Link Collection: Impact Markets

0. Readme (or don't)

• This is not a literature review. I'll vouch for links with an associated archived link, author name, and summary, but not the others.
• Last updated: Dec 2023

1. Overviews

• Impact Markets: The Annoying Details (a), Scott Alexander
  • Comprehensive description of impact markets, reasoning from first principles. Extremely well-written, and a great introduction to the details of impact markets. Gets technical, but in an easy-to-follow way.
• Toward Impact Markets (a), Dawn Drescher
  • Comprehensive description of the benefits, risks (& proposed solutions), and current work on impact markets. Fairly technical.
• Impact certificates and Impact Markets - Owen Cotton-Barratt
• Impact Markets: A Funding Mechanism for Speculative Work
• A Fresh FAQ on Impact Markets
• Impact Certificates on a Blockchain
• Will "impact certificates" value only impact?
• Hypercerts: A new primitive for public goods funding
• Crypto loves impact markets: Notes from Schelling Point Bogotá
• Impact Certificates | Evan Miyazono, Head of Research at Protocol Labs | Green Pill #21

2. Subtopics

• Altruistic equity allocation (a), Paul Christiano
  • Original proposal of allocating altruistic equity. Somewhat technical.
• Certificates of impact (a), Paul Christiano
  • Original proposal of impact certificates. Somewhat out-of-date with current work. Somewhat technical.
• Impact markets may incentivize predictably net-negative projects (a), Ofer and Owen Cotton-Barratt
  • Describes how impact markets can incentivize funding some types of projects that have clear negative expected impact. Argues that impact markets may exhibit the behavior of those types of projects, and therefore that impact markets should never be funded on impact markets.

3. Implementations

Last updated: December 2023

• Manifund*, run by Rachel & Austin
  • all of Manifund's internal docs are publicly available
  • includes the ACX Forecasting Impact Mini-Grants round, the Open Philanthropy AI Worldviews Contest, and the leftovers of ACX Grants 2024
• AI Safety GiveWiki, previously Impact Markets, [?possibly previously something else]
• Hypercerts
• Gitcoin (not an impact market, but they do retroactive quadratic public goods funding, which is pretty damn close)
• NPX Advisors (also in the "close-to-an-impact-market-but-not-quite" category. NPX recently shut down.)
• The Impact Purchase
• Experiment in Retroactive Funding: An EA Forum Prize Contest
• Plan for Impact Certificate MVP

4. Related topics

• Retroactive Public Goods Funding (a), Vitalik Buterin
• The Retroactive Funding Landscape
• The Retrofunder’s Dilemma
• Experiment in Retroactive Funding
• Chaining Retroactive Funders
• Accelerating Academic Research with Impact Certificates

5. Other resources

Places that curate content on impact markets

• EA Forum's "Impact Markets" Tag
• ?others, I'd be particularly interested in readers' ideas

People

Note: the following people haven't (necessarily) consented to being contacted nor placed on this list; I've compiled this list myself.

Note 2: if you want to get ahold of any of these people but for some reason can't, contact me.

• Rachel & Austin
• Scott Alexander
• Paul Christiano
• Dawn Drescher
• Dony Christie
• those who participated in the ACX Mini-Grants Forecasting Impact Market, including:
  • me, Tom, and Jingyi
  • Max Morawski
  • William Howard
  • everyone else listed here
• if you think you ought to be listed here but you aren't (or if you are listed here but you don't want to be), please let me know.

This post originally came from a comment I left on a bounty for charity money to help someone out with an undergrad paper.

*COI: I’ve done some work for, might do some more work for, and own a tiny bit of equity in Manifold, the parent company (?) of Manifund. I'm writing this independent of any work I'm currently doing or planning to do for Manifold or for any other entity. I just think the ideas are cool.