Co-ops, DAOs, and the way forward for collectives

From my experiences in the two spaces, I have noticed that DAOs tend to be better at enabling collective ownership at scale, even if their cultural understanding of the rights, responsibilities, and accountability associated with ownership is comparatively underdeveloped. And while cooperatives tend to be less successful in securing funding, they a... See more

Having one foot in the platform cooperativism movement and another in the DAO space has been illuminating, and I have come to believe that both spheres are giving rise to valuable new tools when it comes to human organization, collective ownership, and cultural production. While it can sometimes seem like these innovations are happening in parallel... See more

At the end of the day, the best framework for an organization may not be a choice between a cooperative or DAO model, but a blend of both. Incorporating cooperative values into crypto networks could take the form of a traditional cooperative that bootstraps its network through on-chain tokenized contributions. Alternatively, a DAO could decide to a... See more

Co-ops often emerge as an attempt to respond to market failures and exploitative economic systems. They are designed to bring benefits to their members: good jobs, dignity, and collective agency. Because co-ops are motivated by serving members’ needs, rather than profit, they are often guided by racial and economic justice missions. There aren’t an... See more

Members work together to create, distribute and capture value relative to a shared mission. Ownership shares economic, social and political components, creating best practices for digital coordination.