I’ve written before about why I think Retroactive Public Goods Funding is one of the most interesting economic experiments happening in the world right now, and why even people with zero stake in Optimism should be watching it closely.

Lately, I’ve been spending less time on X/Twitter and more time heads down, trying to make public goods funding work better. When I poke my head up, the sentiment seems to have gotten more negative, especially toward Retro Funding, and increasingly toward the whole idea of public goods funding in crypto.

Criticism is good. I’ll talk all day about the immaturity of the mechanisms or the fragility of governance. I even miss the days when people earnestly debated what is and isn’t a “public good.”

What’s frustrating is how intellectually lazy so much of the bearish commentary has become.

There are three common critiques I see over and over. They all miss the point.

1. “X is better than Y, but Y got more, therefore the whole system is broken.”

This is bias masquerading as principle.

Every Retro round publishes its full scoring equation and raw datasets on GitHub. If you think the current formula overweights developer history or underweights utility, great. Open an issue. Fork the coefficients. Publish your own analysis.

Pointing to an anecdote isn’t analysis. It’s like saying the scale is broken because you feel lighter than your friend.

Yes, there will always be noise. Yes, there will be Type II errors. That’s the cost of using an open filter. The way to improve it is by proposing better designs, not arguing from vibes.

2. “So-and-so left governance, therefore the whole system is broken.”

This confuses star power with governance power.

Delegates churn. Contributors burn out. Politics get messy. That’s life. What matters is whether there’s enough continuity and commitment from the people doing the work.

If your trusted delegate or thought leader steps back, the adult move is not to rage-quit. It’s to support the next rising contributors and give them room to find their voice.

3. “This decision was made the wrong way, therefore the whole system is broken.”

People love to complain that consensus governance is slow. They also love to complain when hard decisions are made without a vote.

Yes, process matters. But what matters just as much is the impact of the decisions.

Did dropping “PGF” from the name dilute the public goods mandate? Show the budget allocation before and after.

Did a voting change skew outcomes? Point to the data.

Governance doesn’t evolve through outrage tweets. It evolves through analysis, iteration, and amendments backed by evidence.

If you think something’s broken, show receipts.

So what's the point?

The right question isn’t “Did the results match my priors?”

It’s: Are we laying better rails each season?

Especially in a down market, the easy move would be to slash budgets and fund only “core” infra. But Optimism keeps choosing the harder path: running a live experiment in how to allocate protocol revenue to the people who had the most meaningful impact, direct and indirect.

That choice deserves respect.

Doing the hard thing means mistakes. It means tension. It means testing assumptions, measuring impact, and iterating in public.

That’s the whole point. Retroactive public goods funding isn’t a static mechanism. It’s a rare, live experiment in economic design—one of the only ones still running, still adapting, still trying.

You can debate the models. You can audit the process. You can propose changes.

But if your reaction to a single funding round is to declare the whole thing a failure, you’re not helping - you’re heckling from the cheap seats.

This space doesn’t need more quick takes. It needs more people in the arena.