In the public goods funding ecosystem, there is a balance to be found between confidence for funders and stability for builders.

On the one hand, we have upfront funding such as Gitcoin grants which are great for builder stability because builders get upfront funds which are often needed to jump start a project. However, funders have no assurance of delivery.

On the other hand, we have retroactive public goods funding systems like Optimism's which is great for adding a sort of "bonus" reward when the community recognizes existing projects as doing good. Funders may be confident that they can see a project and its results before sending funds, but builders have no guarantee of funding while they are building. 

There's the additional issue that these options only exist because funds are being funneled from profitable projects to these more "charitable" programs, but the programs are not profitable in and of themselves. How can someone else launch their own public goods funding programs if they don't already have a pool of funds? 

Prizes (aka bounties) as a public goods funding mechanism allow for complete funder confidence because you only ever send out a reward after you see evidence of the successful completion of a project. In this way, no funds are ever wasted (30 billion dollars annually are spent on crowdfunding campaigns that do not deliver what was promised. Imagine what the public goods funding world could accomplish if we reclaimed even 10% of that?) 

As well as this, from the builders perspective they have security knowing that a transparent pool of funding is waiting for them if they successfully bring a project from its current ideation stage into the realm of reality.

Best of all, a community doesn't need an existing big pool of funds to start coordinating the ideation, creation, and funding of public goods. They may simply start launching prizes and let the community crowdfund them. 

Programs like Gitcoin grants do amazing good. Why not have crowdfunded Gitcoin bounties/prizes? By building up viaPrize, we are showing another path forward for supporting public goods that can expand the great work of communities like Gitcoin.

More details found here: https://www.noahchonlee.com/post/prizes-as-the-missing-middle-road-in-public-goods-funding