The difference between Public Goods Problems and Coordination Problems… and whether it matters.
By Michael Zargham, Scott Moore, and Matt Stephenson (author order randomized)Public Goods Problems and Coordination Problems describe some of the most fundamental and important challenges we face both in Web3 and the wider world. While they are related concepts, they are theoretically distinct. Is this a distinction without a difference? In this note we explore why game theorists and even behavioral economists (like one of your co-authors) make such a distinction. We will describe what the d...
A Rain Dance for Productivity Growth
The First Industrial Revolution (“IR 1”) is the famous one, occurring a little before the year 1800. It connected people with railroads and steamships and yet, despite its fame, it brought almost no growth:Look how flat the curve is before ~1850. That curve is a measure our ability to do more with less, to meet our human needs without simply forcing everyone to work harder. And so it's interesting that IR 1 didn't really improve our lot, at least not for decades and decades after it...
The Ideas We Lose: Funding Scientific Citations through an NFT SplitStream
Introduction: How the First Great Finding in Empirical Science Was Lost for DecadesBelieve it or not, humanity is completely capable of ignoring a $1,000,000,000,000 bill sitting in plain sight. It happened in 1747, when James Lind ran a controlled scientific study — maybe the first ever — and discovered that citrus fruits cured scurvy. In Lind’s day, scurvy killed more British sailors than "shipwreck, storms, all other diseases, and enemy action combined”. Which is to say that Lind's cu...
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The difference between Public Goods Problems and Coordination Problems… and whether it matters.
By Michael Zargham, Scott Moore, and Matt Stephenson (author order randomized)Public Goods Problems and Coordination Problems describe some of the most fundamental and important challenges we face both in Web3 and the wider world. While they are related concepts, they are theoretically distinct. Is this a distinction without a difference? In this note we explore why game theorists and even behavioral economists (like one of your co-authors) make such a distinction. We will describe what the d...
A Rain Dance for Productivity Growth
The First Industrial Revolution (“IR 1”) is the famous one, occurring a little before the year 1800. It connected people with railroads and steamships and yet, despite its fame, it brought almost no growth:Look how flat the curve is before ~1850. That curve is a measure our ability to do more with less, to meet our human needs without simply forcing everyone to work harder. And so it's interesting that IR 1 didn't really improve our lot, at least not for decades and decades after it...
The Ideas We Lose: Funding Scientific Citations through an NFT SplitStream
Introduction: How the First Great Finding in Empirical Science Was Lost for DecadesBelieve it or not, humanity is completely capable of ignoring a $1,000,000,000,000 bill sitting in plain sight. It happened in 1747, when James Lind ran a controlled scientific study — maybe the first ever — and discovered that citrus fruits cured scurvy. In Lind’s day, scurvy killed more British sailors than "shipwreck, storms, all other diseases, and enemy action combined”. Which is to say that Lind's cu...
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We just made our first trade! Paperclip DAO has swapped one $PAPER/$CLIP NFT for the 1/5 SE Earthen Concept Art Card offered by @bitcoinPalmer. Palmer welcome to PaperclipDAO! 🖇
We weighed several factors in making a final decision on which trade to accept. We care about more than just the economic value of a trade; we value the culture, story, and journey of the NFT as well. We also had to make a hard call about whether to honor the past or push towards the future. Our final poll after hours of discussion was a dead heat:

It wasn’t easy, but we ultimately decided to go with a trade that highlighted the future of NFTs.
PaperclipDAO now owns a 1/5 SE Earthen Concept Art Card, which can be used in Parallel, a sci-fi collectable game composed of digital collectible cards that can be combined into decks that dictate the game (think Magic at the Gathering or Pokemon). The Earthen Concept Art NFT was given only to early supporters of Parallel, and it's gratifying to see people taking the opportunity to recount the NFT's unique history.

It’s a promising future for digitally scarce, playable cards, and since the purchase of these NFTs funds the development of the game itself, it also demonstrates the wide range of utility of NFTs. Who knows, maybe the team will let us bestow some magical paperclip power? 💫
This decision wasn’t easy; we were blown away by the offers we received and quickly realized that the hardest part would be parting with the incredible NFTs that we couldn’t accept. Check out the full Round 1 offer thread to see all the amazing offers.
Given the quick turnaround, we only have time to highlight a few of our favorites. In no particular order, here is our homage to the ones that got away in Round 1:
Our very first offer came from JPG’s Maria Paula Fernandez, who just plain got it and proposed a trade for simulacra before we had explained the project at all. Legend. EDIT: There was actually a tie for the first offer, with @AdrianLeb offering a lovely BlockArt at the exact same time as MP, making them co-legends.
Adam Cochran offered this Cool Cat, complete with sunglasses and a great story. As competition heated up, he increased the offer to 4 Cool Cats. Adam later put forth an offer that absolutely blew his first two away! He proposed a collection of 14 historic NFTs, in a collection titled Moments in Our History. This collection represents unique fists, influential artists, and rare defunct collectibles that helped shape the NFT space and have led to the NFT renaissance we're living right now. It’s an excellent read.
A $HASH of the @paperclipDAO UNIv3 NFT was also minted and proposed. Proof of Beauty is stunning. Just look at them. And to honor our project with a mint of the $PAPER/$CLIP NFT floored us.

MoonCatRescue is absolutely one of the great NFT stories, with a community rediscovering and rescuing these Mooncats that have been “trapped” since the project began in 2017 (!!!). No way to do it justice here--you have to read about it. We were lucky to be offered several Mooncats (this one, this one, and this one).
Folia’s Kudzu virus is the genius brainchild of Billy Rennekamp, one of the NFT OG’s (with the NFT to prove it). There’s nothing else like it--it’s a permanent NFT that will never leave your wallet. When you send it to someone it mutates and they get their own, permanent, NFT. We were offered 2 (this one and this one).
Each of these offers makes our story all the richer and we couldn’t be more excited about our first trade. In Round 1, we picked the future. But the past always has a way of coming back... Round 2 starts now! 🖇🖇
Propose a Swap for Round 2 sudoswap.xyz
↳ Only For: 0x87EE1158bEe297c381745284dcb2E54fA03EB5f2 (paperclipdao.eth)
↳ Want Type: ERC1155 ↳ Want Asset Address: 0x76be3b62873462d2142405439777e971754e8e77 ↳ Want Token ID: 42 ↳ Want Amount: 1.0
↳ Have: Your NFT or bundle of NFTs!
↳ Post it: in the #offers channel of the paperclipDAO discord.
We just made our first trade! Paperclip DAO has swapped one $PAPER/$CLIP NFT for the 1/5 SE Earthen Concept Art Card offered by @bitcoinPalmer. Palmer welcome to PaperclipDAO! 🖇
We weighed several factors in making a final decision on which trade to accept. We care about more than just the economic value of a trade; we value the culture, story, and journey of the NFT as well. We also had to make a hard call about whether to honor the past or push towards the future. Our final poll after hours of discussion was a dead heat:

It wasn’t easy, but we ultimately decided to go with a trade that highlighted the future of NFTs.
PaperclipDAO now owns a 1/5 SE Earthen Concept Art Card, which can be used in Parallel, a sci-fi collectable game composed of digital collectible cards that can be combined into decks that dictate the game (think Magic at the Gathering or Pokemon). The Earthen Concept Art NFT was given only to early supporters of Parallel, and it's gratifying to see people taking the opportunity to recount the NFT's unique history.

It’s a promising future for digitally scarce, playable cards, and since the purchase of these NFTs funds the development of the game itself, it also demonstrates the wide range of utility of NFTs. Who knows, maybe the team will let us bestow some magical paperclip power? 💫
This decision wasn’t easy; we were blown away by the offers we received and quickly realized that the hardest part would be parting with the incredible NFTs that we couldn’t accept. Check out the full Round 1 offer thread to see all the amazing offers.
Given the quick turnaround, we only have time to highlight a few of our favorites. In no particular order, here is our homage to the ones that got away in Round 1:
Our very first offer came from JPG’s Maria Paula Fernandez, who just plain got it and proposed a trade for simulacra before we had explained the project at all. Legend. EDIT: There was actually a tie for the first offer, with @AdrianLeb offering a lovely BlockArt at the exact same time as MP, making them co-legends.
Adam Cochran offered this Cool Cat, complete with sunglasses and a great story. As competition heated up, he increased the offer to 4 Cool Cats. Adam later put forth an offer that absolutely blew his first two away! He proposed a collection of 14 historic NFTs, in a collection titled Moments in Our History. This collection represents unique fists, influential artists, and rare defunct collectibles that helped shape the NFT space and have led to the NFT renaissance we're living right now. It’s an excellent read.
A $HASH of the @paperclipDAO UNIv3 NFT was also minted and proposed. Proof of Beauty is stunning. Just look at them. And to honor our project with a mint of the $PAPER/$CLIP NFT floored us.

MoonCatRescue is absolutely one of the great NFT stories, with a community rediscovering and rescuing these Mooncats that have been “trapped” since the project began in 2017 (!!!). No way to do it justice here--you have to read about it. We were lucky to be offered several Mooncats (this one, this one, and this one).
Folia’s Kudzu virus is the genius brainchild of Billy Rennekamp, one of the NFT OG’s (with the NFT to prove it). There’s nothing else like it--it’s a permanent NFT that will never leave your wallet. When you send it to someone it mutates and they get their own, permanent, NFT. We were offered 2 (this one and this one).
Each of these offers makes our story all the richer and we couldn’t be more excited about our first trade. In Round 1, we picked the future. But the past always has a way of coming back... Round 2 starts now! 🖇🖇
Propose a Swap for Round 2 sudoswap.xyz
↳ Only For: 0x87EE1158bEe297c381745284dcb2E54fA03EB5f2 (paperclipdao.eth)
↳ Want Type: ERC1155 ↳ Want Asset Address: 0x76be3b62873462d2142405439777e971754e8e77 ↳ Want Token ID: 42 ↳ Want Amount: 1.0
↳ Have: Your NFT or bundle of NFTs!
↳ Post it: in the #offers channel of the paperclipDAO discord.
@JordanLzG splashed the pot by offering The Title Open Edition by Pak. Pak is an anonymous creator at the forefront of experience-based art. His work was recently auctioned by Sotheby’s and his collection The Title (from which The Cheap hails) was one of the best NFT-based experiences in 2020. We were also offered 3 in Pak’s The Flipper series.
In a very special offer, devops199fan offered #404/420 of the EthereumFilm Infinite Garden Bloom NFT in collaboration with the one and only pplpleasr 🤩 . Each NFT is tied to select on-screen credits in the film, which will be the first feature-length Ethereum documentary and the first documentary funded via NFTs.
Astrocryptids is a charming little project where a twitter transmission bot “beams” mysterious code to an artist who then creates algorithmic sprites with a unique star code. We were offered 7.
Artblocks is the premier name in abstract NFT art, and among several Artblocks curated pieces we were offered was a gorgeous Rinascita.
Jonathan Mann, the songadaymann himself, wrote us a song about the man that did/didn’t invent the paperclip! This ranked the highest in paperclip-iness! Truly the one that got away. He’s since started an auction for the song on Zora.
For the real OGs, we were offered a very rare 5x symmetrical clover (from Clovers.Network) of which only 55 were ever found. It has symmetry in both diagonals, x & y axes, and rotationally. It’s also a very lucky four leaf clover!
We were offered a Pudgy Penguin, a Meebit, and a baby Bored Ape - a nod to the many emerging icons of the NFT world.
One interesting offer included all three NFT standards: an ERC-20 (an $XMON), ERC-721 (an Artblocks), and ERC-1155 (a Parallel)
Pixel Portraits is a fun project with portraits of interesting people in the cryptopunks style. NFT OG Nick Johnson, who helped edit the ERC-721 proposal, offered his portrait of Alan Turing.
Finally, we were given a choice between 1.) a rare 1/27 XCOPY piece from an obscure NFT project launched in 2018 or 2.) a 0xmons named Maznoth + their unique sound.
@JordanLzG splashed the pot by offering The Title Open Edition by Pak. Pak is an anonymous creator at the forefront of experience-based art. His work was recently auctioned by Sotheby’s and his collection The Title (from which The Cheap hails) was one of the best NFT-based experiences in 2020. We were also offered 3 in Pak’s The Flipper series.
In a very special offer, devops199fan offered #404/420 of the EthereumFilm Infinite Garden Bloom NFT in collaboration with the one and only pplpleasr 🤩 . Each NFT is tied to select on-screen credits in the film, which will be the first feature-length Ethereum documentary and the first documentary funded via NFTs.
Astrocryptids is a charming little project where a twitter transmission bot “beams” mysterious code to an artist who then creates algorithmic sprites with a unique star code. We were offered 7.
Artblocks is the premier name in abstract NFT art, and among several Artblocks curated pieces we were offered was a gorgeous Rinascita.
Jonathan Mann, the songadaymann himself, wrote us a song about the man that did/didn’t invent the paperclip! This ranked the highest in paperclip-iness! Truly the one that got away. He’s since started an auction for the song on Zora.
For the real OGs, we were offered a very rare 5x symmetrical clover (from Clovers.Network) of which only 55 were ever found. It has symmetry in both diagonals, x & y axes, and rotationally. It’s also a very lucky four leaf clover!
We were offered a Pudgy Penguin, a Meebit, and a baby Bored Ape - a nod to the many emerging icons of the NFT world.
One interesting offer included all three NFT standards: an ERC-20 (an $XMON), ERC-721 (an Artblocks), and ERC-1155 (a Parallel)
Pixel Portraits is a fun project with portraits of interesting people in the cryptopunks style. NFT OG Nick Johnson, who helped edit the ERC-721 proposal, offered his portrait of Alan Turing.
Finally, we were given a choice between 1.) a rare 1/27 XCOPY piece from an obscure NFT project launched in 2018 or 2.) a 0xmons named Maznoth + their unique sound.
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