The FTX Future Fund had a large regranter program. They didn’t fully let regranters do whatever they wanted with funds, but I think it’s incorrect to say that it’s controlled by very few people.
Ultimately the Future Fund had veto power over regranters (even those with their own pots), [edit:] so I think it’s inaccurate to say that the regranters had control of the funds (influence, sure; but not control).
I’m somewhat perturbed by the ratio of karma on these comments (esp agree karma; although low sample size—mine has only 1 vote on agreement (5 votes on karma); see pic below for time of writing this comment)[1]. We’ve just found out that we’ve in general been way too trusting as a community, and could do with more oversight etc (although I guess it’s open to discussion how much decentralisation of decision making is ideal; see below). The fact that regranters could influence the Future Fund on their grantmaking was great, but we shouldn’t confuse that with actual control. What ultimately matters is what is true from a mechanistic legal perspective—where the buck actually stops, and who is actually in charge of authorising grants. For the Future Fund, that was 5 people (who presumably in turn could still have been vetoed by the 4 on the board).
The next step for a regranting program in terms of actually distributing control would be to actually give the regranters the money, to do whatever they saw fit with it. I can imagine many people screaming in horror at the thought, especially those in central positions who think that they are the best experts on avoiding the unilateralists curse, but that illusion has been shattered now. I have to say that writing this, I’m torn in that I still think the unilateralists curse is a big problem, given the vulnerable world hypothesis etc. I don’t know what the solution is.
Although maybe it’s in part due to the fact that Neel is mentioning the regranting program that I didn’t mention (I would’ve been better mentioning it explicitly in my original comment, but pointing out that regranters didn’t have control, perhaps in a footnote); in which case, fine.
I was reached out to by a regranter and got the vibe immediately that they were stressed about providing grants that might be accepted and basically just optimizing for what they perceived to be the most likely things for the team to give the ok.
Now again I only talked to one person but if they were just shooting ideas at the team to be processed similar to how they were processing general apps the regranter program serves more as a marketing tool to increase applicants and a slight filter of awful apps than it does change who has the power. I would be very interested to say the data on how many regrants were given / how many regrants were suggested compared to the normal funds.
I was a regranter. I did not have my own pot, but could make recommendations for grants. 52% of my regrants (11/21) were approved (32% by $ value). I understand that those with their own pots allocated to them had a lower bar for acceptance so probably had a better success rate for approvals.
The FTX Future Fund had a large regranter program. They didn’t fully let regranters do whatever they wanted with funds, but I think it’s incorrect to say that it’s controlled by very few people.
Ultimately the Future Fund had veto power over regranters (even those with their own pots), [edit:] so I think it’s inaccurate to say that the regranters had control of the funds (influence, sure; but not control).
I’m somewhat perturbed by the ratio of karma on these comments (esp agree karma; although low sample size—mine has only 1 vote on agreement (5 votes on karma); see pic below for time of writing this comment)[1]. We’ve just found out that we’ve in general been way too trusting as a community, and could do with more oversight etc (although I guess it’s open to discussion how much decentralisation of decision making is ideal; see below). The fact that regranters could influence the Future Fund on their grantmaking was great, but we shouldn’t confuse that with actual control. What ultimately matters is what is true from a mechanistic legal perspective—where the buck actually stops, and who is actually in charge of authorising grants. For the Future Fund, that was 5 people (who presumably in turn could still have been vetoed by the 4 on the board).
The next step for a regranting program in terms of actually distributing control would be to actually give the regranters the money, to do whatever they saw fit with it. I can imagine many people screaming in horror at the thought, especially those in central positions who think that they are the best experts on avoiding the unilateralists curse, but that illusion has been shattered now. I have to say that writing this, I’m torn in that I still think the unilateralists curse is a big problem, given the vulnerable world hypothesis etc. I don’t know what the solution is.
Although maybe it’s in part due to the fact that Neel is mentioning the regranting program that I didn’t mention (I would’ve been better mentioning it explicitly in my original comment, but pointing out that regranters didn’t have control, perhaps in a footnote); in which case, fine.
I was reached out to by a regranter and got the vibe immediately that they were stressed about providing grants that might be accepted and basically just optimizing for what they perceived to be the most likely things for the team to give the ok.
Now again I only talked to one person but if they were just shooting ideas at the team to be processed similar to how they were processing general apps the regranter program serves more as a marketing tool to increase applicants and a slight filter of awful apps than it does change who has the power. I would be very interested to say the data on how many regrants were given / how many regrants were suggested compared to the normal funds.
I was a regranter. I did not have my own pot, but could make recommendations for grants. 52% of my regrants (11/21) were approved (32% by $ value). I understand that those with their own pots allocated to them had a lower bar for acceptance so probably had a better success rate for approvals.