About this episode

In this episode, the hosts discuss open source funding challenges with guest Devansh Mehta at the Devconnect Conference in Buenos Aires.

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…

People in this episode

Hosts: Eriol Fox, Victory Brown

Guest: Devansh Mehta

Topics covered

• open source funding
• quadratic funding
• public goods
• AI in funding
• funding mechanisms
• Devconnect Conference

Keywords

• funding loop
• credit assignment
• Goodhart’s Law
• dependency graphs
• Deep Funding
• open networks
• corporations

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Ethereum Foundation

Places: Buenos Aires

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• Episode 286: Jack Skinner of PyCon AU and Regional Confs · March 13, 2026 · 40 min
• Episode 285: Miranda Heath on Altruism & Burnout in Open Source · March 6, 2026 · 44 min
• Episode 284: Devconnect 2025 with Trent Van Epps · February 27, 2026 · 28 min
• Episode 283: Devconnect 2025 with Nuno Loureiro · February 20, 2026 · 18 min
• Episode 282: Devconnect 2025 with Lucas Fada · February 13, 2026 · 21 min

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