Season 10. Episode 2: Deep Funding: The Future of AI-Powered Public Goods Allocation with Devansh Mehta

New @greenpillnet pod out today! 🌱
Kevin chats with Devansh Mehta about Deep Funding — an AI-powered mechanism combining human judgment and prediction markets to fund open-source projects.

They dive into how it scales evaluations, prevents Sybil attacks, and builds a fair "price feed" for public goods ahead of Gitcoin Grants 24 (GG24).

Links:
🌐grants.gitcoin.co 
🌐 deepfunding.org
🌐 deep.seer.pm
🌐 greenpill.network

🐦 @owocki @greenpillnet 

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Welcome to the Greenpill Podcast – exploring tech, coordination & Protopia
00:45 – Introducing guest Devansh Mehta, AI & Public Goods Lead at the Ethereum Foundation
01:20 – What is Deep Funding and why it matters
02:00 – How Deep Funding scales human evaluations with AI models
02:45 – Overview of the pilot run and what was tested
03:20 – How the mechanism works: human jurors + model builders
04:30 – The White Hat Sybil attack and what it revealed
05:40 – How Deep Funding integrates data science competitions and prediction markets
06:50 – Results of the pilot: weighted funding for 45 open-source repos
07:30 – Creating a credibly neutral funding system with unequal weights
08:40 – Comparing Deep Funding with Protocol Guild and other mechanisms
09:20 – Building a strong community of AI developers and human jurors
10:30 – The role of jurors and models in fair evaluation
11:10 – What's next: expanding to 90 repos in Gitcoin Grants 24 (GG24)
11:50 – Funding pool: $350K from Ethereum Foundation & Gitcoin
12:30 – Challenges of distributing capital efficiently and fairly
13:20 – Moving to GitHub repo-level governance: who controls the funds?
14:40 – Two models of spending: splits contracts vs counterfactual wallets
15:40 – Lessons from past Gitcoin funding rounds
16:20 – Why Deep Funding focuses on units of work, not organizations
17:20 – Avoiding distortions and improving fairness in funding
18:10 – The vision: creating a live price feed for public goods
19:10 – How prediction markets price open-source value
20:30 – Self-correcting market behavior and real-time adjustments
21:20 – Subsidies and liquidity: bootstrapping active participation
22:10 – Balancing liquidity levels to prevent manipulation
23:00 – What's next for Deep Funding: refining future iterations
23:40 – Shoutout to the model builders and competition winners
24:20 – Where to learn more: deepfunding.org
 & deep.seer.pm

25:00 – Closing: the future of AI, governance, and funding what matters