Involvement in Free and Open Source Software by Benjamin J. Birkinbine

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer

Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound

Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Logistical support by Tina Arboleda from Digital Savvies

Special Guest: Trent Van Epps.

Guest

Nuno Loureiro

Panelists

Eriol Fox | Victory Brown

Show Notes

In this episode of Sustain, host Eriol Fox and co-host Victory Brown are live with Nuno Loureiro, Lead Designer at the Ethereum Foundation, at Devconnect Conference in Buenos Aires. Nuno shares his journey in digital design and discusses his role in focusing on ethereum.org. He highlights the challenges of designing for open source platforms, including the difficulty of onboarding and collaborating with designers. He also touches on UX challenges in the context of blockchain technology, emphasizing the importance of trust and design for mass adoption of open source tools. The discussion further explores how the Ethereum Foundation engages with the community for design feedback and the decentralized nature of project narratives. The episode concludes with Nuno spotlighting Penpot, a tool he believes is changing the landscape design. Hit download now to hear more!

[00:00:34] Nuno shares his background in digital and product design and joining Ethereum Foundation to focus on Ethereum.org as a learning portal.

[00:02:13] He shares the biggest design challenges at the Ethereum Foundation starting out with a major challenge which was opening a design system to open source collaboration.

[00:04:08] Eriol asks how good design and usability relate to sustainable open source. Nuno argues UX is the main blocker for mass adoption of open source tools and uses tools like GIMP as an example.

[00:05:00] Victory asks how Nuno brings more designers into the ecosystem and elevates design conversations. He admits he’s “not doing enough” and notes how hard it is to balance paid work with open source contributions and critiques designers, including himself, as poor collaborators compared with developers.

[00:06:27] Eriol reflects on how both coders and designers get deeply attached to their work, and notes that vulnerability and openness to critique are hard but necessary for sustainability of open source to grow.

[00:07:54] Eriol brings up Vitalik’s talk, Founder of Ethereum, at Funding the Commons, where he emphasized reliability as critical to UX and poses a question to Nuno. He explains what Ethereum Foundation’s current “three mantras” are.

[00:11:49] A question is brought up about how design decisions for new features are made inside Ethereum and what others can learn. Nuno clarifies the Ethereum Foundation does not own the protocol or roadmap and is a community based approach.

[00:13:26] Victory asks how Ethereum gathers UX feedback from users. Nuno says they rely heavily on third party projects that do their own UX research.

[00:14:43] Nuno spotlights Penpot, an open source design tool he uses and believes is changing the design landscape.

Links

[email protected]

[email protected]

SustainOSS Discourse

SustainOSS Mastodon

SustainOSS Bluesky

SustainOSS LinkedIn

Open Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)

Richard Littauer Socials

Eriol Fox X

Victory Brown X

Nuno Loureiro X

Nuno Loureiro Website

Ethereum Foundation

Ethereum

Devconnect- 2025, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 17-22 November

Funding the Commons

Penpot

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer

Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound

Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Logistical support by Tina Arboleda from Digital Savvies

Special Guest: Nuno Loureiro.

Guest

Lucas Fada

Panelists

Eriol Fox | Victory Brown

Show Notes

In this episode of Sustain, host Eriol Fox and co-host Victory Brown speak with Lucas Fada, the head of partnerships at Drips Network. Lucas shares insights from his over a decade of experience in early-stage startups, focusing on making open source software projects financially sustainable through strategic partnerships. They discuss the methodologies Lucas employs to secure funding for open source projects, the types of projects that attract funders, and how Drips Network aims to create a 'super app' for funding open source builders. Lucas also provides valuable advice for open source projects on becoming more visible to funders and highlights the essential role of ecosystems like Web3 in supporting open source. Additionally, he emphasizes the importance of moving beyond traditional philanthropy and crisis management in open source funding. Press download to hear more!

[00:00:23] Eriol introduces Lucas, and he explains what doing partnerships for Drips Network entails.

[00:01:50] Before approaching funders, Lucas shares that Drips looks for people or teams that have already funded OSS or spoken publicly about it.

[00:02:56] Victory wonders what kind of projects funders are interested in. Lucas explains funders tend to focus on high-visibility libraries rather than deep dependencies and goes into funder motivations to “give back” vs ecosystem needs.

[00:05:17] How can projects become more fundable? Lucas dives into this in two parts and he announces they are building a ‘super app’ for funding open source builders.

[00:07:49] Lucas elaborates on what package registries could do. One example he mentions is that Drips launched a “Fund Me” button for GitHub repos, like “Buy Me a Coffee” but crypto-based and fee free.

[00:09:19] Eriol notes that many projects associate marketing with proprietary, corporate culture, but marketing is really just communication. Lucas suggests the community could develop a shared marketing team that helps projects share their story.

[00:10:53] What can funders do proactively to support open source and critical digital infrastructure? Lucas’ top advice is: Talk to your own developers.

[00:13:07] Why Web3? It’s one of the most OSS-driven spaces; blockchains are typically open source and modular. Lucas wants OSS funding to move out of philanthropy/emergency rescue mode into something more strategic and ongoing.

[00:15:25] Lucas shares how they are making OSS maintenance a viable elaborating on how Drips is building funding pathways for different stages of an OSS career: Dependency funding, Direct grants, Retroactive grants, and Drips Wave.

[00:17:58] Drips is working with UNICEF to create funding mechanisms for several high use Digital Public Goods and how governments in the global south could encourage youth to join open source bounties. Eriol acknowledges skepticism about bounties and highlights their benefits.

[00:19:54] Find out where you can follow Lucas on the internet and he shares his project spotlight, Ethers.js and its maintainer, Richard “ricmoo” Moore.

Links

[email protected]

[email protected]

SustainOSS Discourse

SustainOSS Mastodon

SustainOSS Bluesky

SustainOSS LinkedIn

Open Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)

Richard Littauer Socials

Eriol Fox X

Victory Brown X

Lucas Fada X

Lucas Fada LinkedIn

Drips

Drips Discord

Devconnect- 2025, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 17-22 November

Ethereum

Ethereum Foundation

Ethers.js

Web3

Richard “ricmoo” Moore

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer

Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound

Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Logistical support by Tina Arboleda from Digital Savvies

Special Guest: Lucas Fada.

Guest

Devansh Mehta

Panelists

Eriol Fox | Victory Brown

Show Notes

In this episode of Sustain, host Eriol Fox and co-host Victory Brown are at Devconnect Conference in Buenos Aires with Devansh Mehta from the Ethereum Foundation, to unpack one of the hardest problems in open source: how to fund the public good infrastructure that everything else depends on fairly, ethically, and at scale. They dig into quadratic funding, “credit assignment,” dependency graphs, Goodhart’s Law, and how AI can help, without taking over. Also, why open networks still struggle to compete with corporations and what new funding mechanisms like Deep Funding are trying to change. Hit download now to hear more!

[00:00:22] Eriol introduces Devansh, and he tells us about the work he does at Ethereum Foundation.

[00:01:32] He explains two core problems: Funding loop and Credit assignment.

[00:03:57] He identifies two failure modes: Popularity contests and lobbying & favoritism and shares why he found quadratic funding very liberating.

[00:05:48] Devansh uses Bitcoin as a simple model: miners get all the credit for a block and the new BTC is the funding loop.

[00:06:51] He defines public goods as value created minus value captured and argues the real challenge is linking revenue centers to cost centers.

[00:09:19] Devansh proposes a 3-step model for connecting revenue and OSS dependencies: Build an accurate dependency graph, weight the edges, capturing “how much value I get from you, and send money into one address and let it flow through the graph by weights.

[00:11:28] Goodhart’s law is explained, and Devansh warns metrics like stars/downloads break once tied directly to money and he gives some solutions to use non-deterministic AI and human judgement.

[00:16:04] Victory wonders how we can make this more ethical. Devansh notes that experts have the biggest conflict of interest, and he introduces cryptographic ideas: Confusion and Diffusion.

[00:18:27] Devansh analogizes funding mechanisms are like recommendation algorithms and critiques the current RFP/grant system common in non-Web3 open source.

[00:21:01] Find out where you can follow Devansh on the internet and he shares the Ethereum Foundation believes in the “policy of subtraction” and highlights some key partners in deep funding: Seer, Pond, and Drips.

Links

[email protected]

[email protected]

SustainOSS Discourse

SustainOSS Mastodon

SustainOSS Bluesky

SustainOSS LinkedIn

Open Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)

Richard Littauer Socials

Eriol Fox X

Victory Brown X

Devansh Mehta X

Deep Funding

Deep Funding GG24 Web3 Tooling and Infra Round

Agent Allocators

Devconnect- 2025, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 17-22 November

Ethereum

Ethereum Foundation

Ethereum Foundation Blog

Goodhart’s law

Seer

Pond

Drips

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer

Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound

Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Logistical support by Tina Arboleda from Digital Savvies

Special Guest: Devansh Mehta.

Guest

Nixo Rokish

Panelists

Eriol Fox | Victory Brown

Show Notes

In this live episode of Sustain from Devconnect in Buenos Aires, host Eriol Fox and

co-host Victory Brown sit down with Nixo Rokish, Protocol Support Lead at the

Ethereum Foundation, to unpack how Ethereum’s deeply decentralized governance

actually works in practice. They dive into the nuts and bolts of coordinating 100+

core contributors across 11+ client teams, why neutral facilitation is crucial, how

Ethereum’s upgrade and EIP process avoids “single maintainer” failure modes, and

what lessons other open source projects can steal to make their own governance

more sustainable. The episode concludes with Nixo promoting the EthStaker

project focused on decentralized staking. Hit download now to hear more!

[00:00:38] Nixo explains Ethereum as a rare example of truly decentralized

governance and she describes the Protocol Coordination team.

[00:02:25] Why does this governance model matter for sustainability? Nixo says

most projects rely on 1-2 key people and if they leave, the project can stall or die.

[00:04:09] Eriol asks if anyone resists this decentralized, community-led

governance model. Nixo says active participants are mostly enthusiastic about

the process and the main friction from VCs wanting more control and social

media “ship faster” pressure.

[00:05:51] Eriol talks about money and influence entering open source projects

and Nixo shares that core devs are motivated by building systems for many

people, not concentrating profit.

[00:08:00] Nixo walks through the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) process.

[00:11:38] Victory asks how they manage consensus with so many people and

companies involved. Nixo explains 11+ client times, only one is within EF, other

are independent companies/nonprofits.

[00:13:36] Eriol reacts to how impressive it is that devs can reach consensus via

facilitation and asks Nixo for advice for smaller open source projects that want to

adopt similar practices. Her key advice is to have a neutral facilitator.

[00:16:13] Nixo shares where you can find her on the internet and she spotlights a

project she used to work at called, EthStaker.

Links

[email protected]

[email protected]

SustainOSS Discourse

SustainOSS Mastodon

SustainOSS Bluesky

SustainOSS LinkedIn

Open Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)

Richard Littauer Socials

Eriol Fox X

Victory Brown X

Nixo Rokish X

Devconnect-Buenos Aires, Argentina 2025, 17-22 November

Ethereum

Ethereum Foundation

Institute of Forecasting & Planning

EthStaker

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer

Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound

Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Logistical support by Tina Arboleda from Digital Savvies

Special Guest: Nixo Rokish.