“What happened to impact markets?” by Austin

At a conference on post-AGI futures earlier this year, I proposed a session titled “What's next for impact markets?” The conference speakers included the godfather of impact markets Paul Christiano himself, and noted supporters like Scott Alexander, Oli Habryka, and Andrew Critch — so I was hopeful that there would be some interest.

…

Zero people signed up for my session.

Before everyone writes these off as some EA fad of the early 2020s, or a pie-in-the-sky dream requiring impossible levels of funder buy-in: I’d like to give my account of what we’ve learned about impact markets, and where we can go next.

A brief oral history of Manifund

Our 501c3 entity “Manifold for Charity Inc.” was originally started with a narrow thesis: it’d be good to let Manifold prediction market traders donate winnings to a charity of their choice. See our original grant proposal to the FTX Future Fund, which they approved with a 500 thousand dollar grant around April 2022. But at the time, this was just a side project of Manifold.

Manifund proper was made with the explicit mandate of “make impact markets happen”. Scott Alexander was interested in trying out new mechanisms for funding projects [...]

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Outline:

(00:56) A brief oral history of Manifund

(03:34) Wait, so, what do you think about impact markets now?

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First published:
September 1st, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/m84eEGu3t2jgMBNmC/what-happened-to-impact-markets

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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