Collective is on a mission to redefine the way businesses-of-one work

Collective

collective

The Value of Diversity and Inclusivity in the Arts Since time immemorial, the arts have been an effective tool for encouraging diversity, campaigning for reform and fostering inclusive societies, for example, the Egyptian civilization, like building the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx! Ancient Greek society building beautiful pottery, and sculpture! Artistic variety is essential for creative originality and creativity. Further, the and the highlighted the value of the marginalized people expressing their experiences and viewpoints in the form of art to empower them and make them be heard. feminist art movement in 1970s Harlem Renaissance When the art experience is shared with different audiences, it improves and becomes more representative of the diverse aspects of society. In terms of the labor force, having a diverse workforce for programming and community participation jobs makes art more relevant and approachable. An artistic society leads to more innovation and creativity all around, which leads to new discoveries and inventions….. The era of the renaissance was so critical in Europe’s history because the artistic tendencies of the human were awarded, which led to better outcomes for the medieval society. Even though it may appear tough, numerous organizations have successfully navigated the hurdles of in the arts. PepsiCo and , for example, have profited from a diverse workforce by allowing them to innovate and give excellent customer service to a wider spectrum of clients. Initiatives such as East-West Players' 51% Preparedness Plan for the American Theatre are excellent examples of how enterprises in the arts and culture sector may thrive by embracing diversity at all levels, including board members, artists, and audiences. Further, cultural instructions such as the and the theater demonstrated the importance of diversity and inclusivity but promoted empathy and diversity through sharing stories from various backgrounds, thereby bringing and democratizing art for everyone to enjoy and share. establishing diversity AT&T Sundance Film Festival Alvin Ailey American Dance The Palm Collective's Visionary Leap The Palm Collective is spearheading a new generation of Web3 and art in New York City. The Obscura Community is a groundbreaking platform created by this forward-thinking artist collective. Its goal is to empower artists in the rapidly expanding Web3 landscape. As we celebrate Women's History Month, this initiative serves as a testament to the transformative power of art and a beacon of inclusivity. The registration link for artists to register to the Palm Collective, can be found here. Participants must ensure that they follow the Palm Collective’s terms and conditions, and must be ready to provide a high-definition version of their work for projection in case it’s selected. Call x Digital Art: Egalitarian Utopia is accepting submissions in all formats ofall digital media, including images, videos, music, 3D, and artificial intelligence (AI) works though submissions using AI must be disclosed. Celebrating Womxn's Month with a Vision of Utopia March marks the arrival of spring as well as the commemoration of women's accomplishments across history and cultural contexts. Taking advantage of this historic time, The Palm Collective presents "Call x Digital Art: Egalitarian Utopia". It is a call for designers and artists of all gender identities to present their utopian worlds that are based on egalitarian values. This project advances the discussion on diversity and inclusiveness into the field of digital art in addition to honoring Women's History Month. With the transformation and shift to the digital age, artists now have unprecedented means of expressing their creativity at scale. The Palm Collective's most recent initiative, which provides artists with enticing incentives and a unique space to display their work, serves as more evidence of this move towards building an artistic society which fosters creativity and innovation at scale, for the people and by the people. Final Thoughts An important turning point in the history of the relationship between art, technology, and social reform has been reached with the introduction of the showcase project by The Palm Collective and the Obscura Community, as it brings together blockchain technology, NFTs, artistic creations and creative mindfulness together to create value for the society just like in the days of Renaissance. This innovative initiative is a celebration of the strength of the human imagination and the impact that artists have on the future. Through the celebration of Womxn's Month, The Palm Collective not only pays tribute to the accomplishments of women throughout history, but also lays the groundwork for a more equitable and inclusive creative community. The Palm Collective's effort is not just an art competition; it is a desperate cry to artists everywhere to imagine, make, and inspire a better future. It's evident from gazing out over this new terrain that art, in its most imaginative manifestations, possesses the keys to unlocking a more inclusive and harmonious world. Don’t forget to like and share the story! This author is an independent contributor publishing via our brand-as-author program. Be it through direct compensation, media partnerships, or networking, the author has a vested interest in the company/ies mentioned in this story. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYOR Vested Interest Disclosure:

Empowering Artists in the Digital Age: The Palm Collective's Visionary Platform

ডিজিটাল যুগে শিল্পীদের ক্ষমতায়ন: দ্য পাম কালেক্টিভের ভিশনারি প্ল্যাটফর্ম

Künstler im digitalen Zeitalter stärken: Die visionäre Plattform des Palm Collective

Empoderar a los artistas en la era digital: la plataforma visionaria de The Palm Collective

Donner du pouvoir aux artistes à l’ère numérique : la plateforme visionnaire du Palm Collective

डिजिटल युग में कलाकारों को सशक्त बनाना: द पाम कलेक्टिव का दूरदर्शी मंच

デジタル時代のアーティストに力を与える: パーム コレクティブの先見の明のあるプラットフォーム

디지털 시대의 예술가 역량 강화: The Palm Collective의 비전 플랫폼

Capacitando Artistas na Era Digital: A Plataforma Visionária do Palm Collective

Расширение прав и возможностей художников в эпоху цифровых технологий: концептуальная платформа The Palm Collective

Dijital Çağda Sanatçıları Güçlendirmek: Palm Collective'in Vizyoner Platformu

Trao quyền cho các nghệ sĩ trong thời đại kỹ thuật số: Nền tảng tầm nhìn của The Palm Collective

为数字时代的艺术家赋能：The Palm Collective 的愿景平台

The Problem of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF UNIVERSALS ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF UNIVERSALS In regard to one man's knowledge at a given time, universals, like particulars, may be divided into those known by acquaintance, those known only by description, and those not known either by acquaintance or by description. Let us consider first the knowledge of universals by acquaintance. It is obvious, to begin with, that we are acquainted with such universals as white, red, black, sweet, sour, loud, hard, etc., i.e. with qualities which are exemplified in sense-data. When we see a white patch, we are acquainted, in the first instance, with the particular patch; but by seeing many white patches, we easily learn to abstract the whiteness which they all have in common, and in learning to do this we are learning to be acquainted with whiteness. A similar process will make us acquainted with any other universal of the same sort. Universals of this sort may be called 'sensible qualities'. They can be apprehended with less effort of abstraction than any others, and they seem less removed from particulars than other universals are. We come next to relations. The easiest relations to apprehend are those which hold between the different parts of a single complex sense-datum. For example, I can see at a glance the whole of the page on which I am writing; thus the whole page is included in one sense-datum. But I perceive that some parts of the page are to the left of other parts, and some parts are above other parts. The process of abstraction in this case seems to proceed somewhat as follows: I see successively a number of sense-data in which one part is to the left of another; I perceive, as in the case of different white patches, that all these sense-data have something in common, and by abstraction I find that what they have in common is a certain relation between their parts, namely the relation which I call 'being to the left of'. In this way I become acquainted with the universal relation. In like manner I become aware of the relation of before and after in time. Suppose I hear a chime of bells: when the last bell of the chime sounds, I can retain the whole chime before my mind, and I can perceive that the earlier bells came before the later ones. Also in memory I perceive that what I am remembering came before the present time. From either of these sources I can abstract the universal relation of before and after, just as I abstracted the universal relation 'being to the left of'. Thus time-relations, like space-relations, are among those with which we are acquainted. Another relation with which we become acquainted in much the same way is resemblance. If I see simultaneously two shades of green, I can see that they resemble each other; if I also see a shade of red: at the same time, I can see that the two greens have more resemblance to each other than either has to the red. In this way I become acquainted with the universal resemblance or similarity. Between universals, as between particulars, there are relations of which we may be immediately aware. We have just seen that we can perceive that the resemblance between two shades of green is greater than the resemblance between a shade of red and a shade of green. Here we are dealing with a relation, namely 'greater than', between two relations. Our knowledge of such relations, though it requires more power of abstraction than is required for perceiving the qualities of sense-data, appears to be equally immediate, and (at least in some cases) equally indubitable. Thus there is immediate knowledge concerning universals as well as concerning sense-data. Returning now to the problem of a priori knowledge, which we left unsolved when we began the consideration of universals, we find ourselves in a position to deal with it in a much more satisfactory manner than was possible before. Let us revert to the proposition 'two and two are four'. It is fairly obvious, in view of what has been said, that this proposition states a relation between the universal 'two' and the universal 'four'. This suggests a proposition which we shall now endeavour to establish: namely, All a priori knowledge deals exclusively with the relations of universals. This proposition is of great importance, and goes a long way towards solving our previous difficulties concerning a priori knowledge. The only case in which it might seem, at first sight, as if our proposition were untrue, is the case in which an a priori proposition states that all of one class of particulars belong to some other class, or (what comes to the same thing) that all particulars having some one property also have some other. In this case it might seem as though we were dealing with the particulars that have the property rather than with the property. The proposition 'two and two are four' is really a case in point, for this may be stated in the form 'any two and any other two are four', or 'any collection formed of two twos is a collection of four'. If we can show that such statements as this really deal only with universals, our proposition may be regarded as proved. One way of discovering what a proposition deals with is to ask ourselves what words we must understand—in other words, what objects we must be acquainted with—in order to see what the proposition means. As soon as we see what the proposition means, even if we do not yet know whether it is true or false, it is evident that we must have acquaintance with whatever is really dealt with by the proposition. By applying this test, it appears that many propositions which might seem to be concerned with particulars are really concerned only with universals. In the special case of 'two and two are four', even when we interpret it as meaning 'any collection formed of two twos is a collection of four', it is plain that we can understand the proposition, i.e. we can see what it is that it asserts, as soon as we know what is meant by 'collection' and 'two' and 'four'. It is quite unnecessary to know all the couples in the world: if it were necessary, obviously we could never understand the proposition, since the couples are infinitely numerous and therefore cannot all be known to us. Thus although our general statement implies statements about particular couples, as soon as we know that there are such particular couples, yet it does not itself assert or imply that there are such particular couples, and thus fails to make any statement whatever about any actual particular couple. The statement made is about 'couple', the universal, and not about this or that couple. Thus the statement 'two and two are four' deals exclusively with universals, and therefore may be known by anybody who is acquainted with the universals concerned and can perceive the relation between them which the statement asserts. It must be taken as a fact, discovered by reflecting upon our knowledge, that we have the power of sometimes perceiving such relations between universals, and therefore of sometimes knowing general a priori propositions such as those of arithmetic and logic. The thing that seemed mysterious, when we formerly considered such knowledge, was that it seemed to anticipate and control experience. This, however, we can now see to have been an error. No fact concerning anything capable of being experienced can be known independently of experience. We know a priori that two things and two other things together make four things, but we do not know a priori that if Brown and Jones are two, and Robinson and Smith are two, then Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith are four. The reason is that this proposition cannot be understood at all unless we know that there are such people as Brown and Jones and Robinson and Smith, and this we can only know by experience. Hence, although our general proposition is a priori, all its applications to actual particulars involve experience and therefore contain an empirical element. In this way what seemed mysterious in our a priori knowledge is seen to have been based upon an error. It will serve to make the point clearer if we contrast our genuine a priori judgement with an empirical generalization, such as 'all men are mortals'. Here as before, we can understand what the proposition means as soon as we understand the universals involved, namely man and mortal. It is obviously unnecessary to have an individual acquaintance with the whole human race in order to understand what our proposition means. Thus the difference between an a priori general proposition and an empirical generalization does not come in the meaning of the proposition; it comes in the nature of the evidence for it. In the empirical case, the evidence consists in the particular instances. We believe that all men are mortal because we know that there are innumerable instances of men dying, and no instances of their living beyond a certain age. We do not believe it because we see a connexion between the universal man and the universal mortal. It is true that if physiology can prove, assuming the general laws that govern living bodies, that no living organism can last for ever, that gives a connexion between man and mortality which would enable us to assert our proposition without appealing to the special evidence of men dying. But that only means that our generalization has been subsumed under a wider generalization, for which the evidence is still of the same kind, though more extensive. The progress of science is constantly producing such subsumptions, and therefore giving a constantly wider inductive basis for scientific generalizations. But although this gives a greater degree of certainty, it does not give a different kind: the ultimate ground remains inductive, i.e. derived from instances, and not an a priori connexion of universals such as we have in logic and arithmetic. Two opposite points are to be observed concerning a priori general propositions. The first is that, if many particular instances are known, our general proposition may be arrived at in the first instance by induction, and the connexion of universals may be only subsequently perceived. For example, it is known that if we draw perpendiculars to the sides of a triangle from the opposite angles, all three perpendiculars meet in a point. It would be quite possible to be first led to this proposition by actually drawing perpendiculars in many cases, and finding that they always met in a point; this experience might lead us to look for the general proof and find it. Such cases are common in the experience of every mathematician. The other point is more interesting, and of more philosophical importance. It is, that we may sometimes know a general proposition in cases where we do not know a single instance of it. Take such a case as the following: We know that any two numbers can be multiplied together, and will give a third called their product. We know that all pairs of integers the product of which is less than 100 have been actually multiplied together, and the value of the product recorded in the multiplication table. But we also know that the number of integers is infinite, and that only a finite number of pairs of integers ever have been or ever will be thought of by human beings. Hence it follows that there are pairs of integers which never have been and never will be thought of by human beings, and that all of them deal with integers the product of which is over 100. Hence we arrive at the proposition: 'All products of two integers, which never have been and never will be thought of by any human being, are over 100.' Here is a general proposition of which the truth is undeniable, and yet, from the very nature of the case, we can never give an instance; because any two numbers we may think of are excluded by the terms of the proposition. This possibility, of knowledge of general propositions of which no instance can be given, is often denied, because it is not perceived that the knowledge of such propositions only requires a knowledge of the relations of universals, and does not require any knowledge of instances of the universals in question. Yet the knowledge of such general propositions is quite vital to a great deal of what is generally admitted to be known. For example, we saw, in our early chapters, that knowledge of physical objects, as opposed to sense-data, is only obtained by an inference, and that they are not things with which we are acquainted. Hence we can never know any proposition of the form 'this is a physical object', where 'this' is something immediately known. It follows that all our knowledge concerning physical objects is such that no actual instance can be given. We can give instances of the associated sense-data, but we cannot give instances of the actual physical objects. Hence our knowledge as to physical objects depends throughout upon this possibility of general knowledge where no instance can be given. And the same applies to our knowledge of other people's minds, or of any other class of things of which no instance is known to us by acquaintance. We may now take a survey of the sources of our knowledge, as they have appeared in the course of our analysis. We have first to distinguish knowledge of things and knowledge of truths. In each there are two kinds, one immediate and one derivative. Our immediate knowledge of things, which we called acquaintance, consists of two sorts, according as the things known are particulars or universals. Among particulars, we have acquaintance with sense-data and (probably) with ourselves. Among universals, there seems to be no principle by which we can decide which can be known by acquaintance, but it is clear that among those that can be so known are sensible qualities, relations of space and time, similarity, and certain abstract logical universals. Our derivative knowledge of things, which we call knowledge by description, always involves both acquaintance with something and knowledge of truths. Our immediate knowledge of truths may be called intuitive knowledge, and the truths so known may be called self-evident truths. Among such truths are included those which merely state what is given in sense, and also certain abstract logical and arithmetical principles, and (though with less certainty) some ethical propositions. Our derivative knowledge of truths consists of everything that we can deduce from self-evident truths by the use of self-evident principles of deduction. If the above account is correct, all our knowledge of truths depends upon our intuitive knowledge. It therefore becomes important to consider the nature and scope of intuitive knowledge, in much the same way as, at an earlier stage, we considered the nature and scope of knowledge by acquaintance. But knowledge of truths raises a further problem, which does not arise in regard to knowledge of things, namely the problem of error. Some of our beliefs turn out to be erroneous, and therefore it becomes necessary to consider how, if at all, we can distinguish knowledge from error. This problem does not arise with regard to knowledge by acquaintance, for, whatever may be the object of acquaintance, even in dreams and hallucinations, there is no error involved so long as we do not go beyond the immediate object: error can only arise when we regard the immediate object, i.e. the sense-datum, as the mark of some physical object. Thus the problems connected with knowledge of truths are more difficult than those connected with knowledge of things. As the first of the problems connected with knowledge of truths, let us examine the nature and scope of our intuitive judgements. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Bertrand Russell (2009). THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5827/5827-h/5827-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

Our Collective Knowledge of the Universals 

Exploring applications of Web3 tech for the collective management of ‘real world’ cyber-physical infrastructure Web3 evangelists preach the promise of a new Internet of Value and multidimensional democratization where the first iterations of the Internet failed. They say blockchain and cryptocurrency technology offer new modes for economic expression and socio-political paradigms where people-powered organizations can create their own currencies, pool funding, collectively own and manage infrastructure, and self-govern. The vision is ambitious, to say the least, and 14 years after the introduction of Bitcoin, many question the “real world” impact of these technologies as ecological degradation accelerates, and with it, economic and political instability. A recent event, CyborgCamp, illustrated this criticism of Web3 in its memetic governance experiment with “Lamp DAO”. The project’s creators not only poke fun at the crypto space’s inability thus far to create the deep systemic shifts needed to tackle our planet’s most wicked problems, but ironically, what started as a meme may actually hold promise for that bigger change and possibility. This piece takes us underground (literally a basement) to the lesser-known pioneering edges of Web3 space exploration, where cyberpunk is making a comeback and creative solutions engineering is based in play. Here, the hope for a brighter future rests in the hands of a neuroversal group of multidisciplinarians whose greatest weapon of revolution just might be - a lamp. Enter the Lair: CyborgCamp & A World Beyond Techno Feudalism I'm in a basement painted bright primary green. There's a TV streaming fractal, psychedelic art, while high-intensity electronic dance music pulses in the background. There are lamps of varying shapes and computer chips strewn about on a long, polished wood table. On another desk nearby, electric engineering and soldering equipment rest on the table with a hand-drawn picture of a dead stick figure labeled "danger" in red permanent marker. Zargham: "Don't f@!* with that one, Isaac already soldered it! Use the fresh breadboards." Barton: "Breadboards - now that sounds like it's for the people!" Michael Zargham, Founder and Chief Engineer of - a pioneering operations research and complex systems engineering firm - and Barton Rhodes, co-founder of , a visionary research and development exploration simulating and building energy microgrid infrastructure - yell at each other excitedly over the music. They cross the room to a whiteboard, covered in system diagrams, ontology mappings, and new applications of lambda calculus. BlockScience Plurigrid "We just have to sniff our Bluetooth signals!" Zargham says loudly as he draws another diagram. Janita Chalam, a developer with an advanced tooling stack, tries not to get distracted from coding, but can’t help laughing. decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) DAO DAO This is , an event started by Cyborg Anthropologist, public speaker, author of Calm Technology Amber Case in 2008. This year, it found expression in a suburban Albany, New York neighborhood home. The area, known as Rensselaer, was named after a 17th-century and one of the original founders of the Dutch West India Company. CyborgCamp Dutch feudal lord It is only fitting that 20 engineers and researchers gathered here for CyborgCamp 2023 to discuss and the possibilities for global systemic change amidst increasing . The backdrop - economic, social, and political unrest around the world, aging and underfunded public infrastructure, the rise of AI, and the transition from Web2 to Web3 technologies. technological feudalism overshoot of planetary boundaries From Feudalism to Commons: Rebuilding the Internet for Resilience in an Era of Collapse As witnessed in the last few decades, the promise of a democratized and open internet was crushed by the conglomerization and in Web2. Some critics have likened the role of participants of social networks and ride-sharing platforms to feudal peasants, hooked to dopamine drips and the pittance of wage slave economies. While they toil, the feudal overlords of transnational corporate platforms harvest data and build psychometric profiles to profit from advertising. The system is underpinned by a vast substrate of computation in an accelerating feedback loop of black box algorithms with the power to turn geopolitical tides (heavily documented and outlined in documentary films like ). monopolization of internet platforms “The Great Hack” With the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009, there has been a foray into the possibilities of a new “Internet of Value.” Proponents envision not only increased agency and revenue sharing of platform participant’s data via and cooperative models, but more transparency and expanded collective governance of . Discussions across crypto communities range from more distributed ownership of network capital, assets, production, and infrastructure to greater resilience through more decentralized infrastructure, to improved pathways for fundraising, democracy, political action, and governance via new organizational structures and voting tools. data trusts algorithmic policy This drama is playing out within the four corners of our screens, but if we look up and out, we see another backdrop and frame - environmental and planetary collapse. With this, an even more important purpose of a new internet comes into view - systemic and paradigmatic shifts to reverse the extractive and destructive feedback loops we find ourselves in. A new iteration of the internet with enabling tools for the coordination of self-organized networks for local and global problem-solving, economic diversity and shelter, infrastructure with enhanced adaptive capacity, and overall greater resilience - . a regenaissance Cyborgers Unite! (Around a Lamp) The potential of Web3 and planetary collapse were just some of the countless discussions and impromptu talks at the un-conference style salon event. The grid of sticky notes on the living room wall displayed other topics like , , , , , and . Metaphysics: How do we formalize and apply it From Agents to Agency Xenomodernism: Dreams of a common language Macro Oriented Programming Exploring Post-Network Connectivity: Connectivity Fields Seizing the Memes of Production: A Memeathon In between bagels, sunset-watching breaks, and discussions on language models, the origins of the universe, and constitutions of science and truth, the Cyborgers were primarily focused on a hackathon experiment deemed “Lamp DAO.” The idea had been brewing for some weeks. Back in the basement, jokingly called “the lair" on the sticky note program grid, the experiment was taking shape. Jake Hartnell, __ __and DAO DAO co-founder was sitting on an office chair, bent over his computer wearing a blanket strung with LED lights around his shoulders like a cape. The  wires led to a Raspberry Pi, which he was using to test newly created voting tools. "So the lights on the blanket are blue now, but say we voted to change it to green - green's my favorite color - the vote would execute. I'll sign the transaction. I always love this part." Juno network Why Lamp DAO and What is it? Lamp DAO is a memetic-inspired demonstration, living art installation, and research and development project. The mission: To map, test and develop a DAO that can collectively control the brightness and hue of a lamp. cybernetics Chalam and Zeke Medley, another developer, are giggling wildly as they code JSON hue inputs generated from conversations with the conversational agent they build with . They query it about vibe preferences, referring to moods such as "dark and gloomy Japanese city in the rain," "bright, bold and glittery,” and “candy-colored hues” to generate a correlating number representing a light brightness and hue. OpenAI’s GPT-3 model "It sounds kind of stupid, I mean, it's a lamp. Why are we voting on the state of the lamp? The point is what it represents, a physical reality that's affecting all of us and we have a way to aggregate our preferences to change the physical reality. We can create a loop where we are reacting to that loop and continually updating it,” Chalam says excitedly. Event organizer, Case expands on the cybernetic aspects - human-machine assemblages and feedback loops of information and processes - emphasizing the importance of play in creativity and problem-solving. "By doing these things we create a temporary reality, a temporary autonomous zone, a liminal space betwixt and between the here and there in which people can come together and make something actually interesting. In this case, a socio-technical cybernetic assemblage that includes lamps, people, networks, DAOs, connectivity, voting, large language models like GPT-3, and other fun tools to demo out what we can do," Case explains. The lightbulb flicked on for Zargham when he was thinking about how to explain and demonstrate cyber infrastructure - socio-technical systems, with human and tech interfaces and feedback loops - and their power in shaping the "real world." Although cyber-physical infrastructure can include various layers of technology, the CyborgCamp group is well-versed in digital infrastructure design and systems engineering, including blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. Zargham discussed the idea with Case, Hartnell, colleagues at BlockScience, and the interdisciplinary research collective, - who all came to the quick and full consensus that Lamp DAO must happen. MetaGov Zargham explains his motivation in experimenting with Lamp DAO: "My dad was an engineer for the state of New York's Department of Transportation, so naturally I am versed in public infrastructure. What I do now involves a new technological substrate, but the same engineering and scientific principles apply.” “We must find ways to rewire our current systems to account for environmental, economic, and social externalities that have us in this incredibly destructive feedback loop. One challenge of working with young and smart, but all-too-often inexperienced builders in Web3 is, they're governing their governance to govern; at least " laughs Zargham. lamps are real, The BlockScience founder has a background in electrical and robotics engineering and is particularly interested to see Web3 capacities applied to enhance and control (in the sense) cyber-physical infrastructure. This could be especially useful in outdated systems - like national power grids - in need of upgrades in tech, as well as policies and governance tools that enable quicker response and adaptation to the increasing challenges of the . control theory polycrisis "It's a great time to apply this new technology to our existing physical systems, and at the same time create new digital public infrastructures – such as practical participatory governance for algorithms, especially in emerging technology like AI", Zargham added. How Does Lamp DAO Work? I get a notification from the Lamp DAO Signal chat with several people sending their Juno wallet addresses, and I follow suit. Without even speaking members reply with theirs, the signal that membership NFTs are being minted - the energy in the room - magnetic. The NFTs represent membership in Lamp DAO. From the DAO dashboard, the members can chat with the conversational agent using GPT-3 (built by Chalam and Medley) to set their preferred lighting aesthetic. The agent can translate between a Lamp DAO member’s preferred aesthetic and a JSON configuration. The DAO members can then stake tokens on their preference, while the back-end aggregates the preferences through a weighted average, and the JSON file feeds the chip wired to the lamp and adjusts the lamp accordingly. Chalam explains: “The point of this is to demonstrate a way for people to express their preferences in natural language without having to understand the underlying configuration format, thereby "democratizing" the configuration space. You can imagine using [AI] agents in similar ways to offer people more control and understanding of different governance levers.” Many aspects of the configuration are customizable (such as how to represent membership, token distribution and vote weighting) and Lamp DAO will continue experimenting with different aspects of the system and governance possibilities. I ask if the hue could be “rainbow disco” rather than one color. Within seconds, programmer Colten Jackson types a few lines of code, and the blanket - formerly worn by Hartnell now on the table in front of me - flashes wildly in an array of colors. From Lamp DAO to Energy Grids: Exploring “Real World” Applications After Jackson codes the disco for me, the hackers break from testing components for Lamp DAO to listen to a talk from one attendee’s father, Carl Paatka, on New York’s energy infrastructure. Energy grids are a fitting example (especially for Lamp DAO) of an infrastructure sector facing several challenges - increased demand from population shifts, global warming, and the switch to more electric vehicles to name a few. Patka is an energy and environmental lawyer working on climate change policy and tells me energy grids could employ decentralization and more distributed connectivity and supply to give the grid real-time capacity to load balance and respond to shifting needs. He tells me the intergenerational exchange was fruitful for both sides. “I gained insight from CyborgCamp on how blockchain and automated contracts can provide more tools to achieve climate change goals and actually enhance reliability and transparency of the power system for investors, operators, and customers. The ability to establish algorithmic markets and contracts will enable a two-way grid where the largest power lines are actively integrated in real-time with microgrids and small distributed energy resources and storage. The potential is huge,” said Patka. Lucas Chu, a former researcher at Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society’s metaLAB was especially interested in the grid talk. Chu wasn’t short on puns, but also sees the serious potential of the hackathon experiment as a potential solution to impending infrastructure crises. "Only at CyborgCamp would you have a room full of PhDs asking Chat GPT whether vanilla was the right vibe for an internet-controlled lamp. But what we're really asking is, ‘How do we change energy systems? How do we connect smart devices, wisely?’ We're at the door between data and oil, microgrids and markets, and elections and electrons, and we're just opening the door.” He continues, “Last September, over 1.5 trillion dollars was needed to keep energy trading just in Europe. Bitcoin was created in response to the Great Financial Crisis; we're building Plurigrid as a response to the Great Energy Crisis. Let there be light.” Seizing the “Memes of Production” While discussions of energy crises and AI continued, some of the hackers and I are making memes - like “I love lamp!” and “The future is bright” emulating a classic, cartoon-style propaganda poster. Lamp DAO is not only a cybernetics demonstration, playful experiment, and a , but it is also a chance for DAO DAO to build and battle-test new governance tooling. Medley and Zargham are at the whiteboard again, deriving algorithms for a new, DAO DAO version of a real-time voting tool called that allows people to continuously stream their preferences via a token staking mechanism. larp Conviction Voting While they work at the board, BlockScience researcher Jeff Emmett talks excitedly about the new voting tool and the need for better governance mechanisms in our existing political systems. "Right now in most countries, we vote once every four years. Imagine you touched a hot stove and it took four years for you to decide to move your hand. We need to upgrade our governance systems so they can be more responsive to the existential threats we face as a collective. We have new tools, that when used in the right context, can support more adaptive governance,” said Emmett. While discussions of governance continue, a new guest arrives - a prominent labor lawyer. She is exploring DAO technology for her organization - a network of unions, cooperatives, mutual aid groups, and faith-based institutions serving communities. Hartnell gives a walk-through of DAO DAO tooling for her on the TV in the house's child's playroom - the only vacant room in the house. Other Cyborgers join in and discuss various applications. Case participates in the discussion in between minting NFTs, using a Discord bot to blend AI-generated images. "The DAO tooling can be customized for anything - Delaware BCorps, clubs, coops, municipalities. We don't want to limit what people and DAOs can do with it. To illustrate the point, we have a pretty great larp going - there's a DAO in DAO DAO called 'The Corporation,'" Hartnell continues the walk-through. Hartnell demos the layers of the DAO, one-click smart contract deployments, and "The  Corporation's" sub-DAOs including "Non-Human Resources" and a board layer with an NFT membership profile of CEO, "Chairman Meow." The lawyer laughs and the group exchanges more experience, envisioning how and in what contexts this new tooling could be used. A Dimension Where the Future is Bright With the hackathon and event nearing an end, __ __is for now, a few smart contracts and 14 $LAMP tokens - one for each participant. The DAO managed to execute only one vote - changing the color of the LED blanket from blue to green. The group, however, has lofty dreams and plans to continue experimentation when possible amidst full-time work on projects and companies. Lamp DAO member and Research Fellow at Metagov, Isaac Patka, says running tests at graduated levels of risk is a must before actually deploying any of this tech with high-stakes infrastructure. Lamp DAO "Lamp DAO is a tangible experiment that will help us figure out how to design decentralized, resilient infrastructure. Think about the connection between the lamp and the internet, the internet and the state of the DAO, the DAO and the smart contracts that define the behavior, and the validators that run the nodes. There is counterparty risk everywhere. Before we can replace the lamp with real critical infrastructure we need to figure out how to manage this risk, and ideally without traditional centralized regulators," said Patka. The journey from hackathons and voting on LED lamp colors to power grid deployments and collective governance of major public infrastructure may be a long one, but as CyborgCamp attendees will remind you - the space between digital and physical worlds is shrinking and after all, space and time are relative. I pass various encampments of air mattresses as I head back to the lair. The basement has quieted as the CyborgCamp hackers had to tend to their “bio” needs (going out to dinner). The disco blanket, with its lights off, looks just like a regular blanket. Still on - Lamp DAO’s test lamp with the sticker "The future is bright" on its shade, with a "harmony contingent chill" hue, #42 glow. Acknowledgements Written by with edits and input from , , , , , and . Cover image generated with Stable Diffusion. Jessica Zartler Amber Case Michael Zargham Jeff Emmett Kelsie Nabben Janita Chalam Jakob Hackel Scott Moore

Lamp DAO: a Cybermemetic Experiment in Collective Governance

Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego by Sigmund Freud, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . OTHER ACCOUNTS OF COLLECTIVE MENTAL LIFE OTHER ACCOUNTS OF COLLECTIVE MENTAL LIFE We have made use of Le Bon's description by way of introduction, because it fits in so well with our own Psychology in the emphasis which it lays upon unconscious mental life. But we must now add that as a matter of fact none of that author's statements bring forward anything new. Everything that he says to the detriment and depreciation of the manifestations of the group mind had already been said by others before him with equal distinctness and equal hostility, and has been repeated in unison by thinkers, statesmen and writers since the earliest periods of literature. The two theses which comprise the most important of Le Bon's opinions, those touching upon the collective inhibition of intellectual functioning and the heightening of affectivity in groups, had been formulated shortly before by Sighele. At bottom, all that is left over as being peculiar to Le Bon are the two notions of the unconscious and of the comparison with the mental life of primitive people, and even these had naturally often been alluded to before him. But, what is more, the description and estimate of the group mind as they have been given by Le Bon and the rest have not by any means been left undisputed. There is no doubt that all the phenomena of the group mind which have just been mentioned have been correctly observed, but it is also possible to distinguish other manifestations of the group formation, which operate in a precisely opposite sense, and from which a much higher opinion of the group mind must necessarily follow. Le Bon himself was prepared to admit that in certain circumstances the morals of a group can be higher than those of the individuals that compose it, and that only collectivities are capable of a high degree of unselfishness and devotion. 'While with isolated individuals personal interest is almost the only motive force, with groups it is very rarely prominent.' (p. 65.) Other writers adduce the fact that it is only society which prescribes any ethical standards at all for the individual, while he as a rule fails in one way or another to come up to its high demands. Or they point out that in exceptional circumstances there may arise in communities the phenomenon of enthusiasm, which has made the most splendid group achievements possible. As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude. But even the group mind is capable of genius in intellectual creation, as is shown above all by language itself, as well as by folk-song, folk-lore and the like. It remains an open question, moreover, how much the individual thinker or writer owes to the stimulation of the group in which he lives, or whether he does more than perfect a mental work in which the others have had a simultaneous share. In face of these completely contradictory accounts, it looks as though the work of Group Psychology were bound to come to an ineffectual end. But it is easy to find a more hopeful escape from the dilemma. A number of very different formations have probably been merged under the term 'group' and may require to be distinguished. The assertions of Sighele, Le Bon and the rest relate to groups of a short-lived character, which some passing interest has hastily agglomerated out of various sorts of individuals. The characteristics of revolutionary groups, and especially those of the great French Revolution, have unmistakably influenced their descriptions. The opposite opinions owe their origin to the consideration of those stable groups or associations in which mankind pass their lives, and which are embodied in the institutions of society. Groups of the first kind stand in the same sort of relation to those of the second as a high but choppy sea to a ground swell. McDougall, in his book on The Group Mind, starts out from the same contradiction that has just been mentioned, and finds a solution for it in the factor of organisation. In the simplest case, he says, the 'group' possesses no organisation at all or one scarcely deserving the name. He describes a group of this kind as a 'crowd'. But he admits that a crowd of human beings can hardly come together without possessing at all events the rudiments of an organisation, and that precisely in these simple groups many of the fundamental facts of Collective Psychology can be observed with special ease (p. 22). Before the members of a random crowd of people can constitute something in the nature of a group in the psychological sense of the word, a condition has to be fulfilled; these individuals must have something in common with one another, a common interest in an object, a similar emotional bias in some situation or other, and ('consequently', I should like to interpolate) 'some degree of reciprocal influence' (p. 23). The higher the degree of 'this mental homogeneity', the more readily do the individuals form a psychological group, and the more striking are the manifestations of a group mind. [19] The most remarkable and also the most important result of the formation of a group is the 'exaltation or intensification of emotion' produced in every member of it (p. 24). In McDougall's opinion men's emotions are stirred in a group to a pitch that they seldom or never attain under other conditions; and it is a pleasurable experience for those who are concerned to surrender themselves so unreservedly to their passions and thus to become merged in the group and to lose the sense of the limits of their individuality. The manner in which individuals are thus carried away by a common impulse is explained by McDougall by means of what he calls the 'principle of direct induction of emotion by way of the primitive sympathetic response' (p. 25), that is, by means of the emotional contagion with which we are already familiar. The fact is that the perception of the signs of an emotional state is calculated automatically to arouse the same emotion in the person who perceives them. The greater the number of people in whom the same emotion can be simultaneously observed, the stronger does this automatic compulsion grow. The individual loses his power of criticism, and lets himself slip into the same emotion. But in so doing he increases the excitement of the other people, who had produced this effect upon him, and thus the emotional charge of the individuals becomes intensified by mutual interaction. Something is unmistakably at work in the nature of a compulsion to do the same as the others, to remain in harmony with the many. The coarser and simpler emotions are the more apt to spread through a group in this way (p. 39). This mechanism for the intensification of emotion is favoured by some other influences which emanate from groups. A group impresses the individual with a sense of unlimited power and of insurmountable peril. For the moment it replaces the whole of human society, which is the wielder of authority, whose punishments the individual fears, and for whose sake he has submitted to so many inhibitions. It is clearly perilous for him to put himself in opposition to it, and it will be safer to follow the example of those around him and perhaps even 'hunt with the pack'. In obedience to the new authority he may put his former 'conscience' out of action, and so surrender to the attraction of the increased pleasure that is certainly obtained from the removal of inhibitions. On the whole, therefore, it is not so remarkable that we should see an individual in a group doing or approving things which he would have avoided in the normal conditions of life; and in this way we may even hope to clear up a little of the mystery which is so often covered by the enigmatic word 'suggestion'. McDougall does not dispute the thesis as to the collective inhibition of intelligence in groups (p. 41). He says that the minds of lower intelligence bring down those of a higher order to their own level. The latter are obstructed in their activity, because in general an intensification of emotion creates unfavourable conditions for sound intellectual work, and further because the individuals are intimidated by the group and their mental activity is not free, and because there is a lowering in each individual of his sense of responsibility for his own performances. The judgement with which McDougall sums up the psychological behaviour of a simple 'unorganised' group is no more friendly than that of Le Bon. Such a group 'is excessively emotional, impulsive, violent, fickle, inconsistent, irresolute and extreme in action, displaying only the coarser emotions and the less refined sentiments; extremely suggestible, careless in deliberation, hasty in judgment, incapable of any but the simpler and imperfect forms of reasoning; easily swayed and led, lacking in self-consciousness, devoid of self-respect and of sense of responsibility, and apt to be carried away by the consciousness of its own force, so that it tends to produce all the manifestations we have learnt to expect of any irresponsible and absolute power. Hence its behaviour is like that of an unruly child or an untutored passionate savage in a strange situation, rather than like that of its average member; and in the worst cases it is like that of a wild beast, rather than like that of human beings.' (p. 45.) Since McDougall contrasts the behaviour of a highly organised group with what has just been described, we shall be particularly interested to learn in what this organisation consists, and by what factors it is produced. The author enumerates five 'principal conditions' for raising collective mental life to a higher level. The first and fundamental condition is that there should be some degree of continuity of existence in the group. This may be either material or formal; the former, if the same individuals persist in the group for some time; and the latter, if there is developed within the group a system of fixed positions which are occupied by a succession of individuals. The second condition is that in the individual member of the group some definite idea should be formed of the nature, composition, functions and capacities of the group, so that from this he may develop an emotional relation to the group as a whole. The third is that the group should be brought into interaction (perhaps in the form of rivalry) with other groups similar to it but differing from it in many respects. The fourth is that the group should possess traditions, customs and habits, and especially such as determine the relations of its members to one another. The fifth is that the group should have a definite structure, expressed in the specialisation and differentiation of the functions of its constituents. According to McDougall, if these conditions are fulfilled, the psychological disadvantages of the group formation are removed. The collective lowering of intellectual ability is avoided by withdrawing the performance of intellectual tasks from the group and reserving them for individual members of it. It seems to us that the condition which McDougall designates as the 'organisation' of a group can with more justification be described in another way. The problem consists in how to procure for the group precisely those features which were characteristic of the individual and which are extinguished in him by the formation of the group. For the individual, outside the primitive group, possessed his own continuity, his self-consciousness, his traditions and customs, his own particular functions and position, and kept apart from his rivals. Owing to his entry into an 'unorganised' group he had lost this distinctiveness for a time. If we thus recognise that the aim is to equip the group with the attributes of the individual, we shall be reminded of a valuable remark of Trotter's, to the effect that the tendency towards the formation of groups is biologically a continuation of the multicellular character of all the higher organisms. [20] About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Sigmund Freud (2011). Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/35877/pg35877-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

OTHER ACCOUNTS OF COLLECTIVE MENTAL LIFE

Dear Bankless Nation, Sometimes exploring around NFTs can feel like a solo mission in a strange new world. What we need is better tools to own and govern the internet’s new class of digital collectibles. collectively One project that’s working on precisely such resources? . Tessera This week Tessera launched a trio of interesting products that are aimed at streamlining collective NFT experiences in new ways. Let’s get you up to speed on what these rollouts are all about! -WMP Collective NFT ownership with Tessera The tl;dr ❓ Tessera just the new website, Tessera Marketplace, and Tessera Protocol. This trio of products marks Tessera’s official debut in the NFT ecosystem after the team rebranded from Fractional, the project’s 1.0 system, in August 2022. introduced tessera.co The context 📱 In recent days, the Tessera team has been paving the way for its official launch by publishing explainers for some of the 2.0 mechanisms of the new Tessera Protocol. These new mechanisms have included: — a non-custodial smart contract wallet that can lockup an NFT or NFTs for collective ownership, the creation of which kickoff auctions for “Raes” 🏛️ Vaults — ERC1155 NFTs that represent governance and ownership over a vaulted NFT or NFTs 🌟 Raes — “LPDAs” are currently the main way to distribute Raes on Tessera, a Dutch Auction-style system with decreasing prices similar to Tyler Hobbs’s QQL sale 🛒 Last Price Dutch Auctions — a new way to offer to buy vaulted NFTs that emphasizes fair price discovery 💰 Optimistic Buyouts How it works 🧱 If you want to take a peek at the new Tessera rollouts, head to and sign in with your Ethereum wallet. The homepage will feature the project’s curated NFT Vaults, the first of which is for . tessera.co CryptoPunk #4847 While the initial auction for Punk #4847’s 1,000 Raes , the zero-fee Tessera Marketplace is now live and makes it possible to buy or sell these Raes, and future sold-out releases, via secondary sales. Punk #4847’s Raes were trading around 0.09Ξ each at the time of this post’s writing. are over To buy or sell Raes, you’d simply head to your Vault page of choice and select either from the “Buy Raes” or “List Your Raes” options. You can also click on the “Secondary Marketplace” tab to review above-floor Rae listings. Alternatively, if you’re interested in vaulting one of your NFTs, the Tessera team is curating interesting opportunities right now, so feel free to contact them if you think you have a good fit. via submission form Why it matters 🫂 Tessera’s mission is to make “owning cool stuff on the internet with other people” easier than ever. Of course, the web3 collective ownership sector is early and wide open, but with releases Tessera is advancing how groups, and not just individuals, can come together on-chain with new sorts of NFT tools. People often joke that crypto is “PVP,” a reference to the cutthroat gaming notion of players versus players. As projects like Tessera and its tool continue to gain steam, I think we’ll see a growing emphasis on squadding up and working together through NFTs in contrast. What to watch 👀 Going forward, the Tessera team plans to continue curating “culturally significant and historic pieces of internet history” for its new Vaults system. That means be on the lookout for new Raes secondary marketplaces to keep popping up around notable NFTs. Additionally, look for other NFT projects to start plugging into Tessera’s open infra. For example, Tessera co-founder Andy Chorlian just teased that Uniswap’s NFT aggregator system is poised to plug into Tessera Marketplace soon. Action steps 🪟 Check out the newest Tessera releases 🎄Read my latest if you haven’t yet! Bankless Holiday Crypto Gift Guide Author Bio William M. Peaster is a professional writer and creator of Metaversal —a Bankless newsletter focused on the emergence of NFTs in the cryptoeconomy. He’s also recently been contributing content to Bankless, JPG, and beyond! First Published here .

Collectively Owning and Governing NFT Experiences With Tessera 🪟

Exit to Community with Curve Bonded Crowdfunding The following is a thought experiment to explore how Open Collective can . The goal here is to “transition from a privately owned company to a structure that allows us to share power and revenue” with its community comprising of employees, Fiscal Hosts, Collectives, funders, investors, and individual contributors. Exit to Community You can read about Open Collective and its pursuit to exit to the community . here This proposal is based on how has approached realigning incentives around public goods. The incremental changes take the company from a privately held start-up to a self-governing and continuously funded community. Commons Stack In summary, the article proposes for the platform to be treated as a public good. The result is a continuous organization² powered by a self-sustaining funding mechanism to preserve it as a public good. The setup relies on a token bonding curve to align incentives to produce socially-beneficial behaviors and outcomes.³ Open Collective as a Public Good Powered by Curve Bonded Crowdfunding One of the key questions raised in the article, , is as follows: Early musings on “Exit to Community” for Open Collective How can we future-proof Open Collective Inc. for the thousands of communities around the world that rely on it? The article proposes achieving this by treating the Open Collective platform as a global public good. The platform is already non-excludable, allowing all kinds of groups to raise, manage, and spend money transparently. It also meets the criteria for being non-rivalrous where use by one person neither prevents access of other people nor does it reduce availability to others. While the limitations of the capitalistic markets to create and preserve public goods is well established, there is growing research to support public goods using crypto-economic incentive design⁴. Specifically, the next order question is: Can we define the socially and financially desirable outcomes for Open Collective and work backward to codify rules that incentivize a vested community towards those outcomes? Here is a set of outcomes to start this exercise with: Enable inclusive of a variety of stakeholders across the globe community governance Preserve the by granting control to those who care about it the most core purpose Build to allow existing investors to exit and fund future operations self-sustaining liquidity Incentivize who can help meet future needs of the community long-term contributors Here’s a conceptual view of the building blocks to achieve these outcomes. The focus of this article will be on mechanism design. It is a sub-discipline of economics that deals with designing protocols that incentivize rational actors to behave in socially desirable ways⁴. The as a mechanism design provides continuous funding to establish and maintain a shared public good. It incentivizes group behavior around the collection and prudent use of shared community resources. Augmented Bonding Curve For brevity, the rest of the article does not delve into the technical design¹ of the bonding curves to codify these incentives. Also, the design allows optionality for the specific types of governance to apply on top of the mechanism design. This enables the community in essence to BYOG or “Bring Your Own Governance”² and is not a topic that is addressed at this time. Each of the subsequent phases outlines the desired outcome, exit criteria, and assumptions that progressively take Open Collective closer to its goal to exit to community using Augmented Bonding Curve. For a technical description of how Augmented Bonding Curves work, see article. this Identify trusted community members using a reputation system who earn the right for future governance and ownership. This is accomplished pending a precise definition of associated economic gains. This is by design. Seed Phase: This is an invitation for the seed members to bootstrap the community with a pre-determined goal of funds. In return, the member tokens offer a stake in ownership and control. The outcome is a system for funding “labor” i.e. actions that have a positive impact on the community. Hatch Phase: This phase extends the capital contributions to investors who may not be directly associated with the commons. In exchange, the investor members receive a stake that enables financial returns but not control. Open Phase: Seed Phase: Setting the Foundations for Self Governance Objective: Identify the initial group of value-aligned seed members in the community. They will become eligible for the economic stake and control rights in the next phase. This is based on their proof of participation i.e. qualifying contributions in the community. Why: The rest of the article remains bullish on the ability of judiciously coded contracts to build a community. Yet, the proposal also recognizes the limitations of relying only on “economic incentives as institutional glue”.⁵ How can a community exploit the possibilities of self-governance without entirely relying on economic incentives? It is important to seed the effort with value-aligned members to be the vanguards in this journey. How: Establish processes and systems that recognize members based on their qualifying contributions. These members earn the right to take part in the Hatch Phase. For example, invite proposals from the community to improve the platform during the seed phase. Authors of the qualified proposals get recognized and gain their standing. Additionally, members who participate with valuable inputs for these proposals also get recognized. An exercise like this sets in motion the cultural foundations needed to pivot to community-led governance. Exit Criteria: This phase identifies a diverse set of trusted community members with representation across the different stakeholders of Open Collective. Assumption: Different stakeholders of Open Collective may have varying levels of interest in actively owning and governing the new decentralized entity. These stakeholders include employees, Fiscal Hosts, Collectives, funders, investors, and individual contributors. The Seed Phase allows each constituent to make an informed choice for the role they seek to play in Open Collective’s future. These roles may vary between control-and-ownership (outlined in the Hatch Phase), ownership-only (outlined in the Open Phase), or neutral (no change to the current state). Hatch Phase: Bootstrapping the Community Objective: Bootstrap the community by funding an initial goal from the qualified community members from the Seed phase. In return, the community members receive tokens locked in a vesting period. However, the tokens can be used to drive governance and fund operations. These initial funds are placed in two separate pools — a Reserve Pool and a Funding Pool. This is the point of transfer of active governance to the token holders from the Hatch Phase. Why: The two pools work together to create a self-sustaining funding mechanism. The distribution of tokens to qualified community members pairs incentives with intrinsic motivation. The vesting period prevents any actions to drive speculative returns. There are now opportunities to assess governance mechanisms to fund initiatives and resources. How: From a conceptual standpoint, a bonding curve is an interface between the internal economy of the community and the outside world. It creates liquidity to provide incentive-aligned funding for what matters most to the community while putting multiple safeguards for manipulation and speculative activities. The capital in the Reserve Pool is bonded to the curve The newly minted tokens are locked in a vesting period to allow Reserve Pool to be stable The capital in the Funding Pool remains un-bonded as a floating source of capital The tokens are slowly unlocked in correlation to how much capital has been allocated to fund “labor” within the community With the vesting process and introduction of a governance model, the token holders are economically incentivized to allocate funding to curated proposals Exit Criteria: Initial funds are raised and distributed between the Reserve Pool and Funding Pool. Assumption: Community members are familiar with managing crypto wallets to receive tokens and use them to participate in active governance. While this may be a challenge today, with an ever-growing interest in enabling community tooling for crypto-enabled governance, user-friendly solutions will soon be on the horizon for adoption at scale. Open Phase: Decentralization at Scale Objective: Attract new investors and qualifying members that see the impact of the community and want to be a part of the movement so that the Funding Pool can grow. The investor tokens enable financial returns but investors cannot participate in the governance. Why: The system reserves control for the most direct value creators. Thus, the qualifying members keep long-term control of the organization. The liquidity by attracting investors makes the organization more resilient. How: Interested new investors can mint tokens by contributing funds into the curve in return for “investor tokens”. New qualifying members identified by the reputation system can also buy member tokens. Both contributions go into the Reserve Pool.⁶ Hatch Phase members can liquidate their tokens based on: a predetermined vesting period, and the extent to which funds from the Funding Pool are allocated to projects based on a governance structure With this vesting process and the introduction of a governance model, members are economically incentivized to allocate funding to curated projects that have the most beneficial impact. Lastly, whenever members liquidate their tokens, a small percentage of their returns go into the Funding Pool as “Exit Tax”. This activates funding of the commons while members are earning returns. Open Collective as a Continuous Organization So what do we have so far? Let’s revisit the outcomes we started with: Enable community governance inclusive of a variety of stakeholders across the globe The Seed Phase identifies value-aligned community members to bootstrap the funding Friction-less stake in ownership and control for qualified members at a global scale The tokens in themselves don’t enforce any particular type of governance. This enables the community to design governance processes appropriate to what’s at stake Preserve the core purpose by granting control to those who care about it the most New non-member investors are prohibited from participation by design in the Seed and the Hatch Phase Open Phase investors only receive a stake in ownership but do not have governance rights The qualifying members from the Hatch and Open Phase keep long-term control of the organization Build self-sustaining liquidity to allow existing investors to exit and fund future operations The Augmented Bonding Curve offers a continuously open primary market If the demand exceeds supply, tokens are minted providing ongoing funding Enables investors to sell at market price and at a pace they want Incentivize long-term contributors who can help meet future needs of the community Community members get a share of the value if the organization is successful This enables the same long-term financial benefits as employees The liquidity enables the community to be less distracted and focus more on the execution Other Considerations How can the existing investors exit as part of this transformation? Existing investors could choose between the following alternatives: The community can use the initial funds from the Reserve Pool to pay investors who want to exit Investors could choose to receive investor tokens during the open phase and sell at the market price at the pace they want How can the structure be inclusive to respond to the needs of various types of stakeholders for Open Collective? This will require outreach and education in the Seed Phase. The intent is to encourage all types of stakeholders to participate in qualifying activities to be eligible to receive member tokens. If the diversity of the members is inadequate in the Hatch Phase, the process will need a manual reset or intervention before adequate representation is reached. How are profits treated in the model? Surplus cash flow and donations can be distributed as follows: A fraction could be used to mint new tokens and distribute them to current (investor and member) token holders The rest could be directed to the Funding Pool to invest in projects and resources deemed beneficial to the group No Silver Bullets To see the world’s first , check out building token engineering public goods without donation. Bonding curves are helpful in low-liquidity environments and an efficient primary market maker. Augmented Bonding Curve in action Token Engineering Commons At the same time, tokens alone don’t build communities — a sense of belonging rooted in a shared value-driven purpose does. As we apply the construct of bonding curves to Open Collective, it would be shortsighted to ignore potential challenges in enabling governance using cryptoeconomics in the context of Open Collective’s roots, culture, and aspirations. Here’s is a preliminary list of topics that need further exploration to avoid narrow incentives overpowering the common good⁷. 1. Personhood of Participants Implementing a reputation system to identify qualifying contributors and their proof of participation is a high-cost activity and increases friction for new members for Open Collective. The investor members in the Open Phase do not have governance rights similar to the current investors in Open Collective. However, with obscured identity, there is a risk of a single actor masquerading as many users. 2. Holistic Representation of Community Interests The reputation system is intended to avoid voter apathy and bring the most committed members into the fold for making decisions that matter. However, it also implies only a subset of the globally diverse Open Collective community can get involved in token ownership. How can the governance structure be designed so as to respond to the needs of: the community members not included in the economic relationship? future members who did not have a chance to participate in the initial design? 3. Technical Complexities of Bifurcating Ownership and Control Tokens belonging to qualified community members identified by their proof of participation have a stake in ownership as well as control in decision making. Investor tokens only offer ownership. The implementation details to mint and burn the dual-natured tokens on the same bonding curve need to be assessed for feasibility. Wrap up Coin voting governance is still in its infancy and the current forms of coin voting are far from being “safe defaults”⁸. At the same time, the mechanism design proposed in the form of Augmented Bonding Curves is not hard-wired to specific forms of governance. This offers an opportunity to further study if the incentive alignment and funding enabled by the bonding curve can be paired with a tailored governance setup for Open Collective’s aspirations. About is a platform where communities can collect and disburse money transparently, to sustain and grow their projects. The platform provides tools for legal entities to fiscally sponsor Collectives under their umbrella, empowering people to create associations without friction. It’s like an API between the legacy world of banks and taxes and the emerging future of digitally powered distributed collaborations. Open Collective is building commons-based microeconomies to sustain public goods through incentive alignment, continuous funding, and community governance. The library of open-source, interoperable web3 components will put effective new tools in the hands of communities, enabling them to raise and allocate shared funds, make transparent decisions, and monitor their progress in supporting the Commons. Commons Stack is a project of at the University of Colorado Boulder and . It’s a different kind of story, one that connects the founders, workers, users, investors, activists, and friends who have been trying to feel their way toward a better kind of startup. Its endgame is to be a long-term asset for its community, co-owned and co-governed by those who give it life. Exit to Community (E2C) MEDLab Zebras Unite Additional References: ¹ Michael Zargham, Jamsheed Shorish, and Krzysztof Paruch, 2019, From Curved Bonding to Configuration Spaces ² Thibauld Favre, 2018, , HackerNoon Introducing Continuous Organizations ³ Jeff Emmett, 2018, , Good Audience (Medium) Rewriting the Story of Human Collaboration ⁴ Laina Emmanuel, 2018, , Medium Crypto-economic incentive design for public goods ⁵ Nathan Schneider, 2021, , The Reboot Beyond Cryptoeconomics: Platform Cooperativism and the Future of Blockchain Governance ⁶ Nathan Schneider, 2022, , HackerNoon Policy Proposals for Crypto Protocols to Make Them Less Dystopic and More Inclusive ⁷ Nathan Schneider, 2022, (DRAFT v.20220121) Cryptoeconomics as a Limitation on Governance ⁸ Vitalik Buterin, 2021, Moving beyond coin voting governance Photo by from Pixabay Pexels Also Published Here

Inside Open Collective's Effort to Become Decentralized for Global Public Good

Our current efforts to solve climate change suck and also don’t suck enough. In this piece I have collated some research on sucking carbon out of the air, carbon pricing, Australia’s current renewable plans and carbon consumption habits. I recently watched the ABC TV show starring Craig Reucassel from , two shows with great values investigating if and how Australians are making an environmental difference. It seemed like the methods he looked into were just about keeping the peace and wouldn’t actually change the status quo. I enjoyed the format and Craig’s wit especially when he challenges politicians and company owners to do better. I think both shows fall short in keeping the focus on reforming businesses which use plastic and fossil fuels. He chose to follow households and see how they can make personal lifestyle changes instead. Unfortunately I think this feel-good morale inflates the idea that small changes can make a huge difference. The only issue is the changes mentioned like having a shorter shower, recycling and making cows eat seaweed really compared to large lifestyle shifts like a , though he does touch on living without . Localising the issue to our behaviour also contributes to the delusion that we can solve the problem by doing little things and shifts the cause away from plastic and fossil-fuel industries. But I do get the purpose is to feel empowered when it’s so often easy to feel helpless in regards to global issues. Fight for Planet A The War on Waste won’t make a big difference plant-based diet fossil fueled transportation Besides lifestyle changes, we can utilise community action groups and take class action lawsuits directly against politicians, organisations and governments. Recently, six Portugese youth against 33 European countries for putting their lives at risk by failing to reduce emissions. Similarly, five American states have filed against oil and gas corporations for the “havoc they knowingly wreaked”. This is the kind of activism we need most. Stop telling a story of how it’s up to individual people to make a difference in their lives by recycling and using less electricity and start telling the story of shitty businesses and corrupt governments. filed a climate lawsuit climate change lawsuits Recycling as a major public goal continues the idea that if we only recycled better, we wouldn’t have a waste problem. With climate change, it’s the same, fossil fuel companies emit carbon gas waste into the atmosphere and then tell us to use better heating. Plastic companies frame recycling as the solution so they can keep selling and using cheap packaging instead of the more expensive compostable packaging. South Australia is on the right path with a recently-passed . It includes the ban of single-use plastic products and will commence in 2021. waste avoidance Bill The plastic and fossil fuel industries have conned us into thinking that the solution is in recycling and reusing their products. It’s not. That message perpetuates the problem. We’re desperately struggling to reduce emissions and use renewables instead of banning and preventing the cause. Governments allow this to happen because cheap fuel and packaging make a country appear like it’s succeeding in terms of financial growth. Australia’s commerce involves the supply of some of the worst assets you can trade — coal, live animals and gas. Livestock causes the destruction of in Eastern Australia. 1500 football fields of forest every day Australia is heading in a fatal direction with “ ”, a financial campaign led by Scott Morrison with a misnomer for a name. It makes no sense to be spending money on natural gas companies when the government has already found — in its own research — that . This way it would use current pipelines to prevent expenses of new infrastructure and be a cleaner energy source for industrial processes like green steel. Even in Australia’s new $1.9 billion , they point to fossil-fueled hydrogen, factory-produced carbon capture instead of funding renewables and environmental R&D. This roadmap is a guise to reduce scrutiny and keep funding corrupt industries to profit from fossil fuels. The Australian government is often run by politicians who care about getting rich at any cost even if it means continual and the commitment of crimes against nature such as the destruction of and . gas-led recovery hydrogen should replace natural gas low-emissions technology roadmap suppression of environment research The Great Barrier Reef heritage sites Clean hydrogen is also not the solution, as it requires renewable energies to power its extraction from H2O through electrolysis. It’s also than electricity as a fuel for transport. (See this for a quick breakdown on hydrogen.) It would be better to like subsidising electric car prices and puting free electric vehicle charging stations around the country instead of to industrial companies. four times more expensive Real Engineering video support electric car iniatives trying to increase our GDP by exporting hydrogen We need to think globally, scientifically, and economically about the main cause of climate change: the exponential growth of the human population alongside the rise of fossil-fueled industrialisation. Let’s look at methods to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by three underrepresented alternatives. These methods aren’t about finding one solution — they all matter. But let’s talk about methods which could actually counteract the consumption habits and production of fossil fuels and reduce the global temperature by two degrees celsius. 1. Carbon Removal Methods Carbon removal methods are like the upkeep of the Earth’s hygiene by cleaning the harmful greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. I’m not talking as much about the carbon capture and storage of fossil fuels from coal, oil, and gas factories. Those carbon capture strategies should definitely be used by carbon-producing industries such as fossil fuel plants, but clearly, it would be better not to have those industries in the first place. I’m referring to carbon removal through climate engineering methods. Global warming is created from the sun’s radiation getting trapped inside the increasingly carbonised spherical roof in our atmosphere. Until we convert entirely to carbon-neutral or carbon-negative emissions in our business and personal practices, we’ll continue to burn fossil fuels by driving, using electricity, heating and eating, and the planet will get warmer, causing innumerable disastrous climate effects. The earth already captures carbon incredibly well through photosynthesising lifeforms and inorganic mineral collection. The development of carbon capture methods is just beginning and the methods are either improving the natural ways our planet sequesters carbon or building machines that collect and convert efficiently. The first is cheap and easy, and the second is currently expensive but getting cheaper and more effective . It’s one of many solutions to global warming we need to pursue. Direct air capture methods imitate what trees and photosynthesizers do naturally by capturing carbon dioxide out of the air. Current carbon capture technologies can do the work of and that’s fully grown trees. Planting trees is a slow process and we need to work fast in order to plant enough, which may not be possible given how long it takes for them to work effectively. Trees are also deforested at an alarming rate thus losing all their work of decades of carbon sequestration. They’re also burned when a fire rampages through a forest and their . Ironically, fires are more likely to happen because of global warming and not having enough trees. We need a change in mindset from short-term gains to long-term foresight. 40 million trees stored carbon is depleted Klause Lackner’s team at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions in Arizona have developed carbon capture trees which and are increasingly cheaper, currently at $94USD per square ton of carbon removal. work 1000 times faster than a natural tree Others propose a more direct through the photoelectric chemical conversion of CO2 into oxygen and energy. However, current models deem it . Similarly, look cool and use artificial photosynthesis but they’re . artificial photosynthesis expensive these trees not scalable CO2 O2 Faux trees convert to . Image from phys.org A major benefit of capturing carbon is being in control of how it’s stored and converted. If we convert carbon from CO2 into calcium carbonate pellets, we can use and store them more efficiently. One method that has incredible potential is . It is a technique that can convert any type of carbon into the extremely useful graphene. Graphene can be used to strengthen concrete by 40% with only 1% of it in the mixture. Graphene can be used to make green concrete which is stronger than regular concrete by . These breakthroughs can convert carbon into reusable technology instead of the likely . flash graphene 34% with only 0.07% of graphene in the mixture unsafe, and costly process of geological carbon storage A cheap decarbonisation method is coating mountain rocks, roads and roofs to capture the CO2 brought down by rain and storing them in the calcium carbonate composite. Another extremely promising method is : essentially feeding nutrients to the phytoplanktons which use photosynthesis like plants to convert sunlight and CO2 into oxygen and/or excrement. Ocean fertilisation has been an excitingly cheap and simple solution to implement. We need to give more credit to these oceanic microorganisms. In fact, they are the critters that created our breathable ozone in the first place, not trees. They’ve been working since the beginning of life on this planet and fertilise all land and life — it’s the ocean we need to work on more than anything, as it sequesters the majority of carbon. with olivine ocean fertilisation We’re focusing on strategies which only account for 20% of emissions while 80% of the problem remains. Ocean fertilisation is potentially the best all-round solution to a negative emission technology. The nine mechanisms which marine vertebrates play roles in the oceanic carbon cycle. , GRID Arendal CC BY-ND Ocean fertilisation will need to work in coordination with deacidification. We’ve lost incredibly healthy and foundational phytoplankton on a global scale of . I recommend on some further innovative strategies including Steven Gillet’s talk on past methods and new nanotechnological solutions for carbon and silicates including deacidification. 1% per year this playlist Carbon capture is necessary but not sufficient and improving old methods like ocean fertilisation is just the beginning. We may need to consider bioengineering new phytoplankton through the use of gene drives in order for them to out compete larger microorganisms and prevent harmful algae blooms from occurring. Tracking can also be undertaken through the use of satellites to see the ocean and atmospheric changes and make adjustments to the bloom areas. There’s no natural way out of this. We shouldn’t be afraid to change the planet through these climate engineering techniques, as we’ve already drastically and irredeemably changed earth in the last century. We need to make up for our mistakes, as sustainability is no longer sufficient. 2. Carbon Pricing Increase Many countries already have a price on carbon. The countries with the highest price on C02 per metric tonne have had great reductions in their emissions and the countries that delay carbon pricing are only increasing how much the tax will need to be, as climate change gets worse, according to . The challenge is enforcing it upon the companies that pollute the most and using carbon pricing as a deterrence scheme. It would be excellent to supplement carbon pricing with a plan to change energy practices altogether, like the , which outlines a way to supercharge the economy through developing renewable infrastructure and technologies. IPCC and the World Bank Green New Deal Canada has a similar to Australia’s, except in Australia, industrial polluters can emit up to a certain amount of carbon on the safeguard mechanism and then . Australia is going in the opposite direction of the pledge made in to reduce emissions by 28% by 2030. The Australian government is one of the worst countries in the world in their action to mitigate climate change according to the . even say a carbon price of $111 per tonne of CO2 still wouldn’t be high enough to meet our Paris agreement targets. Britain has been of $25 a ton and led electric utilities to switch away from coal and to cleaner solutions. Australia doesn’t currently have a roof or a floor price on carbon. pollution pricing program just buy credits as compensation the Paris Climate agreement Global Energy innovation Index Estimates successful in using a carbon price floor Graphic By Ranamode — Own work, via wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0 One suggestion is to to incentivise people to save money by converting to greener technologies. Likewise, renewable energy companies like electric vehicle manufacturers and solar power plants should be subsidised so they become cheaper. reduce the price on renewable energies If carbon capture methods cost approximately $100 USD per metric tonne of CO2 then we need to adjust our carbon tax accordingly. The tax fund could be distributed to the top climate change solutions and most effective methods should be getting more of the funding. Carbon pricing works, according to by researchers from Australian National University . It showed countries with a carbon price reduced their emissions by 2% per year and the countries without a carbon price increased their emissions, on average, by 3%. a decade-long study Carbon price vs no carbon price in 142 countries. Best, Burke, Jotzo 2020 We can also tax the carbon footprint of everyday life as well as pay people for being carbon negative. This can be achieved by simply subsidising renewable energy companies instead of fossil fuel companies. If we did get taxed heavily for the carbon we emit and got paid even more for the renewable energy we produce by living a carbon negative life, we could save a lot of money. And wouldn’t that be a nice motivator to change to a more ethical lifestyle? 3. Carbon Consumption Prevention Having one fewer child prevents the most carbon from being consumed out of all the individual lifestyle choices we can make. Creating one person amounts to 60 tonnes of carbon emissions each year and has led to awareness campaigns such as Vancouver’s . One Planet One Child Stopping a wealthy person’s carbon footprint by having one or no children is the single greatest action you can take to offset your carbon emissions over a lifetime. outside of donating tens of thousands of dollars In terms of as a contributing factor of climate change, it’s important to note that it’s predominantly developed nations and rich households who have . Not developing nations like in Asia and Africa where are happening. overpopulation 86% of the worlds CO2 emissions 118 million births out of the global 140 million annual births Graph from Our World in Data CC BY SA 4.0 In developed nations like Australia, we should not be offering monetary incentives to have children. Despite people’s fear of the , automation and a global are likely going to happen to make up for the decline in the working-age population. economic implications of an aging population Green New Deal CREDITS: (GRAPHIC) J. YOU/SCIENCE; (DATA) SETH WYNES AND KIMBERLY A NICHOLAS, ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS (2017 ) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/best-way-reduce-your-carbon-footprint-one-government-isn-t-telling-you-about says we should have kids because they sometimes emit joy. Unfortunately joy doesn’t offset carbon and for many of us, kids due to the decrease in daily pleasure. Just to be clear on what our carbon habits are in Australia, here’s a graph: This article make us more miserable *Land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). Overall emission figures given, less LULUCF, total 99.9% due to rounding. Source: Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources The thing is, we need to do better even if we were to donate a 1000 times more than we do to offset carbon. Eating a plant-based diet has an even greater benefit than we realise after taking into account all of the carbon offsets that would happen as a consequence of reducing animal agriculture — say that this shift alone could limit our warming to 1.5°C. Once you factor in all the forest regrowth and enormous stop on deforestation for animal grazing and animal feed, less farm-to-table travel, less animals burping and the fact that as CO2 you realise the enormity of the problem and the easiest solution: don’t eat animals. estimates methane is 28 times as potent These discussions need to be had to influence our cultural understanding of why the destruction of our planet continues. We need to truly consider altering our carbon footprint and to talk about the industries, governments and businesses that are the root cause. Our small habit changes in our daily life aren’t the larger and only solution. Push for reform and don’t settle for a slow destruction of our planet for future generations. We should switch our diet, our electricity, and our car to renewables. But most importantly, let’s switch our thinking from ethnocentric profiteering to global and systematic accountability for a sustainable future and make our governments do the same. Subscribe to my newsletter for the latest blogs Previously published behind a paywall at: https://medium.com/predict/altered-carbon-footprint-94b4e3317034

Three Effective Strategies to Collectively Alter Our Carbon Footprint

The United States is not in the midst of a political war despite the true fight manifesting in the domain of politics. America is instead in a much larger and a more significant culture war. This issue is so multifaceted and dates back so long that it can’t be attributed to any one event. The Death of Modern Christendom The traditional Christian world is fading away as faith declines faster than ever in the Western world. This is more catastrophic for America than any other state. Nietzsche brilliantly noted in the late 19th-century that as Christianity declined, both collectively and individually, a loss of identity would ensue. Moreover, Nietzsche noted that following this loss of belief, Westerners would cluster into ideological groups to regain their sense of identity. Nevertheless, despite the decline, Western civilization was still responsible for Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. Right? The millennia-old methods of seeking truth have empirically created the freest, most fair, technologically advanced, and powerful countries that ever existed. These are the notions that are slowly molding the identity of many on one side of this culture war. Blood And Soil Americans today can barely comprehend the notion of blood and soil. Unless, one is a first-generation immigrant, as a population we can’t fathom the feeling of being tied to an ancestral homeland. Being connected with our ancestors who walked on the same ground thousands of years ago is a foreign idea let alone feeling. The United States, this young republic, is one that is supposedly bound by ideals rather than land and ancestry. The idea of America was intended to be the embodiment and crystallization of the words of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adams, and the like. While this is a noble notion, the foundation of 21st-century American culture includes sports and the state rituals that accompany them, reality television, a brightly colored flag, consumerism, petty ideological differences, and binge-watching Netflix. A History of Slavery Despite those men being famous for their works on the “ ,” the United States has a century-old tradition of slavery and racism. One that still courses through the veins of the nation today. natural rights 13% of the American population had ancestors who were slaves. Following their “liberation” they were restricted and harassed in every imaginable way. Today, they’re ancestors, the descendants of slaves, continue to deal with the racism that remains laden within our age-old institutions. The type of anger that must exist in the African American community is one I can only ever imagine. Conclusion Combining all of these seemingly fractured ideas into one whole, America finds itself divided into two large groups with subgroups underlying both. First, the victimized and those who believe that American cruelty ought to override any other national story. The history of American righteousness, fighting for rights, being a country of immigrants is meaningless unless America fully lives up to its ideals. They point not only to slavery but the stigmatization of homosexuality, women’s suffrage, along with the suffering of minorities generally. Second, those who see America and thus the West—despite its horrors—as the undisputed champion of the world morally, economically, and politically. If these ideals bind us together, America’s moral arc necessarily bends towards justice because people will fight for those rights with the flow of information. Furthermore, they’d argue that Western civilization has produced the fairest political and economic system with the highest standard of living in history and technologically advanced society to date. I believe we are unable to find common ground because both stories are in their own right true. If Americans cannot admit the legitimacy of the other side’s interpretation of history, a loss of our collective and individual identities will worsen. This culture war may be the beginning stages of something less ideological and more tangible. By Chris Panagakis Founder of Curiosity Shots

Blood And Soil: The Culture War That Is Shaping Our Collective And Individual Identities

The United States is not in a political war despite the true fight manifesting itself in the domain of politics. America is instead in a much larger and significant culture war. This issue is so multifaceted and stems back so long it can’t be attributed to any one thing. The Death of Modern Christendom The traditional Christian world is fading away as the decline of faith accelerates across the Western world. This is more catastrophic for America than any other state. Nietzsche brilliantly noted in the late 19th-century that as Christianity declined, both collectively and individually, a loss of identity would ensue. Moreover, Nietzsche noted that following this loss of belief, Westerners would cluster into ideological groups to regain their sense of identity. Nevertheless, despite this decline, Western civilization was still responsible for the likes of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, right? The millennia-old methods of seeking truth have empirically created the freest, most fair, technologically advanced, and powerful countries to ever exist. These are the notions that are slowly molding the identity for many on one side of this culture war. Blood And Soil Americans can barely form the notion of blood and soil in their minds and for understandable reasons. Unless one is a first-generation immigrant, as a population we can’t fathom the feeling of being tied to an ancestral homeland. Being connected with our ancestors who walked on the same ground thousands of years ago is a foreign idea let alone feeling. The United States, this young republic, is one that is supposedly bound by ideals rather than land and ancestry. The idea of America was intended to be the embodiment and crystallization of the words of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adams, and the like. While this is a noble notion, the foundation of 21st-century American culture includes sports and the state rituals that accompany them, reality television, a brightly colored flag, consumerism, petty ideological differences, and binge-watching Netflix. A History of Slavery Despite those men being famous for their works on the “ ,” the United States has a century-old tradition of slavery and racism. One that still courses through the veins of the nation today. natural rights 13% of the American population had ancestors who were slaves. Following their “liberation” they were restricted and harassed in every imaginable way. Today, they’re ancestors, the descendants of slaves, continue to deal with the racism that remains laden within our age-old institutions. The type of anger that must exist in the African American community is one I can only ever imagine. Conclusion Combining all of these seemingly fractured ideas into one whole, America finds itself divided into two large groups with subgroups underlying both. First, the victimized and those who believe that American cruelty ought to override any other national story. The history of American righteousness, fighting for rights, being a country of immigrants is meaningless unless America fully lives up to its ideals. They point not only to slavery but the stigmatization of homosexuality, women’s suffrage, along with the suffering of minorities generally. Second, those who see America and thus the West—despite its horrors—as the undisputed champion of the world morally, economically, and politically. If these ideals bind us together, America’s moral arc necessarily bends towards justice because people will fight for those rights with the flow of information. Furthermore, they’d argue that Western civilization has produced the fairest political and economic system with the highest standard of living in history and technologically advanced society to date. I believe we are unable to find common ground because both stories are in their own right true. If Americans cannot admit the legitimacy of the other side’s interpretation of history, a loss of our collective and individual identities will worsen. This culture war may be the beginning stages of something less ideological and more tangible. Previously published at https://curiosityshots.com/the-culture-war-that-will-define-our-collective-and-individual-identities/

The Culture War That Will Define Our Collective And Individual Identities

With the lockdown in place here in India, to prevent the community spread of COVID-19, most of us have been home bound trying to get work done and also spend some quality time with our families. In addition to this, I m sure most of them are taking this as an opportunity to pickup new skills through various online courses. My only request to my readers is to stay home to stay safe, be focused on what you do and the task at hand and not get stressed about the fact that you are not able to get out. Prasar Bharathi (PB), India's largest public broadcasting agency, came up with an awesome idea of replaying some of their iconic shows from the  like Ramayana, Shaktimaan, Mahabharata etc,. Some of these shows have so much of nostalgia associated with it that most the folks born in that era fondly remember it as "those days". One of the best part of these shows were amazing story telling though from a technical aspects of film-making these shows were pathetic. Through this article I just wanted to relive some of that nostalgia and also give a glimpse of the world before the cable tv revolution shook India in the 90s. Some of the facts to be considered about TV in India before the cable TV revolution of 90s: TV broadcasts started in India in early 60s with most of the programming in black & white for a few hours a day Doordarshan, a national TV network was established in the late 70s to increase the penetration of TVs in India. "National Programme" was fed to other TV stations from New Delhi Indian Govt. introduced color television broadcasts in 1982 with the Asian Games Delhi edition With this came a lot shows and programmes in the 1980s which became a national favourite (some of which have done multiple re-runs) The TV penetration in 1987 when Ramayana was aired for the first time was just 14 million households as against 118 million households (1981 census) Keeping the above in mind, let now recount some of my earliest memories how TV was watched in India: TV broadcasts used to start with the famous Doordarshan music TV programming never used to be for 24 hours. Most of the last programming used to end by 11PM or 12AM midnight to start at 5AM next morning TV watching used to be a community affair, where folks who couldn't afford to buy a TV would sit at their neighbour's house either to watch a specific programme or a cricket match when they were watching Village panchayats used to have TVs and they used to play it at the village centre during specific hours for the villagers to watch certain programmes related to farming, news and current affairs etc. Mythological programmes like Ramayana, Mahabharata etc. used to be blockbuster shows as the story telling was brilliant. In some semi-urban locations, people used to perform "pooja" (Vedic rituals) of the TV sets whenever the "Gods" used to appear When these popular programmes or sporting events used to run on TV, the roads would become empty as most of them would be glued to their TVs either at their homes with their neighbours or would be sitting at their neighbour's Watching TV during the 1980's used to be like festival where people used to watch these programmes together and enjoy it as against the current generation where TV programming is available everywhere on every type of device. Hope people from my generation who are reading this blog are able to relate to some of the things that I had mentioned. Also if you remember any of those significant events do let me know. Thanks for reading.

Doordarshan (DD) & its Impact on India's Collective Consciousness of 90s 

Growing the Blockchain Community Development Sector — Introducing The Collective The Collective is one example of a business in the new segment of the cryptocurrency sector As the cryptocurrency sector has developed an interesting new layer has emerged that I call the “meta” blockchain sector. These are companies and organization that are not building platforms to apply blockchain technology to existing industries. Rather, they are aiming to serve the needs of the emerging blockchain development sector itself. Blockchain Community Management An example is an increasing number of what can be called blockchain “community management” companies. These are new business entities dedicated exclusively to the incubation and management of Initial Token/Coin Offerings (IT/COs). More than this, many of the companies are trying to develop a fully integrated ecosystem where IT/COs are managed, whitepapers developed, user communities created and fostered, and the exchange of cryptocurrencies enabled. There are lots of advantages to using a community management service for cryptocurrency businesses. A good community management company will prepare, design, and develop community-building strategies that are legally compliant for start-ups. The central function of these efforts is providing the first line of support so development teams can stay focused on deliverables. Essential to offer effective community management in the blockchain sector is expertise. Blockchain community development companies are typically run by crypto-enthusiasts who can help a business stay ahead of the curve by keeping current on all major industry trends and tools. The Collective Community Development Company The Collective is a successful Fintech company that is expanding its ecosystem to include the creation and management of IT/COs, as well as blockchain community management more generally. What makes it unique is that instead of linking ITO/CO to other parties in the cryptocurrency world, it will provide all necessary structures to grow community engagement within its won ecosystem. Services The Collective plans to offer include: increasing a company’s social media presence by managing multiple content streams. White paper development services ranging from reviewing and editing existing drafts to working with a company to write a white paper from scratch. The Collective has ongoing relationships with leading industry voices and can provide access to a network of influencers. To offer these services effectively, The Collective proposes to create a comprehensive ecosystem that involves multiple components with 24/7 support. These components include a community management company, a decentralized exchange, a centralized exchange, a video game development division, as well as a community-based initiative designed to serve and protect the interests of everyone in the blockchain industry. Integrated Digital Exchange As part of the ecosystem, The Collective is building a hybrid digital exchange. The plans for the exchange include an integrated global decentralized marketplace for Ethereum-based tokens, known as CDEX, and a centralized exchange known as TraderOne. Together these systems enable the trading of all different types of digital assets, not only those based on Ehtereum. Crypto-Powered Augmented Reality Games The Collective also includes a video game division. The video game industry is huge and The Collective is not alone in recognizing that as the popularity of cryptocurrencies increase, so will the opportunities to leverage the user base the gaming industry attracts. The first game to be launched within the ecosystem is called “CollectiveGO,” an augmented reality game that will integrate multiple cryptocurrencies and monetize through various advertisers. For instance, if a company wants to showcase a new coin or token, CollectiveGO can feature it within the game. As a user plays the game and comes across the token, a short description with links will pop up to increase engagement with the company’s online content. The game will be played on mobile phones using the camera to overlay gameplay on the screen. Players navigate through a virtual world where they can encounter and use different digital currencies. A user will be able to link their wallet address to the game for quick distribution. To ensure the gamers are not wasting their time, all coins and tokens distributed through the game will be held in escrow. The Collective Global Initiative One interesting part of what The Collective is planning is called “The Global Initiative,” which is described as a self-regulated organization with the goal of making the cryptocurrency industry safer. The idea seems to be to protect the community from fraud and ensure legal compliance in a way that does not stifle innovation and growth. The Collective Global Initiative wants to establish voluntary best practices for the entire industry (that are not government-driven) and provide trustworthy spaces for user communities to come together and exchange information. Conclusion The Collective is one of the most recent companies to emerge offering incubation and management services to the blockchain sector. It is part of a growing segment of the blockchain sector that is focussing on creating encompassing ecosystems to not only support ICOs but entire crypto communities. _if you would like to be informed about blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. Subscribe to my channels Medium and Twitter If you have any questions about this article, please comment in the section below. Thank you! fauswif._ <a href="https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href">https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href</a>

Growing the Blockchain Community Development Sector — Introducing The Collective

When the ™law™ empowers those who need it most. My oh my, I’ve touched upon an interesting topic. Hi, my name is Charles, and I am an avid cyberspace and intellectual property law enthusiast who believes blockchain and other emerging technologies will have a large impact on our society and economy. For this article, I wanted to discuss an interesting situation that occurred in the NIFTY community, a sub community within the greater Ethereum community, in August 2018, and why trademark ownership needs to be discussed as early as practicable for blockchain communities [1]. NIFTY Trademark In mid-2018, Dapper Labs Inc., a subsidiary of Axiom Zen, and the venture studio that created CryptoKitties, a decentralized application (dApp) where users can collect digital pets on the Ethereum blockchain (think Neopets or Tamagotchi, but on a blockchain), filed a federal trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for “NIFTY,” a term created within the NIFTY subcommunity to describe non-fungible tokens [1][2]. Non-fungible tokens are unique tokens, often based on the ERC-721 standard, that have a “name, a description, and a URI, which usually points to an image” [11]. The NIFTY trademark, granted in 2018, covers goods and services associated with: International Class (IC) 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: downloadable computer software to enable consumers and businesses to interact with other software, digital assets, digital apparel, cryptocurrency, online services, and databases; computer application software for mobile phones, portable media players, and computers that is used to enable users to hold cryptocurrency via electronic wallets; computer software to create and manage electronic wallets for holding cryptocurrency; application software, namely, software for sending, receiving, buying, selling and storing cryptocurrency; software for use in accessing, reading, tracking, and using blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, digital assets, and digital apparel; software for facilitating a cryptocurrency transaction IC 014. US 002 027 028 050. G & S: promotional items IC 025. US 022 039. G & S: promotional apparel, namely, hats, t-shirts, sweatshirts, jackets IC 035. US 100 101 102. G & S: consultation services, namely, professional services, software development, and educational services to third parties IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: providing an online website enabling users to interact with computer games and other content over a global communication network IC 042. US 100 101. G & S: providing temporary use of on-line non-downloadable software and applications for use in accessing, reading, tracking, and using blockchain technology; providing on-line non-downloadable computer software for use in blockchain technology and computation; computer software design services, namely, design, development, and implementation of software solutions for digital currency security for blockchain and cryptocurrency transactions; computer programming and computer software design services, namely, design, development, and implementation of software for hierarchical deterministic multisignature (hdm) wallets and third party verification services for blockchain and cryptocurrency transactions; providing a website featuring technology that enables users to engage in cryptocurrency mining and verification services for cryptocurrency; platform as a service (paas) featuring computer software platforms for providing design, testing, deployment, and management of blockchain systems; platform as a service (paas) featuring computer software platforms for the deployment, transfer, and management of fiat and cryptocurrency; software as a service (saas) [9]. As you could guess, this did not sit well with the NIFTY subcommunity, one that prides itself on working together to grow the NIFTY market and solidify technical standards [1][12]. Matt Condon [10], a prominent figure in the NIFTY subcommunity, was appalled by the action, and made a scathing comment (and pardon the language) on Twitter: In response to multiple tweets from Matt and many others protesting the action, Roham, AxiomZen’s Founder/CEO, tweeted: The whole twitter thread may be found by clicking here . However, given the broad classification, and pertinently highlighted by what is expected to happen when a community member trademarks a community term, especially when other existing platforms are already using the trademarked term as trade names such as NIFTYGallery, now renamed as CryptoGoods Gallery [1][3][4]. Yalda Mousavinia, Though, Dapper Labs has released the open-source NFT license 2.0 to govern the use of NFTs based on the ERC-721 standard to help other companies in the subcommunity to protect their works [13]. This may be one sign that Roham really meant what he said , but the lack of reference to the NIFTY trademark, or even an open-source trademark license, speaks volumes that Dapper Labs insistence to help other companies is merely an affront to imposing their own will on the subcommunity [13]. Specifically, these two tweets by Roham below show signs of inconsistency between his position, and the actual events as they occurred: “ TMs are a standard part of our process — we shipped NiftyLicense and our general counsel jumped on the filing generic words can never be TM’d — our interest is only in protecting products and services from copy-cats that mislead users we absolutely will shield the community” “ third and most important: we’re committed to supporting the community we know we’re at the earliest stages of a major shift, from centralized to peer-to-peer, from digital rental to true ownership, from feudalism to freedom to go mainstream, we need sustainable business models” These two tweets in particular led Matt Condon and other commentators to poignantly mention that Dapper Labs could have filed specifically for “NIFTY + [an additional word]” to prevent the community term NIFTY from being trademarked (or at least talked to his General Counsel to cancel the filing) [1][5]. Given this usurp of the communal ownership of NIFTY, blockchain communities should be worried about a community member surreptitiously or inconspicuously filing a federal trademark application on community-created terms and designs [1]. The most important lesson to be learned from this incident is that as as Roham’s statements may seem, you should to protect the term and help consumers associate the term with the community [1][5]. capitalist file a federal trademark application as soon as possible (ASAP) However, I do not propose blockchain/decentralized communities file traditional trademarks, as most know them, rather, I suggest communities file what [6][7]. is known as a collective trademark/service mark or collective membership mark Before diving into the type of trademarks, I shall provide a short introduction to collectives, trademarks and service marks, and trademark infringement because they apply to collective trademarks [14]. collective Collective Collectives, as defined by Dictionary.com, are “a business, farm, etc., jointly owned and operated by the members of a group” [16]. A collective sounds very similar to a cooperative, but the two differ concerning the organization’s structure [15]. In cooperatives, the structure is regarding (e.g., equal ownership in the enterprise), while in collectives, the structure is concerning _management (e._g., no hierarchical management system)[15]. ownership Trademarks and Service marks Federally Registered Trademark Symbol A trademark is any mark (word, design, color, sound, symbol, device, etc.) used in commerce to distinguish a seller’s goods from other sellers, and to indicate the origin of the goods [16]. A service mark is any mark used in commerce to distinguish a provider’s services from other providers, and to indicate the origin of the service [16]. Both require as defined in Section 45 of the Trademark Act, , i.e., the goods or services associated with the mark are used in connection with the proliferation of the goods (e.g., placing the mark on the goods or the packaging) or services (e.g., using the mark in the advertising of the service) in interstate commerce (e.g., over the internet) [17][18]. use in commerce 15 U.S.C. §1127 A trademark or service mark is infringed, under the Lanham Act, when there is a likelihood of confusion, i.e., that consumers will confuse the registered owner’s trademark or service mark with that of another person’s or entity’s trademark [19]. To show likelihood of confusion, the federal courts have relied on the factors (slight changes depending on the federal circuit): DuPont (1) The similarity or dissimilarity of the marks in their entireties as to appearance, sound, connotation and commercial impression. (2) The similarity or dissimilarity and nature of the goods or services as described in an application or registration or in connection with which a prior mark is in use. (3) The similarity or dissimilarity of established, likely-to-continue trade channels. (4) The conditions under which and buyers to whom sales are made, i. e. “impulse” vs. careful, sophisticated purchasing. (5) The fame of the prior mark (sales, advertising, length of use). (6) The number and nature of similar marks in use on similar goods. (7) The nature and extent of any actual confusion. (8) The length of time during and conditions under which there has been concurrent use without evidence of actual confusion. (9) The variety of goods on which a mark is or is not used (house mark, “family” mark, product mark). (10) The market interface between applicant and the owner of a prior mark: … (11) The extent to which applicant has a right to exclude others from use of its mark on its goods. de minimis (12) The extent of potential confusion, i. e., whether or substantial. (13) Any other established fact probative of the effect of use [19]. Collective Marks Melinda Consortium collective mark.** Collective marks are marks made for collective entities, such as associations, cooperatives, unions and the like [6][7]. In this context, the mark is owned by the collective entity, not by its’ individual members [6][7][8]. These marks are generally held by the collective entity exclusively for the benefit of the collective members [14]. Contrast this with the general trademark which is solely owned by an individual or entity, and benefit is for solely the owner[14]. Collective membership marks are marks meant to denote membership in a particular collective [6]. Collective membership marks do not indicate commercial origin of goods or services, nor are they indicative of any goods or services [6]. On the other hand, a collective trademark or service mark is a mark that indicates (1) commercial origin of goods or services and (2) that the provider of the goods or services has met the membership standards for admission to the collective [6][8][14][20]. With a collective trademark or service mark, as opposed to a collective membership mark, the members of the collective are using the mark to distinguish their goods or services from other providers, and to indicate the commercial origin of their goods or services [6][8][14][20]. In other words, collective marks can be used in the same manner as regular trademarks, even though the membership organization is not itself producing the goods and services [20]. A collective mark is not harder to acquire than a regular trademark, but the specimen (i.e., the mark) that forms the basis of the application is different [6]. The specimen for a collective trademark must show use of the mark by a member of the collective, while a regular trademark must show use by the owner [6]. The collective entity must show control of the mark (e.g., people entitled to use mark, relationship to collective entity, and how the collective entity controls the mark), which can be shown through the bylaws, brand guide, or other documents with a similar effect [28]. Additionally, the same standards of likelihood of confusion that apply to regular trademarks also applies to collective trademarks [6]. For communities that want to preserve a term for the community, a collective membership mark or collective trademark or service mark would be ideal in keeping the term within the community, and providing the exclusive legal right to use the term (which the community can enforce as needed in accordance with its own principles and values) [6][8][20]. Real-world Examples of Collective Marks International Grocers Alliance “IGA” initial mark.** Four real-world examples of collective marks are the New Hampshire Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) Society, Florists’ Transworld Delivery, International Growers Alliance, and the International Association of Privacy Professionals [need source]. The New Hampshire CPA Society owns a collective service mark for providing association services to promote the interests of CPAs and the local accounting industry in New Hampshire [21]. Florists’ Transworld Delivery (FTD) owns a collective service mark for providing services to florists in their operation of their businesses, help foster goods and services exchange between florists, and promoting the florist industry, and providing informational materials pertaining to the sale of gifts, flowers, plants, and floral arrangements [23]. International Growers Alliance (IGA) owns a collective service mark on the initials “IGA” in connection with rendering “[r]etail store services featuring grocery store items and gasoline, and retail pharmacy services” [24]. IGA’s main line of business is a franchise grocery store model through stores not owned by the brand,i.e., without the trademark included (collective service mark, thus no need for licensing), and the majority of the franchised stores are family owned, and located in small markets [25]. IGA is the largest set of independent grocery retailers in the world and operates in more than 30 countries [26]. The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) owns a collective service mark on the standard character mark of the organization’s name, in connection with rendering “[a]ssociation services, namely, promoting the interests of professionals in the fields of privacy, data protection and security, data management, data auditing, and legal compliance for the foregoing” [27]. The IAPP provides certification, training, conferences, and additional resources for people who are interested in privacy, or privacy professionals looking to see what is going on the industry. Hypothetical Example Here is a hypothetical example e of how a community would consider filing for a collective trademark. A blockchain community or subcommunity, lets call them , will develop a trademark-eligible mark. Quirkteam Quirkteam starts to see the potential for the trademark-eligible term or design to become a staple term or design to identify the community. Quirkteam, realizing the potential for misuse and abuse of the trademark-eligible mark, decides to create a collective entity that will be the owner of the trademark-eligible mark. Quirkteam will then file a federal trademark application with the USPTO for a collective mark (trademark, service mark, or membership mark). If successful, the USPTO will issue Quirkteam,a federally registered collective mark. Quirkteam can then manage the use of the collective mark by its members (e.g., through the collective entity’s bylaws or brand guide), thereby preserving the principles and values of the community’s usage of the mark. Alternatives to Collective Mark A blockchain community or subcommunity may also elect to dedicate community-created terms or designs to the public domain, free for anyone to use without any restrictions. Additionally, a community may utilize a version of the creative commons license to protect copyright usage of the term or designs[29]. Notes ** = Strictly for normative use. All rights reserved by trademark owner(s). Disclaimer Nothing contained herein should be construed as, or is intended to be, financial or legal advice. This article is solely for informative purposes. You agree no attorney-client relationship shall be created from reading this article or using this article in future activities. Acknowledgements Thank you to everyone at @Ledgerback for your help on this article. It is much appreciated. References Formatted references are available upon request [1] https://medium.com/@stellarmagnet/nifty-ethereums-first-trademark-battle-996c840b2583 [2] https://trademark.trademarkia.com/nifty-88046182.html [3] https://gallery.cryptogoods.com [4] https://www.cryptogoods.com/ [5] https://twitter.com/rohamg/status/1028354797450145792 [6] https://www.ny-trademark-lawyer.com/collective-trademarks.html [7] 15 U.S.C. § 1127 [8] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/collective-marks-when-your-group-wants-protects-name.html [9] http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:qjuma1.2.8 [10] https://www.nifty.gg/agenda/speakers/285069 [11] https://medium.com/@jagordon/nifty-blockchain-gaming-thoughts-92075a4f934a [12] https://www.nifty.gg/ [13] https://medium.com/dapperlabs/nft-license-2-0-why-a-nft-can-do-what-mickey-mouse-never-could-27673d5f29aa [14] https://www.bitlaw.com/source/tmep/1302.html [15] http://cdi.coop/coop-cathy-coops-and-collectives-difference/ [16] https://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/trademark-faqs#1223 [17] http://www.waltmire.com/2015/01/03/use-in-commerce-mean-trademark-application/ [18] https://tmep.uspto.gov/RDMS/TMEP/current#/current/TMEP-900d1e1.html [19] . 476 F.2d 1357, 177 USPQ 563 (CCPA 1973) In re E.I. DuPont DeNemours & Co., [20] https://www.bitlaw.com/source/tmep/1303.html [21] https://www.bitlaw.com/source/tmep/1303_01_a_i.html [22] https://www.trademarkia.com/trademarks-search.aspx?tn=society%20of%20certified%20public%20accountants [23] https://trademark.trademarkia.com/florists-transworld-delivery-73711904.html [24] https://trademark.trademarkia.com/iga-78613151.html [25] https://www.iga.com/about/about-iga; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGA_(supermarkets)]/ [26] . https://www.iga.com/about/about-iga [27] . https://trademark.trademarkia.com/the-international-association-of-privacy-professionals-86843346.html [28] https://www.bitlaw.com/source/tmep/1303_01_a_i_A.html [29] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Collective Trademarks in Blockchain Communities?

techvillage.md In September, Moldova lights up on the global entrepreneurial map. 50 international investors will meet 50 startups from Moldova, Ukraine, and Romania (RUAMD region), in a small Moldovan village, Butuceni. For three days, September 11–13, Butuceni will become the venue for a unique startup event, TechVillage. will take place in the bosom of nature, in a rural environment. It is a small event focused on quality rather than quantity, destined for investors and startups that are tired of the conventional conferences, pitching competitions, and business forums. But why Moldova? And why now? TechVillage All eyes are looking East At a first glance, Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine don’t strike as hot tech startup hubs worth looking at. These countries are more associated with post-soviet mentality, medieval churches, and bad roads. However, in the last years, their startup scenes have evolved and now are showing real potential. The CEE region as a whole, just a decade ago, was not on the tech investors’ radar. But after the success of products such as Skype, Prezi, TransferWise, and Avast; and a sudden growth of numerous small entrepreneurial hubs in the area, the CEE began turning heads. The entrepreneurial ecosystems in Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova Ukrainians already left their fingerprints on Silicon Valley by being involved in the development of giants like (Jan Koum), and (Max Levchin). The outsourcing business in Ukraine has grown exponentially in the last years, counting at least 200,000 inexpensive tech professionals. The Ukrainian IT sector’s share in the national GDP has turned from just 0.06% to 3.3% — a whopping 5500% growth — in just 5 years. It is soon to be Ukraine’s biggest outsourcing industry. Today, over 100 giant corporations such as Samsung, Boeing, Siemens, and Oracle are in Ukraine. Ukraine might be close to reaching unicorn-level companies like , , , and . Whatsapp Paypal Affirm Grammarly bpm on-line, Genesis Readdle Jooble Across the street, in Romania, the tech industry has its own offspring to be proud of — and . A success of the Romanian startup factory is i, founded in 2010, now counting over 17,000 drivers and over 600,000 clients in Romania. Taking in account the local market size, these numbers are tremendous. According to The , Bucharest is in top 10 best CEE cities for starting a business. BitDefender Soft32 Clever Tax European Digital City Index RUAMD’s funding scene For a long while, Eastern Europe’s big disadvantage was the underdeveloped and fragmented funding environment. But things are improving. In 2016 a series of Romanian startups got funded: (e-commerce) — 5.5 million euros Elefant.ro (A/B Testing)– 1 million euros Omniconvert (billing) — 1 million euros SmartBill (recruiting) — 700,000 euros Smartdreamers (intelligent POS) — 600,000 euros SymphoPay A series of other Romanian startups that launched abroad have also received substantial funding: (USA, $60mln), (USA, $35mln), (USA, $20mln), (USA, $10mln), (UK, $5mln), (UK, $2.2mln), (UK, $1.3mln). Databricks Branch Metrics Midokura Knotch Vector Watch Big Step StatusToday In Ukraine, VC funds such as , , and saw the opportunity and decided to capitalize on geoarbitrage, thus helping Ukrainian entrepreneurs to become top class. According to a UVCA study of the Ukrainian investment and private capital, in 2015 the total investment value reached $132mln — 237% more than 2014. AVentures TA Ventures Wannabiz Imperious By comparison, Moldova still has a lot to catch up on the investment front. There are no local funds to speak of, and foreign investors are somehow timid, or just unaware of the possibility. Moldova is a developing country with a yet undeveloped market and a low volume of startup investing. However, in the last couple of years 40 Moldovan startups have received a total of $1mln in funding. Some of the more successful are , , , , and . To be able to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem which is at its embrional stage, Moldova needs success stories that would inspire the young generation to become entrepreneurs. xor.ai Planable Gaus nemo.ai BubbleWits How is TechVillage filling the gaps Growth is the goal, which can only be achieved it by building genuine, lasting collaborations between startups and investors, hubs, and accelerators. When it comes to entrepreneurship, the Moldovan glass is half-full, and the local community is pouring some more water in it — actually wine, if you didn’t know, Moldova hosts two world’s largest wine cellars and wine collections.. A group of motivated community leaders decided to organize an unprecedented event that will bring together 50 foreign investors with a collective investitional potential of $100mln and 50 Moldova, Romanian, and Ukrainian startups in an authentic Moldovan village, for three days. techvillage.md TechVillage’s ultimate purpose is to showcase the potential of CEE startups to the investors, accelerators, and community leaders from around Europe while creating a friendly environment for foreign investment in CEE. In addition however, the event aims to bring value to the Moldovan tech market, as well as, boost the development of the Butuceni village, a small village 30min drive from Chisinau — the capital of Moldova. Butuceni is known for its scenery, a place where traditions have been preserved in time, that’s why the village is the perfect escape from the everyday rush. The entire event budget will be injected in the services and products provided by Butuceni’s entrepreneurs. For three days, the participants will take part in various rural activities aimed to create meaningful connections and potential collaborations while familiarizing with the Moldovan culture. The event is an unconference type that puts focus on the interaction between participants rather than listening to speeches and panels. are as low as €249 for founders and €399 for investors, which includes accommodation, local transportation, food, drinks and all activities for the 3 day stay. To ensure a good matchmaking between the startups and investors, all participants will go through a selection process before payment. The event tickets To find out more about the TechVillage, follow them on and , and check out their . Facebook Instagram website

50 international investors with a collective potential of over $100 million are coming to…

will allow for accessible, transparent crowdfunding Acorn’s blockchain platform is building what it believes to be the first crowdfunding platform that is free and open to projects from any country. It accomplishes this using its platform and its native token, OAK. By pledging to never reject a legal and ethical project, aims to democratize access to funding and support founders, especially those in emerging and developing markets who have a difficult time attracting capital. Acorn Collective blockchain Acorn The Acorn ecosystem consists of three main components: Acorn Hub, Acorn Market, and Acorn Local. Acorn Hub is where project backers can contribute OAK tokens to fund projects. In exchange, they may receive rewards, equity, or other incentives for funding a given project — the exact reward is entirely up to the specific project. Next, Acorn Market is a retail platform for projects that successfully met their backing goal. This allows them to easily start their initial retail push post-campaign at no additional cost to the project founders. Finally, Acorn Local is an app, targeted especially towards those in developing nations, that allows consumers, retailers and suppliers to seamlessly trade OAK tokens. This keeps tokens circulating in the Acorn ecosystem rather than on exchanges, and may also be useful for businesses to extract additional insights about the products in the platform. Beyond those key components, some of the platform’s main features are: The platform does not charge a platform fee, which is clearly preferable to the 5%+ typically charged. Free Crowdfunding: The Acorn platform will never reject a project as long as it is legal and not harmful to others. This allows both smaller, local projects, as well as larger projects to be funded on the platform. All Legal Projects: The platform can be used in any country, so those in emerging nations as well as developed nations will be able to participate. Any Country: The Acorn team maintains a reserve intended to provide liquidity for large campaign payouts. This protects against large price fluctuations while the OAK token is in its early stages and is likely not very liquid on exchanges. Liquidity Reserve: Backers of projects will have the option to purchase insurance should the project fail. This makes backing less risky, as they can purchase insurance to significantly reduce their exposure to the project’s risk. Project Backer Insurance: Overall, the Acorn Collective’s project seems like a clear use of blockchain technology. Its application toward accessible, transparent crowdfunding seems like a great way to democratize access to project backing to those who were previously unable to access to funding. The project seems to have a competent team, with with members skilled in blockchain development, cybersecurity, and marketing (among other things). The Acorn project’s main token sale will begin on April 28. Disclaimer: This article is not meant to be investment advice, and is strictly informational. Make sure you give this post and if you enjoyed this post and want to see more! 50 claps follow me _Read writing from Devin Soni on Medium. crypto markets, data science ☞ twitter @devin_soni ☞ website…_medium.com Devin Soni — Medium You can also follow me on ! Twitter _The latest Tweets from Devin Soni (@devin_soni). https://t.co/Q3YFB0nWiL_twitter.com Devin Soni (@devin_soni) | Twitter

Democratizing Crowdfunding with Acorn Collective

In a world where the majority of issues stem from collective action problems and incentive misalignments of one sort or another, it constantly amazes me that people continue to miss the point by such wide margins. Of course, there will always exist those who feel there’s nothing new under the Sun. That being said, it’s difficult for me to believe that you’re unaware of both the implausibility of such a bearish future for this emerging class of technologies, and how strongly this article parallels prior bear cases such as Paul Krugman’s embarrassingly incorrect predictions regarding the Internet. Perhaps the novelty and attention such bear cases draw within the exuberant phase of technological evolution is worth the later pie on one’s face in a world that has forgotten how to remember, or to discount the present opinions of those whose past predictions strayed so far from eventual reality as to become unrecognizable comedic fodder with the passage of time. If only there were some kind of technology that allowed for us to easily encode such predictions in a trustworthy and durable manner such that we might begin to hold one another accountable without interference from — or vulnerability to the ideological capture of — centralized organizations…

In a world where the majority of issues stem from collective action problems and incentive…

While nobody is doubting the power of collective intelligence anymore, there still exists confusion as far as the difference between various projects in the domain. We compared six most known ones: , , , , , , and outlined specific features that make each project unique. Gnosis Augur Cindicator Stox WINGS Santiment Noticed other differences? Please send us a note at and we will be happy to incorporate more. team@storifier.co *The comparison is based on the info from websites and whitepapers of the projects, as well as independent reviews available online.

Collective intelligence platforms. Telling the difference.

-Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing about Hard Things. “No matter who you are, you need…somebody you can call when things go horribly wrong — when your life is on the line and you only have one phone call.” I’ve had the joy and privilege to spend the last seven years building early stage companies. I’ve raised close to $10M, sold a company, and when I needed to use my “one call,” Collective’s phone would ring. And they always answered. Why did they answer, you may ask? technology Founder They weren’t investors. To protect their large investment stake? They didn’t see my first company, and chose not to invest on my second. To win an allocation in your financing round? So, why? Because they’d been through their own entrepreneurial journeys. And seen a thing or two. But most of all: I believe it’s because genuinely care. Eric, David and Micah The , Founder Collective, is guided by a simple mission “To be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage.” This is what that means to me: venture fund they’ve built Be the most helpful investor any founder has. Stay aligned with the founders (spiritually and structurally). Dilute with them as the company grows. Be (and stay) lean. Be (and stay) humble. It’s harder on the other side of the table. Know that VC isn’t the right answer to every question — it’s . a hell of a drug Entrepreneurial success . does not always mean IPO Don’t chase themes. Follow the visionary entrepreneurs to the weird and wonderful. At Founder Collective, nothing is off limits. Hard tech? (Cruise) Odd marketplace? (Uber) Regulated market? (Pill Pack) Totally new business? (BuzzFeed). They . do it all It seems like a pretty simple premise. But off the record, behind closed doors…I’ve spoken to enough fellow founders to say with conviction: this approach is surprisingly rare. So it’s with great delight that I tell you that as their fifth member of the investment team. I’ll be based in their San Francisco office, where I’ll be investing in and being of service to the next wave of entrepreneurs. I’m joining Founder Collective And if you’re an early-stage company founder, I’ll say the following: I haven’t IPO’ed a company or three. I’m not old enough to have decades of valley “seasoning.” What I can offer is simple: I’ve lived the struggle. And I believe more than ever in technology’s power to shape our world in extraordinary ways. I leave the imagination to you — and can’t wait to see what you build.

Why I’m Joining Founder Collective

This originally appeared in our newsletter, Scrappy & Strange. Sign up for it here! Our mission is to be the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage. We believe the most interesting startups are exploring weird & wonderful spaces that can’t yet be described with tech buzzwords. We also believe that having more capital doesn’t make a startup anymore likely to succeed. These ideas will drive the content of this newsletter (along with a lot of love for our portfolio companies!) Our hope is that we can use this newsletter to help tell the stories of companies that are using scrappy strategies to dominate sometimes strange markets. What do we mean by “Scrappy” & “Strange” you may wonder? Startups need less capital than one might think. Efficient use of capital will drive better returns for entrepreneurs. This newsletter will and break down their lessons for your use. Scrappy = Efficient entrepreneurship: highlight the companies that use capital in wise ways The best, most disruptive ideas . We’ll share thoughts on how we evaluate seemingly odd new ideas, the challenges startups face if they pursue them, and some developments that we find interesting. Strange = Founders pursuing weird & wonderful ideas: rarely make sense when they launch We hope you find this useful. If you like it, please forward it to a friend. If you can think of any ways to improve it, please let us know. Scrappy Managing Partner and Director of Content & Community reviewed all the tech IPOs between 2011–2015 and found that there was no positive correlation between the amount of venture capital a startup raised and their ultimate success. In fact, . Eric Paley Joe Flaherty the companies that raised less VC actually outperformed their better-funded peers in the long run Think about this. Of the 20 most successful startups of the last five years, 14 raised less than $125M, six raised less than $50M, and one raised . By contrast, the 192 active unicorn companies have raised an average of $284M in VC. nothing It’s important to note that it’s never too late to become “capital efficient.” Hotel Tonight CEO Sam Shank ( ) shared the playbook for how he turned his company from . #ProudInvestor unsustainable to profitable in just seven months Strange 1. What “theme” would have predicted Uber or Airbnb? At Founder Collective, we’re proudly “anti-thematic.” By the time people start talking about a “theme” it’s probably too late to start a big business in that space. For instance, Five years passed between the founding of Airbnb & Uber and when people started talking about the “Sharing Economy.” FC Managing Partner David Frankel explored this idea in a post, . Why Today’s Tech Themes are Poor Predictors of Tomorrow’s Hot Startups 2. Watching the Alphageeks What tends to become everyone else does for work in a decade or so. helps illustrate exactly what that might mean in terms of software. It turns out Ruby on Rails is declining as a favorite for weekend hackers while Haskell (big data), WebGL (Web-based 3-D graphics), and the low-level Assembly language are increasingly being used on evenings and weekends. Could these languages be the critical drivers of the next wave of startups? geeks do on weekends New data from our portfolio company Stack Overflow 3. The Rise of “Retrotech?” . Ebook sales have dropped 17% while . are ripping up asphalt and going back to gravel roads to forgo the cost of repaving. What’s driving this? GrandTheftAuto V, the 6th best selling game of last year, which was originally released in 2013, might hold a clue about : Vinyl records outsold MP3’s in 2016 paper books rose in sales by 8% 27 mid-sized cities why old-school technology is holding on longer than we expected Nowadays, people are playing games into their forties and fifties; they have the money to buy new hardware, but they may not have the time or desire to seek out fresh gaming experiences. Updated versions of reliable staples are becoming more attractive. Based on these data points it may be worth considering focusing more attention on understanding your customer’s use cases rather than experimenting with the latest and greatest technologies. 4. “Blessed are the Boring” What do VHS tapes, garbage trucks, and hotels for divorcées have in common? They’re all boring product categories that eventually yielded billion dollar businesses. , but rather, bring their passion for a problem or approach to an underexplored market. Managing Partner Micah Rosenbloom explains why founders shouldn’t wait for an idea that they are passionate about Founder Collective News The Art of Open Source Community Building We’re fortunate to have invested in a group of companies that have set the standard for modern web development. We asked three of them about how they turned developers into devoted users, how they built businesses around open-source communities, and their secrets for promoting new tools. Read their stories: Follow us on to read our next series on how to turn academic research into startups, including an interview with Co-founder/CEO/Rocket scientist, . Medium Accion Systems’ Natalya Bailey Forbes Midas List 2017 made Forbes’ . made the . We’re thrilled and honored to be included on lists with such impressive peers, but we’re keenly aware that our success is the result of our amazing portfolio companies, read about some of them below! Eric Paley Midas List of top venture capitalists for the second year in a row Micah Rosenbloom Forbes’ Brink List of emerging investors Portfolio News , a leader in data science, was acquired by Google Kaggle [TechCrunch] , a leading digital measurement cloud company, was acquired by Oracle Moat [Wall Street Journal] was a app of the year, and a few months later, was [ Pocket Time Magazine acquired by Mozilla Time] raised $57M to acquire TopTix [ SeatGeek Billboard] grew revenue 35X in last 12 months and raised $20M from Sequoia [ Dia & Co. Fortune] raises $2.7M to make renting an apartment a little less horrible Bedly [TechCrunch] gives journalists and agencies a way to work with data, no matter their technical skills. [ Flourish Fast Company] is now shipping wine, nationwide [ Kuvee Kuvee] , the 3-D printer that could finally change manufacturing [ Desktop Metal Technology Review] is a college alternative that gets paid only when students get jobs [ MissionU Fast Company] now powers over 1M real-time apps [ F irebase Firebase] , an equipment rental service wants you to do more by owning less [ Joymode Paste] innovative music apps was featured by Apple in the iTunes store [ JoyTunes Apple] recently hosted new investor Mark Zuckerberg in their Lagos, Nigeria office [ Andela USA Today] published a fifth clinical study validating their diabetes treatment [ Omada Health MobiHealthNews] first user conference, FUSE 2017 is being held in Cambridge on June 6th Formlabs’ [Formlabs] founder Will Ahmed was interviewed about the future of sports technology by Charlie Rose [ Whoop PBS]

Stories, News & Mentions about COLLECTIVE

Collective’s Stories on HackerNoon