 Is this loaded? Yes. Hi. I'm Pia Mantini. I'm co-founder and CEO at Open Collective and I'm thrilled to be here And I'm gonna be talking today about building bridges between the legacy and the decentralized Ecosystems to fund public goods for the future. So here we go We're not going anywhere Yes, so the TLDR if we want to make philanthropy tech For people who are already the winners Then we continue like this But if we want to lift people out of poverty and Co-design co-create this technology with them Then we must bridge the legacy system and help people over Okay, that's what I'm gonna try to argue now So let's start with the thought framework that I use for thinking about where we are in the world right now And my kind of TLDR of the thought framework is what you what used to be Is no longer fit for our needs, but what will be is not here yet So the current system is declining. We're seeing a paradigm that is It's on the way out and we can see maybe far in the future the paradigm that we want to build But we're not there yet. So where we are This theory is called this framework. It's called the three-horizons framework And it's super useful for me to figure out the type of technology that we want to build the type of questions that we should be asking ourselves and Kind of try to make sense of what's happening in the world today. Where where are we? So these three-horizons framework that was developed by the International Futures Forum It's now being applied by Daniel Christian wall to the transition towards Regenerative culture, so let's think about this right the first horizon is the world in crisis is What's what's on the way out? It's the system that it's no longer fit for the type of society the type of technology the type of education that we have today So this is in decline and at the same time far far away We have this third horizon that is the viable world and we are Stuck in the middle where all the messiness is it's called a second horizon and it's a world in turbulent transition It's not clear what's happening new technologies are opening you up new opportunities, but Maybe if we are lucky we can identify the signals of the future, but the future is not here yet At least it's not here for everyone, right? So what happens with innovation in each of these horizons the first horizon? The type of innovation that we want that we can do is sustaining technology essentially building stuff to maintain the status quo Business as usual right let's keep the lights on things like that the second horizon The type of innovation that we see in the second horizon where we are today is called disruptive innovation This means that we are seeing opportunities. We're seeing kind of shift happening We're taking advantage of those changes and we're building We're building technology that is kind of redefining the scope of what's possible The issue that we have here and it's what I'm trying to argue today is that the type of disruptive technology Unless we're very careful in how we build it and with whom we build it We're gonna end up sustaining the life of the previous horizon of the of the Existing paradigm because if we the risk that we face is to build Technology that is just for the winners of the previous paradigm those who are already winning, right? But when we go to the viable world the world we want to build the type of innovation that we can see is Transformative innovation is innovation that is really building a new paradigm and that means redistributing power that means changing who's who are the winners and who are marginalized who are the losers In the in the political economy, right? So what I want to argue here is that web 3 and this space Needs to start thinking about the type of technology that we we are building Oriented towards this viable World it needs to be informed by a long-term perspective So we don't fall in the trap of building Innovation that looks great, but it's sustaining what we have today Okay, so, you know just to land it with a meme old ways the future we want How do we build that bridge, right? Because when a paradigm declines and another one is arising It's not a clear cut. It's not like. Oh, this is gonna disappear and then something else is gonna emerge It doesn't happen like that. We need to build bridges. We need to be bring people over Okay, so in my mind open collective is or can be one of those bridges So we've been sustaining decentralized communities since 2016 and we've been doing it Off-chain before those were a thing What are we at the core? We are? Legal admin and financial Infrastructure for decentralized communities to unlock access to money We give a platform to organize and fundraise and the global network of legal entities that act as custodials of the funds I'll go into this a little bit deeper, but those legal entities are connected to the legacy system So that is the bridge that we're building So we created this open source Transparent finances platform and we have a network of 245 non-profits around the world That help communities have access to money that otherwise they wouldn't be able to access So the tech platform gives them fundraising tooling. It's open source transparent payments It's you know, it's an international community But like really the secret sauce is in this combination of the platform plus this network of fiscal hosts The fiscal hosts give things provide things to these communities that these individuals need and what I'm arguing here Is that if we want to bring those who today are marginalized by the current system over to the new system? We need to give them what they need today to survive and sustain themselves and this is it's boring, right? It's like trust me. I do this every day. It's like not fun, right? proof of income employment and benefits reporting compliance tax the actual receipts, right? You want to make a donation to a collective? We're giving you a tax the actual receipts, right? We are you need employment. You have a collective that has funding we employ you Okay, so how you know did we start it all started with this need that we saw in the world back when we started open collective in 2015 to fund open source projects open source projects are the building blocks of the Economy today, there is no company out there that is not using open source projects But funding open source is very very difficult. I really like this quote that I read recently The original ethos of the web is a desire not only to highly exist within the world But also to take part in its collective creation Right, and I think that there's few things that have embodied this idea As the open source ecosystem So we want more open source, but we need to fund open source because unless we fund it Guess what the only ones who are going to be able to Contribute to open source are those who have free time We're able to have the time to spend in open source who are privileged enough to be able to participate in open source without being compensated okay, so why is it so freaking hard to fund the open source ecosystem because of The attributes of open source is a non-excludable public public good. It means that it's not scarce And there is no marginal cost for another person to use the cost Right, there is no cost for a user to use open source So it's very difficult to create scarcity here. And so but open source is not free Right, it's not free as in a free beer Someone else paid for it and the person's paying for it are the maintainers that are spending time Building these technologies that we are all using And for us we were seeing this huge community in balance at the core of the open source ecosystem And we wanted to step there and make a difference So posting an issue has zero cost right you have a company and start up you're using open source Something is not working for you You go on github on a freaking rant and start asking the maintainers of that dependency to fix it for you And you have no cost What like you spend five minutes posting a toxic issue on github Fun companies are hooked on open source Everyone is using open source because it doesn't have a cost more people are extracting value from an open source project than those who are maintaining it right, so those who are Creating open source technology are not extracting the value of what they're creating shared code but not share responsibility and it's easy to start a project, but it's very difficult to leave it Right once you start a project you have six million applications using your dependency Well, you just have to maintain it. What are you gonna do, right? So this is how So we started thinking okay How can we move money from all of these companies to the hands of these decentralized communities that are not organized around anything And then pain point that we see is that in the open source world formal contracts and partnerships agreements Do not happen like they do in the business world right, so Google wants to give money to The Chromium frameworks ecosystem and they're like, okay, can I get an invoice for my you know donation? And the developers are like we are just a group of people doing code, right? We want to get paid, but we have no formal way of doing it. So that's where open collectives stepped in I Really like this quote from Swift on security. I don't know if you follow them on Twitter But like they're amazing I'm convinced that many developers have no freaking idea how business actually works and what operations Departments have to go through to make things happen Enrolling a new vendor is more than difficult. It's demoralizing. It eats your soul Make it easy and you're a god. I don't know if we are gods, but we're definitely making this easier for them So this is what we created open collectives like these digital interface that connects decentralized communities to existing legal entities that Deal with the clunky and old operating systems that are states and tax departments and you know all that boring jazz and yes Open collective and the nonprofits go through the vendors process and I I kid you not it looks like this or worse It's SAP right anyway 3343 open source projects are hosted by us we've given 30 million dollars in project directed funding and this is project directed fun We're just keep putting money in the hands of these communities But we are now funding with this model multiple public goods commons grassroots grassroots communities social and political movements So we have we moved from just open source That was the beginning and we've exploded to Thousands of different communities in the impact in the solidarity economy the climate justice global movements civic participation We have 15,000 communities now using open source the open collective and we've given you know with Transfer 65 million into the hands of these communities and we're not asking for anything in return Like we're not opinionated about how communities spend their money They know what to do. We're just moving money from the center to the fringes and our approach to sustainability Has to do with grassroots cultures of governance and tech I think this is this is very important for me to kind of communicate We've learned a ton from how grassroots organizers are operating and when I've seen so many talks today and the last Bucket up a couple of days about governance and doubts and dramas and this and that and I'm serious like this is like happening it's been happening for Decades in the grassroots organizing movements They have a lot of really good solutions and processes and ideas and what I want to hear is connect these two worlds So for the way I define sustainability refers to the resilience and thriving of projects communities and Individuals that's around them right. It's everything. It's not just the community or the token holders that are maybe Addresses right. I'm talking about humans here about individuals And communities started compensating themselves, right? Obviously they're raising money, but they're also spending money So in the last 12 months we paid 23 million 23 million dollars in payments to 100,000 of Community members around the world. They're getting there's a meeting invoices. They're getting 1099s Which is the tax form in the United States. They're getting proof of income They can prove to their landlord that they have a paystab, right? We are helping them be a circle in a world that is made for triangles. Okay, so What can we bridge With the legacy system to make decentralized communities sustainable So in my mind what three is operating kind of a little bit isolated from the legacy world Because a lot of these things are still missing and I think that it's time to start making those connections That's the activity for donors in over 30 countries, right? That is something that we can provide and we can support like all of the amazing decentralized philanthropic tech Do invoices paystabs insurance benefits employment? I mean I get it. It's like it's not sexy It's not high tech But you know what the people that we are supposed to be helping need these things today, right? The marginalized of the previous paradigm. They're very much embedded in the legacy system Right, so we need to provide the tooling the support the infrastructure. They need to bring them over Okay, what is the trade-off because that's always a trade-off. Otherwise, I'll be lying to you all on him now The trade-off is that there's a power dynamic that happens between the collectives the communities on the platform and The existing legal entities that give them like a bank account and all of these services This is true. This doesn't happen in the descent in the Web 3 ecosystem these type of power dynamics don't exist I think it's a cost worth paying today as long as we are building enough As long as we're building what we are building with the capacity to change as the conditions change in the future So we want to build resilient tech as well And we're here to offer a bridge from legacy system to the house Right to co-create and co-design philanthropy tech with grassroots culture and low-tech solutions again folks If we are not inviting Those who are marginalized by the current system those who are not the winners today to co-create and co-design technology with us We are just building stuff that looks amazing, but it's only gonna sustain The the the existing paradigm is not gonna be transformative Innovation So like a fear bridge for those I don't know why my design team lets me do these things But you know, sorry But you get the idea and it's happening already right awful climate is a really good example Offal climate is a non-profit on the open collective network is a host But it's also a doll so what they offer is a legal entity for dolls and grassroots initiatives Which are also dolls, but they're just off-chain, right? And so awful climate is used to bridge grassroots citizens with old school Foundations and it's used to bridge those same citizens with the web three ecosystem. It's about Coordinating those bridges between the two paradigms Another example is the work we did with my good friend Kevin Awoki a couple of years ago, or maybe it was last year Who knows pandemic and all? Fando assess we wanted to try quadratic funding in the web to open source Ecosystem so we did one Example we did one experiment, and I think we're gonna keep doing this because like web three is this amazing tool for Creating sandboxes of innovation Iterating on governance and doing some radical experimentation some of which we can bring to the web to world Another example is I was talking very recently with the radical team And so maybe some of the radical Developers or the developers that are on radical when they need to get funding from an entity in The legacy world we can create a fund for radical in Open open collective and so we can offer both things you want to get paid in tokens amazing But you need employment you need paystubs you need invoices we got you right now pay attention here, please democratizing is not about Just opening access right it's about open access and shared And participatory governance right it's about both things right And so open collective ink the platform part of the equation is A company in Delaware of all places. Sorry We have investors and you know cap table, etc. So but what What we want to do what we're creating is infrastructure for the common So what we want to do is to transfer ownership of open collective to the commons So we're doing a need to see but it's not a token I see to see is like an exit to community done with a trust So we're building a perpetual purpose trust That is gonna purchase and own the shares of open collective in the name of the community And then on top of that we're gonna build like governance structure with the community Now the governance piece might have a doubt eventually because we are very global and it's quite difficult to do To organize these governance when you are like in one country But it's not clear to us yet how we're gonna organize this but this is this is our approach What we learned through all of these years of managing helping working with decentralized technologies Is that the challenges that we have they did not change with technology. They're the same, right? Participation is hard And today I saw this incredible talk earlier today by Chandler. I didn't catch his last name But he was talking about why Dow the Dow experience sack and most of it has to do with Participation wanes over time right first you have this burst of participation But then it's very difficult to keep folks engaged and then It's not it's not that it only happens here happens everywhere, right? So the challenge is that we all face are human their culture. They're not technological So please pay attention again. This is the last time democratic culture is upstream of democratic institutions folks If you don't figure out your democratic culture first, you are not gonna have good governance in your DAO Right, it's just not gonna happen And so for open collectives e2c for example the exit part is the last step in the process Right first we are starting this learning in public. We're engaging with the community We're bringing them into the design of the thing of the structure of whatever is going to be built But we are co-creating doing it co-designing it with them because we don't want to be like a referendum Right, what happens with a referendum politicians can't you know figure it out? They throw the decision over to the people they call it democracy and then they they boil it down to a narrow binary Should we stay or should we go? right, we don't want to get to the You know to the exit moment and then tell our community go govern the thing, you know That's not how it works. We need to you know to learn with people how to participate how to engage Okay, we need to something we need to build this kind of Radical narratives together about what we're doing what we're doing, but we need to do it with those Who are not the winners of the current system? Sorry, like I know I sound like a broken record, but unless we do that like why are we here? You know to do disruptive innovation sure But that's not gonna bring us the world that we want to see so do not sleep on culture if culture and humanity Get away from you then there's no consensus mechanism that is gonna solve a savior community Specifically do not forget of some humans those who can more easily see the pitfalls in the technology that we're building Right, so those who are not the winners in the current project time other ones who can see and spot the biases More easily right because they have no vested interest in maintaining the current narrative and so Please have a have a conversation have an honest conversation about what the negative externalities are of what you you're building today and how you're gonna absorb internalize those externalities What are your biases right? Who's who are you talking to that is able to poke holes on your narrative? The people closest to a pain must be the people closest to a solution the last thing I want to see is a bunch of broken Dao's or daos with no communities in the base case You know in the best case or just that we continue building a bunch of profitable opportunities for the winners of the current system That have all the interest and all the incentive to keep the political economy and systems in place That made them winners on the first place Right Okay, I think I've repeated myself enough. So what are we doing here? What do we do at Open Collective? And I think that these are good learning experiences for everyone who's building Dao's or who's building projects in this space What are we doing it to foster democratic culture? Remember democratic culture is upstream of democratic institutions Right, so artists organize our fellows. We have a fellowship for artists who are helping us build Build this radical narratives. We're learning in public. We have the Solidarity school P2P learning contact setting contact setting is key for everyone to be able to act Right, we need to have this co-design co-creation whistleblower policies. Do you have whistleblower policies in your project? Are you thinking of an ethical framework in your project? Do you have conflict resolution? Are you interested in learning conflict resolution? Anyway, please think about these things So to recap Democratic culture is upstream of democratic institutions Sustainabilities about communities and Individuals we are in a transition horizon. So it's messy. It's ugly But we need to be informed by long-term perspective We need to be balanced and provide opportunities to bridge the systems folks We're at the same time, I know caregivers in the previous paradigm and midwives of the new one Right, we need to be balanced. We can't just say we're building here We don't care about like the old paradigm because there are a lot of people in the old paradigm That we need to work with and bring people over Right, so a be balanced governance is hard is hard for everyone build more some boxes I mean the web 3 has provided a wealth of interesting experimentation to me is fascinating and I want to kind of encourage more of that But please do it with those who are not and go today to not understand your tech And be radically honest about the negative externalities, right? That is it My friends, let's talk. I'm all of that. Thank you Thank you so much Pia for for all your work on your amazing presentation. So yeah, let's keep building and support public goods Yeah, and I think there's time for one question Thank you so much Pia. I'm Joyce I'm lucky to know more about your thoughts on using incentives when building that democratic culture a lot of Thou communities today would incentivize people for engagement and participation Do you think that this is a healthy practice and or if there's actually acting against the buildup of that culture itself? Thank you. I think it's a really good question. I think it can work in certain frameworks, but they kind of paid to participate tends to have a very short life, right? Because once you get those initial tokens, then your incentives to participate are Are low and so that they wait in time, right? And so you start being on like the outside of a project But you still have those tokens that wait and you can't really, you know, you're not really contributing But you are a part owner. So I'm not a fan of that but I think in certain like Smaller communities it can work well because it provides ownership and equity of those communities But when you start growing and scaling those communities that type of in incentives, I think that it turns to ruin the community Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you