add: ethglobal sf 2024 auto retro funding blog post

apps/docs/blog/2024-11-19-auto-retro-funding/index.md

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+---
+slug: auto-retro-funding
+title: "Auto Retro Funding - continuous, simple, automatic"
+authors: [jabolol]
+tags: [open source, retroactive public goods funding, hackathon]
+image: ./Oso-X-Polygon.png
+---
+
+# Auto Retro Funding: Continuous, Simple, Automatic
+
+The open-source ecosystem is a vibrant and vital space, fostering innovation and
+collaboration across industries. However, it faces a persistent challenge:
+funding. Despite their critical importance, many impactful projects struggle to
+secure sustainable support, often relying on ad hoc donations or grants that
+fail to scale with their influence.
+
+This challenge inspired us to create
+[**AutoRF**](https://ethglobal.com/showcase/autoretrofunding-bxy5k) during
+[ETHGlobal San Francisco 2024](http://ethglobal.com/events/sanfrancisco2024), a
+system designed to make retroactive funding simple, scalable, and transparent.
+
+<!-- truncate -->
+
+## The Challenge: Sustaining Public Goods
+
+Public goods, like open-source projects, often suffer from the
+[free-rider problem](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-rider/). While
+their benefits are shared widely, the financial burden of sustaining them often
+falls on too few contributors. Traditional funding models, whether upfront
+grants or donations, tend to leave gaps. Even the most impactful projects can go
+underfunded, while others gain visibility-driven support over merit.
+
+Retroactive funding provides a solution by rewarding contributions based on
+measurable past impact. However, current retro funding processes remain complex,
+time-intensive, and mostly manual.
+
+For example, [**Optimism's Retro Funding**](https://retrofunding.optimism.io)
+rounds require extensive deliberation by voters, consuming hundreds of hours to
+allocate funds fairly. These challenges limit scalability and discourage broader
+adoption.
+
+## Introducing AutoRF
+
+AutoRF makes retroactive funding continuous, automatic, and accessible. By
+combining on-chain automation with human-in-the-loop oversight, AutoRF provides
+funders with tools to define impact metrics, schedule distributions, and scale
+funding pools effortlessly.
+
+### How AutoRF Works
+
+AutoRF simplifies retroactive funding with a mix of automation and on-chain
+efficiency. Funders create funding pools, define how to measure contributions
+using impact metrics, and set schedules for distributing rewards. Contributors
+join these pools, and their work is tracked through data like commit history and
+repository activity.
+
+The system automatically indexes new contribution data, recalculates impact
+scores, and updates funding weights on-chain using smart contracts. This ensures
+rewards are distributed fairly and transparently. By automating these processes,
+AutoRF makes it easy to support impactful projects with minimal manual effort.
+
+![Split Overview](./Split-overview.png)
+
+### The Grinder's Fund x Polygon
+
+At ETHGlobal SF 2024, we showcased AutoRF with a live prototype: **The Grinder's
+Fund**, a retroactive funding pool rewarding the hardest-working teams at the
+ETHGlobal hackathon. Funded by [**Polygon**](https://polygon.technology) and
+[**Dabl Club**](https://www.dabl.club), The Grinder's Fund distributed **$1,000
+USD** across elegible participants. The final distribution can be found at the
+[Splits website](https://app.splits.org/accounts/0xd90561e9c1d4B58b0aFfB39B5eb39494C4D8A9C6/?chainId=137).
+
+The fund analyzed GitHub activity to reward contributors based on metrics like
+commit frequency timing, and size. By Sunday morning, over **60 projects** had
+signed up, with an average of 4 people per team, totaling around **300
+participants**. This demonstrated AutoRF's ability to scale retroactive funding
+in real-world scenarios. More insights from the hackathon can be found
+[here](https://github.com/opensource-observer/ethglobal-sf-2024/blob/main/insights/ethglobal-sf-2024.ipynb).
+
+![The Grinder's Fund Distribution](./AutoRF-final-funding.png)
+
+## Why It Matters
+
+AutoRF is not just a hackathon project; it is a blueprint for sustaining public
+goods at scale.
+
+By lowering operational overhead and providing a transparent, data-driven
+funding mechanism, AutoRF democratizes access to retroactive funding for any
+ecosystem. With its continuous distribution model, AutoRF empowers funders to
+reward impactful contributions while providing contributors with consistent,
+merit-based incentives.
+
+## The Future of Retro Funding
+
+AutoRF represents a shift in how we sustain public goods. Whether it is
+open-source software, climate initiatives, or educational programs, retroactive
+funding has the potential to support critical work while driving engagement and
+innovation.
+
+By scaling AutoRF, we envision a future where funding is continuous, simple, and
+automatic. A future where public goods do not just survive but thrive.