The DisCO Project Matrix

This is a working document prototyping the DisCO Project initially described in the DisCO Manifesto and developed since. For background, you can also read our short introduction to the DisCO framework. If you've been invited to collaborate, feel free to add comments in the talk page. For longer comments, please use the Loomio thread for discussing this text — and feel free to request access to the latter.

Why DisCOs?

The future of work, society, and humanity in general is lately discussed in terms of how high-tech developments like automation or artificial intelligence are imminent. Those who are not prepared to work on or with these high-tech "solutions" are implicitly at fault for not keeping up with the times. There are enormous inequalities and privileges at play in this narrow-minded vision of the future. Fortunately, today there are many people working towards fairer futures. Both emerging and longstanding movements offer effective, responsive methods for organizing people, information and power. The DisCO team is presently working on ways to unite key people and practices from several of these changemaker movements to work on a coherent, practical system for a more egalitarian, effective method of organization, one that integrates but is not dominated by technology.

Despite the increasing alarm bells of technology's encroachment on human dignity and agency, more urgent matters than technology itself tend to preoccupy many people, including our collapsing ecosystems and social cohesion. Technology can even deliberately cloud these issues. The power of a technology depends heavily on the political and economic agendas coded into its "machine DNA". We see potential in harvesting the best of the most recent developments and theories, and also making critical interventions into once promising technology that has been predominantly co opted by entities with little to no regard for people or the environment.

A future of work which benefits people depends on whether communities can recognize and use their power to effect change while confronted with paralyzing threats of worldwide catastrophe and escalating abuses of political and economic power. By orchestrating different change-making movements and empowering people to see hope in new possibilities, this proposal offers a detailed look at a united vision and practical steps towards reimagining the future of cooperative work.

The DisCO Project aims to build networks that prioritize taking care of human beings, using the power of distributed ledger and peer to peer technologies for social and environmental benefit. The project will develop new and radical forms of ownership, governance, entrepreneurship, and financialization to fight pervasive economic inequality, and builds a synergy among clearly related but often siloed sectors which need better strategic alliances to face the future with creative, inclusive solutions.

Purpose, Components and the DisCO CAT

The DisCO Project represents a comprehensive framework to support the development of Distributed Cooperativism. It provides components under the umbrella concept of the DisCO C.A.T (Community Algorithmic Trust) . All components are modular, concurrent and in Permanent Beta. They are:

1. DisCO FLOOR: Comprehensive online educational resources and legal tools
2. DisCO Deck: Value Tracking Platform
3. DisCO EXPERIENCE: Collaborative tools for DisCO practices
4. Research and pilot projects
5. Events and Outreach

The project is initially envisioned as a 4-5 year process with provisions for further expansion beyond year 5. Along its cultural and structural axes, the components described below will be built by value-aligned partners and the DisCO pilots themselves to ensure relatability and intimate knowledge of the DisCO framework.

1: DisCO FLOOR: Educational resources and legal tools

DisCO's educational web platform (DisCO Floor) gathers the cultural aspects of the project, including comprehensive educational resources and legal tools for cooperators to set up DisCOs worldwide.

DisCO Journey

The DisCO learning journey will feature interactive materials to explain DisCOs in plain language over a series of short, didactic articles, complemented by pop-up vocabulary definitions, infographics and videos (see below), TL/DRs, quizzes and games. With a pop-science approach it will be based on our previous work in the Commons Transition Primer

DisCO Ball: Knowledge Base

The DisCO knowledge base (DisCO Ball) will feature a visually engaging design, powered by semantic wiki software. Showcasing best pattern practices for DisCO development and management, the knowledge base will provide semantic categories linking to further resources and examples (from the various individual, self-hosted wikis of each DisCO pilot). It will prioritize modern, clean graphics (following the template of the Guerrilla Media Collective Wiki) and user friendliness. Video tutorials and resources on how to contribute and enrich the DisCO Ball knowledge base will be provided within the overall DisCO Floor platform to facilitate content.

DisCO Directory

Geographic and thematic directory of DisCOs, as well as associated Social Solidarity and Platform Cooperative entities.

DisCO Blocks

Interactive base DisCO Governance Model (based on the original DisCO Governance Model developed for Guerrilla Media Collective).

The base governance model will display the basics for DisCO Governance in dedicated, graphically supported sections, with drop down text and links for more details, including examples and solutions derived from pilot projects. The model matrix will provide interactive Q&A style templates for prospective DisCOs to create their own spin-off governance models.

The builder works through drag and drop components. These are known as "Governance Modules", presenting recurring solutions to common DisCO challenges sourced from various DisCO pilots and experience. They also provide information, pros/cons and risk assessment about the significance and lived experience behind every governance choice.

The modules help DisCO members discuss and configure their governance models, which can then be tweaked, modified and saved as new modules.

The modules also serve to program the basic function and value flows of the DisCO Deck ( see below)

Handbook

Electronic, downloadable Handbook based on the template of the Guerrilla Translation Handbook, but updated for general DisCO use and with various practical examples sourced from all DisCO pilots. The Handbook will provide a complementary linear and narrative approach to the educational materials contained in the educational platform. Published in PDF, EPub and GitBook formats, the handbook is expected to be updated periodically as the project develops and will include practical how-to guides on forming a DisCO (best practices, cultural, legal and technological resources and more). Paper versions can be created through Think Global, Print Local methodologies, with source files available on demand.

The DisCO Trilogy

Three downloadable multi-format publications covering various aspects of DisCO.

If I Only Had a Heart: The DisCO Manifesto

The DisCO Manifesto is a deep dive into the world of Distributed Cooperative Organizations. Over its 80 colorful pages, you will read about how DisCOs are a P2P/Commons, cooperative and Feminist Economic alternative to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (or DAOs). The DisCO Manifesto also includes some background on topics like blockchain, AI, the commons, feminism, cooperatives, cyberpunk, and more.

Care Before Code: The DisCO Elements

(Forthcoming, November 2020) Compilation of several articles on DisCO, including dedicated sections on DisCO in our current historical and Pandemic context, the Seven Principles, DisCO Governance, DisCO Carework and DisCO policies. The DisCO Elements is a "director's cut", expanded from a publication commissioned by Autonomy.work. The DisCO Elements will also be serialised as standalone articles in Hackernoon and cross-posted in DIsCO Stories.

The DisCO PinkPaper

(Forthcoming, March 2020) White paper for the DisCO project, not only describing technological aspects side, but also highlighting the cultural and ethical considerations underlying our design choices. WThe DisCO Pinkpaperill include sections on the DisCO FLOOR, DisCO DECK and their co-dependencies, as well as a sections on the DisCO STACK and how it relates to FLOOR and DECK.

DisCO Stories

Series of articles authored by the DisCO Crew, DisCO constituents, and outside journalists to be published in leading outlets (The Guardian, Open Democracy, Hackernoon, Truthout, the Conversation, etc.) outlining the various aspects of DisCO, alongside reflections on the implications of the framework, the unmet needs leading to its creation, the real stories and experiences of those using the DisCO Framework and Stack.

Articles include short articles, long read essays, and interviews. All articles are compiled in the DisCO Stories section of DisCO.coop.

Videos

Supporting videos for the project will include:

1. Animated infographic introductions to the overall vision, the history and facets of DisCO
2. Video tutorials for the value tracking platform (see below)
3. Talking heads/Greenscreen Videos with approachable explanations of DisCO aspects. These can be adapted from the articles below, as well as entries in the DisCO Ball knowledge base
4. Interviews with DisCO creators and pilots
5. Short, on the ground, mini documentaries of the pilots
6. Video summaries of Discothons
7. Talks and presentations

Infographics

Graphic adaptations of DisCO resources and materials extracted from the DisCO Manifesto, including the seven DisCO principles, characteristics of the DisCO framework, the base governance model, steps to set up a DisCO and more.

Graphic Novel

Graphic narrative reimagining of the contents of the DisCO Manifesto. The Graphic Novel will prioritize accesability and a deeper exploration of the four components of the DisCO DNA (Commons and P2P, Open Cooperativism, Open Value Accounting and Feminist Economicis). The graphic novel will feature a humorous and relatable narrative, highlighting user stories and historical precedents. As with the Handbook, the Graphic Novel will be available in electronic format, with further resources available for local printing and distribution.

Audiobook

Bilingual Audiobook version of the DisCO Manifesto to engage those who prefer their content via narration. The English version will be read by co-author Ann Marie Utratel and the Spanish version by co-author Stacco Troncoso.

MOOC

Three-month online courses with webinars, synchronous and asynchronous discussion channels, and supporting materials (as described within the section on educational resources) for prospective DisCO initiators. The MOOC will be modular and will include dedicated courses on the theory of DisCO, as well as its practical aspects (online collaboration tools, best practices, configuration and usage of the DisCO CAT platform, legal structures, etc.)

Legal structures

Tutorials and advice on DisCO-appropriate legal structures, organized by geographical legislation but also examining the practical legalities of DisCO's transnational dimensions, as well as possible legal frameworks for onchain structures (see legal research section below).

Translation and localization

Ongoing linguistic and contextual adaptation of all materials featured on the educational platform, as well as the DisCO Manifesto, homepage, Value Tracking Platform and research materials, described below.

2: DisCO Deck: Value Tracking Platform

To ensure their success and uptake DisCOs need accessible convivial technologies to facilitate their value tracking and redistributory components, as well as complementary DisCO-appropriate collaboration tools.

The DisCO DECK will be the front-end interface and back end for any given DisCO's Community Algorithmic Trust (or DisCO CAT). It is designed to be an accessible online tool with a balanced integration of Web 3.0, Distributed Ledger Technology and Blockchain components. The DisCO Deck will facilitate value tracking, accounting, and other tools to fully support the DisCOs in their day to day operations.

The DisCO Deck will feature:

Configurable modules for value accounting with adjustable ratios and characteristics

These include:

• Pro-bono love work, market livelihood work, and reproductive care work metrics, with the possibility of varying rates and modes of tokenization
• Integrations for automated value tracking, depending on a given DisCO's chosen productive work and software tools
• Time tracking tools

Interactive real time visualizations of

• All value streams according to accorded value ratios
• Drag and drop real time adjustability of accorded ratios to suit personal circumstances and necessities of members (validated by voting-consent mechanisms)
• Personalised views of each DisCO member's historical, invested and divested credits (see this section of DisCO governance model for more details)
• Economic projections and budgeting tools, including reproductive vs productive work balances and readjustments, as well as optimal invested/divested credit ratios
• Legislation-appropriate tax ratios, regular expenses and individual member expenses (deducted from individual allocations)
• All interactions in the Platform can take place through drag and drop graphic visualizations and/or numerical input interfaces. This includes real time visualizations of all DisCO-wide and individual member value flows

Financial tools including:

• Automatically executed value transfers mediated by the CAT (as in a regular DAO) or via liquid democracy enabled consent mechanisms
• Access privilege mediated transfer of credits between
  • individual DisCO members
  • value streams
  • separate DisCO nodes
  • and toward configurable value pools for specific projects
• Transfer of credits among different DisCOs
• Conversion of credits to designated fiat currencies, with bank transfers to
  • DisCO members (ie. monthly payments)
  • Suppliers
  • Organizations
• Conversion of credits to various cryptocurrencies and individual, permissioned access to wallets,
• Automated invoicing and payment tools, both via bank transfer and/or cryptocurrency wallets
• Legislation specific (Country/legal structure) community developed plugins, validated by cryptographic notary signature for taxation and State financial reporting.

All components will allow for granular customization of how many of these processes are:

1. automatically executed by the CAT
2. automatically displayed by the CAT but only executed via customizable governance-model determined permissions and votes by the members
3. individually permissioned

Although modular components and existing FLOSS options will be repurposed and built into the platform, a white paper detailing the structural and technical characteristics of DisCOs will be provided for technical development and funding partners, complemented by a more accessible narrative overview of the technical scope of the project.

As described in the DisCO Manifesto, the platform will use non-blockchain DLT technologies such as Secure Scuttlebutt, Activity Pub and IPFS for individual (small-scale, trustworthy) DisCO value tracking, internal transactions and data storage. The architecture employs public Blockchain sparingly for logging compendiums and transacting with other entities (through two possible cryptocurrencies or "DisCOins"; see below Individual-DisCO level interaction-generated data can be crunched and placed in these blockchains for secure, trustless, external transactions and value flows, with the possibility of Solid serving as a protocol for querying PDS through blockchain validated access privileges.

Complementary Pilot-tested inclusive educational materials and state-of-the-art UX (presented as part of the DisCO Floor Knowledge base — see above) will ensure the CAT's accessibility and user friendliness.

Tech Development Stages for the DisCO Deck

The development cycle for the DisCO Deck will follow three incremental stages:

1. Centralized server MVP/Test case Stage
2. Web 3.0 (SSB/IPFS) Stage
3. Blockchain Stage

Each of these roughly corresponds to the three main features described in the previous section (value accounting, visualizations and financial tools). The stages are not strictly sequential, with concurrency increasing for Stages 2 and 3 in particular. Perpetual Beta will be deployed through various combinations of the Stage 2 and 3 architectures.

Centralized server MVP/Test case Stage

The first iteration of the DisCO Dev is currently being developed based on existing components developed for Network Resource Planning by Mikorizal Software. This iteration is being piloted by Guerrilla Media Collective. Other pilots can use the MVP to prototype different value accounting frameworks, as described in the section above. This initial stage will let us test the robustness of the software, increase the scope for tweakability and refine the design for the UI on top of a non distributed architecture.

Web 3.0 (CommonsPub/SSB/IPFS) Stage

Stage 2 will take over from Stage 1 and deploy the software on a secure Web 3.0 system. Stage 2 will be partly research based, where we will iterate the DisCO NRP MVPs on different architectures (CommonsPub, Secure Scuttlebutt and IPFS) to test functionality, while incorporating the finished front-end interface described in the visualizations section, as well as some of the characteristics described in the Financial Tools section above.

The Web 3.0 Platform will be considered the default platform for individual DisCO Value accounting and small DisCO federation value mutualization.

Blockchain Stage

Stage 3 builds on the previous two stages by utilizing the user graphic interface and value accounting architecture developed in Stage 2 and applying it to a public blockchain. This Stage is primarily designed for DisCOs, as well as other organizations with compatible/convertible tokens who want to trade or engage in value sovereignty mechanisms but it can function alongside the Stage 2 Web 3.0 architecture for some of the tokenization, invoicing and monetary transfer tools described in the Financial Tools section, as well as the cryptocurrency possibilities to be examined in the DisCOin: Cryptocurrencies research component below.

3: DisCO EXPERIENCE: Collaborative tools for DisCO practices

The DisCO Stack will follow the needs of the DisCO pilots, as determined by the research component. Rather than building dedicated tools, it will leverage and customize existing FLOSS tools for

• synchronous communication
• asynchronous communication and decision making
• Task management
• Collaborative writing
• File storage
• Documentation
• Calendar and scheduling tools

These can be either included as a module within the CAT or as a suite of browser based apps, to be used in conjunction with the patterns and practices described in the educational resources listed above (Knowledge base, Handbook, video tutorials, etc). Beyond the particular tools, the DisCO framework, highlights best practices and educational materials to use complementary tools within a coherent framework.

4: Research and pilot projects

The DisCO project needs to be developed in close collaboration with the distributed cooperatives that seek to incorporate its framework. The various research lines described below are to be developed through field work and ongoing dialogue with the pilot projects

DisCO pilots

Pilot projects for DisCO need to present a diverse geographical and cultural focus, as well as a healthy representation of various type of mission-oriented productive work.

Criteria for included pilots will be determined by the overall capacities and resources of the DisCO project. In any case, any group can choose to become a DisCO and make use of the resources posted in the educational platform and contribute to its development but selected pilots will benefit from hands on support from the project team. Pilots directly involved with the project should also benefit from financial resources to prioritize their own development and learning journey, as well as to help with initial set up costs. They will also take part in the participatory action research components of the project and will be a key influence in its direction.

During their development phase, pilot projects will be supported in the following pilot-specific areas (links point to existing examples in Guerrilla Media Collective)

• Development and creation of governance model, including:
  • Multi constituent membership layers
  • Value accounting ratios and methods
  • Decision making
• Customization of DisCO CAT
• Development of repository for commons-creating pro bono work
• Ethical business plan
• Creation of Commitment Statement
• Dating Phase andmentoring strategies development
• Community Rhythms development
• Development and customization of workflow tools
• Documentation and creation and upkeep of own knowledge base/wiki
• Storytelling
• Participation in development of Intra-DisCO value flows

This list is not prescriptive, however, and pilots may diverge from this template as long as they successfully fulfill the seven DisCO principles. Existing patterns from Guerrilla Media Collective and other emergent DisCOs can be copied selectively or serve as a point of origin/inspiration for all the preceding areas. However, it is for each pilot to decide which patterns to prioritize and how. Pilots are also encouraged to devise and document new strategies and patterns to fulfill the possibilities of the DisCO Framework.

Pilot projects may choose to convert their whole operation to DisCO principles or to experiment with the DisCO Framework through dedicated clusters. All pilots will be supported by the online resources described in this text, as well as the ongoing support of all stakeholders involved in the project. Ultimately, the DisCO project is designed to be a mutual learning experience, prioritizing new forms of non hierarchical education and a wide variety of approaches to the DisCO framework and its seven basic principles.

Interested pilots so far include:

• Guerrilla Media Collective (Communications collective, International)
• CultureStake (Arts Collective, International)
• La Louve (Cooperative supermarket, France)
• Fairmondo (Online marketplace, International)
• Multi-Talented Makerspace(Makerspace, Zimbabwe)
• SpiralSeed (Permaculture association, United Kingdom)
• FairBnB (Social Solidarity alternative to AirBnB)
• Pixelache (Transdisciplinary platform for emerging art, design, research and activism, Finland)
• Smart.coop (Freelancer mutual, European Union)
• Cooperation Jackson (Self-managed solidarity networks, United States)
• Embassy Network (Solidarity-based housing solution)
• DLabs (Educational self sufficiency labs, African continent)
• Cavana
• Bloom Network (Community for regenerative culture makers, International)
• Regen Network (Decentralized collective action towards healthier ecosystems, International)
• Youth Initiative Program (Educational program for your social entrepreneurs, Sweden, International)
• Numundo (Decentralized network of ecovillages, intentional communities, permaculture farms, social projects and retreat centers, International)
• Circular Textiles
• The Hologram
• Crypot Knitting Circles/String Figures
• GeoAlternativa
• Laneras
• LaFábrika detodalavida (LFdTV)
• ACTYVA
• BROVID

See also DisCO Pilot Development in the Events section below.

Research lines

Distributed Cooperativism in action

Participatory action research on the DisCO pilots, including extensive fieldwork and ethnographies on group process, culture and challenges. Will include comparative qualitative and quantitative studies among the different pilots and DisCO cooperative vis a vis Platform Cooperatives, "regular" cooperatives, Social Solidarity economy enterprises and general SMEs.

Intra DisCO value flows

Overview of possible mutual solidarity mechanisms and funds between different DisCOs both within national and legislations and fiat currencies, or transnational and through crypto-assets. These mechanisms will prioritize the ongoing development of the DisCO project beyond its initial scope and its sustainability. Will also explore solidarity, mutualization and decommodified mechanisms for mutual support, including the creation of physical, digital and knowledge commons

Legal frameworks (on-chain and off)

Comparative review of suitable legal frameworks for DisCO value accounting and member control. Will include regional, national and (in the case of the EU) continental and international cooperative legislation. Initially based on the DisCO pilots the research will focus on best-practices and legal templates for other DisCOs operating within the same legislation, while providing a research framework for other legislations to be explored at a later date. This component will also include an investigation of other legal structures beyond cooperatives currently used in DAO space, how to embed ICA's current values onchain, while seeking legal recognition for such structures to be recognised as distributed cooperative. Finally, the role of CopyFair and other forms of P2P Licensing will be analysed, along with license mediated reciprocity and solidarity mechanisms.

Feminist economic theory and practice

Comporative review of feminist economic literature vis a vis real world practices of the DisCO pilots, including the definition and practice of care work as practiced in DisCOs, the pros and cons of reproductive work accounting and relative tokenization. Tokenization in different mediums will also be analysed for its effects on social relationships. Will also include an examination of care and reproductive work beyond the cooperative structure, i.e. in the household, and how this affects work performed within the DisCO. This last point will explore varying boundaries between work and home life, as well as possible multiconstituent mechanisms to make some of those boundaries permeable if so decided.

Commons-oriented, feminist critique of DAOs

A comparative study of DisCOs vs DAOs framed within existing academic literature on the common, feminist economics and the blockchain/DAO/DLT world. The study will focus on the different understanding of values, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and resources in both fields, as well as mutual and differing characteristics of each.

DisCOin: Cryptocurrencies

Research and development into two DisCO-specific cryptocurrencies:

1. DisCOin.st (Stablecoin)
2. DisCOin.vol (Volatile)

This component will explore the possibility of DisCO members choosing what proportion of the payments they want divested as fiat currencies vs any of the two DisCOin architectures. DisCOins can then be used, among other things, to divest pro-bono payments (ie, not subjecting them to taxation for salaried work), convert into social currencies or other cryptocurrencies and, at the DisCO network level, make payments among DisCOs for b2b goods and services. An investment fund can also be created. Once the research phase has been carried out, it can be decided whether to build these crypto-currencies and add these options to the DisCO Deck platform above.

Commons-public partnerships

Study of documented commons-public partnerships, as well as public-cooperative frameworks (such as the Evergreen/Preston model) and how DisCOs could lower the costs of public provision by encouraging predistributive strategies. This would include policy recommendations for public organisms interested in working with DisCOs and supporting the growth of the DisCO ecosystem.

5: Events and Outreach

Despite originating out of the experience of a mainly online group (Guerrilla Media Collective) our experience has led us to appreciate the importance of in person contact and creative development through a variety of events and exercises. Trust building among supposedly trustless architectures is an essential part of the DisCO vision and, whenever possible, DisCO project members and sympathisers can significantly increase the added value and outputs of the project through a variety of in-person meetings.

Another benefit to this approach is to leverage the network and location-based resources of all DisCO project partners to create an affinity network around DisCO development. This would involve an intensive touring calendar by project participants to foster in-person connections and explore and challenge the possibilities of the DisCO framework. Event documentation (articles, images, and video if possible) of all these interactions can then be added to the DisCO knowledge base ongoing.

Introductory talks and workshops:

Aimed at all publics, but with a special focus on those most likely to be attracted by the DisCO framework (see Impact Section below) these events can include appearances at conferences and panels, and well as dedicated keynote presentations on DisCO — to be documented through DisCO Stories and the DisCO Ball Knowledge base.

Introductory workshops can take place over one or several days to provide a more thorough overview of the framework and include audiovisual materials, short lectures, games and interactive prototyping of DisCOs.

DisCO pilot development

Hands-on accompaniment through workshops and DisCO Project to Individual DisCO agreed-on Community Rhythms. This component will focus on co-mentoring emergent DisCO pilots in the development of their own governance models, prioritizing the cultural and structural aspects of DisCO creation while documenting and systematizing new pattern approaches to the DisCO Framework

Pilot work will also focus on the customization of each pilot DisCO's Community Algorithmic Trust and associated DisCO Deck value tracking platform, as well as training on work collaboration tools and best practices, ethical business models and outreach and diffusion strategies. Pilot development will take place online and through quarterly, week-long DisCO retreats. See also sections above for DisCO-pilot related documentation, written and audiovisual outputs

DisCOthons

DisCOthons are envisioned as public hackathons combining tech and human-centered educational and collaborative resources. They occupy a middle ground between the more expository introductory talks and workshops described above and the more involved mentoring of the DisCO Pilots.

Webinars and AMAs

Public webinars and online "Ask me anything" sessions facilitated by the DisCO development team (including pilots) to showcase the framework and answer questions.

Impact

DisCO offers unique, actionable alternatives for specific audiences eager to engage with new economic models, such as:

• • Freelancers and "the precariat"
  • Legislators in municipalist and P2P Politics
  • P2P movement activists and Commoners
  • The Cooperative, Social Solidarity and "New" Economy sectors
  • The Open Source Community
  • The more inclusivity-conscious sectors of the blockchain space
  • Trade unions
  • Activists from the post Arab Spring/Occupy/15-M and anti-austerity movements

• Complementary movements: Buen Vivir, Just Transition, Degrowth, Makers and Permaculture

• Intersectional feminism/feminist economics advocates

The DisCO model spotlights a new political subject apart from "the worker" or "the precariat": the Commoner, who co-manages their resources in a community and according to its norms. The sustenance of roughly 2.5 billion people worldwide depend on some form of natural resource commons, mainly in the global south, yet many commons remain unprotected and vulnerable to predation through privatization.

As large amounts of digital resources are being co-created online, the number of people relying on knowledge commons is also increasing. These potentially massive affinity networks lack a common identifier or unifying vision, which DisCOs are designed to provide. With 2.6 million cooperative societies, over 1 billion members and a combined turnover of 3 trillion US$ — similar to the market capitalization of Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook combined — the cooperative movement has the potential to radically reshape economies and overturn inequality. Compared with conventional business models, cooperatives are a more inclusive and fair form of business, offering more equality to members. Recent research shows that this more egalitarian approach to employee-ownership provides a workplace that is more stable, more efficiently productive, retaining a larger share of profit and with much narrower executive/non-executive pay differentials. When combined with digitally networked solidarity strategies supported by Distributed Ledger Technologies and the large scale governance seen in P2P/Commons networks, DisCOs could coalesce the economic potential of cooperatives.

Through its focus on inclusivity and diversity of outputs in several languages, DiSCOs take a design-level approach to addressing gender, racial and geographic inequalities in organizations. The project will engage target audiences with narratives suited to their contexts. Once synergies are established, the DisCO framework can provide a flexible, collaborative roadmap for these potentially huge and distinct audiences to mutually recognize each other and operate under a complementary narrative while maintaining their individual hallmarks and strengths.

Partnerships and Support

The DisCO project team is exploring partnerships with value-aligned entities to a) mature, codify and open source cultural practices for DisCOs practising contributive accounting, and b) co-develop an attractive, modular legal/technical infrastructure, easily adapted for other commons-oriented collectives, businesses and DisCOs. We believe that this combination of off-chain (cultural) and on-chain (structural) qualities is essential for any serious distributed project to tackle inequality with tangible impacts.

As a longer-term aspiration, we see this as the seed form of a distributed institution providing peer-to-peer mentorship for self-organised workers, individual or collective levels, and as a prototype for existing cooperatives to federate the model and its digital infrastructure. Combining hybrid pro-bono, paid and care work value streams, DisCOs can support more activists to work in ways that align with their own values.

We are committed to working with our present and future partners to harness the potentials of the digital economy for viable socio-economic outcomes.

Fluid Funding Partnerships

We are critical of, and even uncomfortable with, the typical asymmetrical power relationship between funders and beneficiaries. We want to extend the ideals of our contribution-based and care-oriented economic model to our supporting peers by suggesting a different type of proposal: rather than initial lump-sum funding, we propose to follow a fluid fundingagreement.

Here is our vision: the various partners in the DisCO Project development team (including pilots) works to meet all milestones described above working as DisCO clusters and value tracking their contributions. We seek regular fulfilment for these tracked contributions, which can be divested through traditional or onchain payment structures. Importantly, this would prefigure the qualities of DisCO's governance models and platforms.

Total project allocated funds can be held in a trust, but only divested on a monthly basis according to hours worked/tokens met (or projected budgeted expenses for events or non DisCO-contracted services, when unavoidable).

Based on this model we believe that the milestones can very likely be met in an earlier time frame and at a lower cost that the projected maximum. The results from this joint work could immediately be put to use on other commons oriented, feminist or cooperative projects, validated by the lived experience and expertise of those involved with DisCO's development. Our commitment to transparency and clear communications also ensures a responsible and holoptical use of resources.

Project Status

As of 2020, the DisCO team is in conversation with several partners in philantrophy, academia, technology and cooperative, feminist and political advocacy groups. Check this page for updates. If you are interested in supporting or collaborating with the DisCO project, please get in touch.