*Huge thanks to Harith, Chee, Wen Kang, Sam, Vienna, Kim, and all the ETH KL Community. From the Taiwan community, thanks to Noah, Jackey, and Vivien. Also, thanks to Taka and Hal from Japan. All of my initiatives and inspirations came from the discussions we had at Pagoda. I learned a lot from you all.* Recently, I decided to start a small funding project for public goods. I've deposited 2 ETH into a multisig wallet to serve as an initial public funding pool, which can be viewed [here](https://optimistic.etherscan.io/tx/0xbe1317e6057a6f569f31e32cd0ddcf4885579d2ca29b0357db0054fc1937d186). I will support three developers from my local community in Korea by funding their travel to participate in global hackathons. This opportunity will allow them to learn and experience global developments firsthand. The only condition is that if they win any prizes, they must put them back into the public funding pool. Let's see how many people we can send to Devcon 2024 this year. Please allow me to share why I am starting this initiative. In our competitive society, many people believe that to improve their lives, they must take victories away from others, leading to a zero-sum game. As a result, numerous individuals become obsessed with their own 'growth,' continually striving not to fall behind. This obsession escalates anxiety and contributes to high suicide rates. Korea exemplifies this competitive culture to an extreme degree. In 2023, Korea's birth rate fell to 0.72, and even lower in Seoul at 0.55, where competition is most fierce. Moreover, Korea has the highest suicide rate, with 25 deaths per 100,000 people—more than double the average for OECD countries. In contrast to a competitive society, there exists a world where the positive-sum game thrives: the open-source community. We can view open-source contributions as voluntary work for the public good. Unlike the predatory nature of competition, contributing to open-source is more akin to giving love to society. This shift naturally transforms the game from zero-sum to positive-sum. Thanks to this spirit, we have seen the development of public goods like Linux, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and many others. Consequently, the freedom to share knowledge and software is accelerating change and adding values to the society. Civic hacking is a fascinating movement that perfectly combines open source with public goods. Some people believe that public goods lack sufficient incentives to motivate people compared to the startup model, which maximizes financial incentives. Despite the doubtful views on the public goods, however, the Taiwanese community is making tangible changes in their society. Audrey Tang, a core member of g0v, Taiwan's civic hacking community, ultimately became a government minister. Her leadership is steering the country toward a significantly more beneficial positive-sum outcome. And Civic hacking, which originated with Code for America, is now spreading globally, with initiatives like Code for Japan and, fortunately, Code for Korea. These efforts contribute to make our public systems better, providing a safety net that allows people the freedom to fail. Unfortunately, the civic hacking movement in Korea remains a minority initiative and has not spread widely among the populace. Furthermore, sustainability issues limit the scope primarily to smaller projects, as large-scale endeavors are difficult to sustain. A particularly distressing issue is that a significant amount of the substantial public budget allocated for R&D, which should ideally support public goods, is being wasted due to corruption and rampant embezzlement within government-supported projects. The overall R&D system in Korea is so problematic that graduate students are systematically mobilized and become complicit in this flawed system. Especially notorious is the exploitation of students, who is in their alternative military service with research positions, being coerced into non-research related tasks or involved in embezzlement activities in the labs to move forward the R&D funds to startup companies that are founded by their professors. Due to their status and the closed nature of the local academia, it is difficult for them to speak out, leading to them being colloquially referred to as slaves. Therefore, rather than relying on legacy systems, I hope we can start from scratch by establishing a public fund, PPFF.KR, which stands for Punk's Public Fund for Korea. This fund aims to secure charity donations from enterprises as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives. By allowing the public to actively participate and engage in a quadratic funding mechanism, similar to Optimism's RetroPGF, I anticipate providing an alternative solution to address the covert misappropriations of public R&D budgets and to sustain the spirit of civic hacking while contributing to the sustainability of public goods projects. Therefore, when projects are launched, all information should be transparently shared with the public, and the advisory group should function substantively rather than merely decoratively. I understand that this is an ambitious goal, which may not be achieved quickly. Thus, I am starting with a simple experiment to inspire more people and spread the culture of public goods and public funding, which I believe will yield significant positive-sum outcomes. The initial idea for this initiative is to sponsor students. At the Pagoda gathering in early April, Sam shared that, it is quite common for Malaysian students to learn from their journeys. Chee led the ETH KL community to participate in global hackathons for over a year, winning numerous prizes that funded their subsequent travels. I am deeply impressed by this approach and hope to see Korean students benefit from similar experiences, learning from global exposure and away from the intense competitive pressure at home. These small changes can have a transformative impact on our society. To kickstart this initiative, I have deposited 2 ETH into a multisig wallet to sponsor three students to travel and participate in hackathons. Should they win any prizes, the funds will be reinvested into the multisig wallet to sponsor more journeys. I believe this creates a positive feedback loop and a self-sustaining system driven by goodwill. Let’s see how many people we can send to Devcon SEA 2024 from Korea this year using this method. In conclusion, through the initiative like the Punk's Public Fund for Korea, I'm trying to set the stage for a paradigm shift in how communities engage with public goods and funding for their sustainabilities. By fostering a culture of openness, cooperation, and philanthropy, this initiative aims to create a more inclusive and supportive environment that empowers individuals to explore, innovate, and contribute without the fear of failure. I hope to inspire not only our own community but also others worldwide to adopt similar models. If these ideas resonate with you, I encourage you to fork [ppff.kr](https://ppff.kr), run your own program, and share your experiences via [ppff.xyz](https://ppff.xyz). Let us initiate and embrace the power of the positive-sum games with the public goods and open source together. *P.S. Special thanks to Seeeun, Songyi, and Soowon for being part of the multisig signers who will help ensure this fund is used in a transparent manner.*