Ep. 15 Crypto Commons Association with Giulio Quarta
Apr 08, 2024
Cash Upton
Today we dive into different economic models with Guilio Quarta from Crypto Commons association. Guilio, having a background in sociology, has been studying alternative practices of organizing and assigning value. This has caused Guilio to lean into the “Blockchain for good” space. What I especially resonated with was Guilio’s narrative agnostic approach, where his work seeks to be the narrative bridge that shows people they are doing things that are actually quite similar to each other, rather than strikingly different.
Guilio discusses the concept of how a system is what it does practically, not what it says it does. One warning Guilio gives is of venture capital funding taking away from the good of all stakeholders, and how alternative forms of funding can ensure that all stakeholders such as the broader ReFi community, regen farms, everyday people etc have their needs met, rather than the needs of Venture Capital.
Guilio could see a dystopian future of making the whole world a data ledger and then plugging in all the financial market activities and ecological values. Thus, he cautions the ReFi ecosystem, similar to Douglas Gayton’s from ReFi Generation Ep. 6, to ensure that what we are putting on the blockchain is further democratizing society and increasing inclusivity.
We finished the conversation with a teaser on CoFi - aka Collaborative Finance. The meme of CoFi originated after ReFi - but is a method of accounting that traditional financial systems have historically been using. CoFi focuses more on using credit & trust based systems to improve the local & global economy and looks at Ways to optimize existing financial systems without using tokenomics. One thing to note: Post capitalism does NOT mean communism or socialism, but rather other ways of assigning value, Conscious capitalism, for example, can be thought of a post capitalist modality.
Today we dive into different economic models with Guilio Quarta from Crypto Commons association. Guilio, having a background in sociology, has been studying alternative practices of organizing and assigning value. This has caused Guilio to lean into the “Blockchain for good” space. What I especially resonated with was Guilio’s narrative agnostic approach, where his work seeks to be the narrative bridge that shows people they are doing things that are actually quite similar to each other, rather than strikingly different.
Guilio discusses the concept of how a system is what it does practically, not what it says it does. One warning Guilio gives is of venture capital funding taking away from the good of all stakeholders, and how alternative forms of funding can ensure that all stakeholders such as the broader ReFi community, regen farms, everyday people etc have their needs met, rather than the needs of Venture Capital.
Guilio could see a dystopian future of making the whole world a data ledger and then plugging in all the financial market activities and ecological values. Thus, he cautions the ReFi ecosystem, similar to Douglas Gayton’s from ReFi Generation Ep. 6, to ensure that what we are putting on the blockchain is further democratizing society and increasing inclusivity.
We finished the conversation with a teaser on CoFi - aka Collaborative Finance. The meme of CoFi originated after ReFi - but is a method of accounting that traditional financial systems have historically been using. CoFi focuses more on using credit & trust based systems to improve the local & global economy and looks at Ways to optimize existing financial systems without using tokenomics. One thing to note: Post capitalism does NOT mean communism or socialism, but rather other ways of assigning value, Conscious capitalism, for example, can be thought of a post capitalist modality.
It's very interesting to speak about the narratives. We have a narrative agnostic approach, so basically, I think that a lot of people are doing very similar things with very different narratives. So we are trying to be the entity doing some kind of narrative bridging or semiotic bridging between the different groups to show them that they're actually doing very similar things.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to ReFi Generation, the podcast that talks to experts and leaders in the new frontier of regenerative finance to examine how blockchain technology is creating the next generation of environmental and humanitarian initiatives. I'm your host, cash Upton is creating the next generation of environmental and humanitarian initiatives. I'm your host, cash Upton. Today we dive into different economic models with Julia Korta from Crypto Commons Association. Julia, having a background in sociology, has been studying alternative practices of organizing and inciting value. This has caused Julio to lean into the blockchain for good space. What I especially resonated with was Julio's narrative agnostic approach, where his work seeks to be the narrative bridge that shows people they are doing things that are actually quite similar to each other, rather than strikingly different. Julio discusses the concept of how a system is what it does practically rather than what it says it does. One warning Julio gives is a venture capital funding taking away from the good of all stakeholders, and how alternative forms of funding can ensure that all stakeholders, such as the broader refi community, region farms, everyday people, etc. Have their needs met rather than just the needs of venture capital. Julio could see a dystopian future of making the whole world a data ledger and plugging in all financial market activities and ecological values. Thus, he cautions the refi ecosystem, similar to Douglas Gaten from episode six, to ensure that what we are putting on the blockchain is further democratizing society and increasing inclusivity.
Speaker 2:
We finish the conversation with a teaser on Ko-Fi, aka collaborative finance. The meme of Ko-Fi originated after Re-Fi, but is a method of accounting that traditional financial systems have been historically using. Ko-fi focuses more on using credit and trust-based systems to improve the local and global economy and looks at ways to optimize existing financial systems without necessarily using tokenomics. One thing to note post-capitalism does not mean communism or socialism, but rather different ways of assigning value. Conscious capitalism, for example, can be thought of as a post-capitalist modality.
Speaker 2:
I love this conversation with Julio and I hope you do too. Hey, julio, how are you doing today? Hello, I'm fine. How are you doing today? Hello, I'm fine, how are you? Yeah, it's great to have you on. I was really excited when we got to be in a breakout room on a ReFiDAO meeting and had to have you on. So, yeah, I think today we'll start with a little background on how you got into the space and then talk about the commons economy roadmap and then about refi and refi barcelona, and then jump into kofi a bit. Collaborative finance yeah great. So how'd you? How'd you first get into the space? What drew you to web3 and refi?
Speaker 1:
sure, just the premise. I'm not very good at speaking. It's not my daily job, at least it was not so far. I'm mostly an organizer and a researcher, with what I've been doing the last two years. But said that. So I'm giulio. I'm a background in sociology there are two degrees and then I got some specialization in sociology of technology and economics in particular. Um, since six years or so, I would say, I'm into studying, mapping and connecting alternative economics, projects and actors, broadly speaking so researchers, activists and all the family.
Speaker 1:
And I got into crypto while I was exploring all these different alternative words like digital commons, cooperatives and platform cooperatives, leftist politics. And then there was also crypto and I got quite interested into that because I got excited. I get excited easily in general and crypto was like quite exciting it still is to me but at the same time, there was not so much narrative that I liked about how people were speaking about crypto At the time. It was like 2018, 19 or so, so not super early, but, yeah, much earlier than now and the blockchain for good scene was not a thing yet. There was very DeFi Degence, some voice having some kind of alternative takes some papers and that's it. So I was was like this is weird because I guess, if either I'm wrong and it's not an important technology, or there is a whole scene which is missing, which is the blockchain for good space. Let's say we could call it now, today, um. And so I started connecting and started studying this alternative crypto and commons oriented project and I met this PhD student, felix Fritsch, and we clicked well and we decided to organize. I mean, we agreed on the lack of an alternative scene in the crypto space, so we decided to invite all these people and organize an event to kind of initiate or discuss this emerging scene, and that was the Crypto Commons Gathering 2021, which was honestly great. I mean, don't trust me because I organized it, but it was a wow moment for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:
And since then, yeah, we continue doing events. We did some yeah, four, five big events per year about Crypto Commons, refi, solarpunk, ai as well the last year, always in this perspective of AI as well. The last year, always in this perspective of exploring the alternative voices and practices, especially the practices in the alternative economic space and in the crypto space. So, yeah, we've been doing events. Events have been great to create a network and to enable a huge amount of discussion between different people from different backgrounds, a lot of cross-contamination and so on, and then I felt the need to have some kind of foundation for the activities that we were doing. And, by the way, we were doing these activities as the Crypto Commons Association, which is the international nonprofit carrying on these activities. We were doing a lot of events that were going well, but, yeah, there was some foundations lacking, meaning that I wanted to get some foundational knowledge about the ecosystem that we were engaging with, so the Crypto Commons ecosystem. But, yeah, maybe we can zoom on this later.
Speaker 1:
It's very interesting to speak about the narratives. We have a narrative agnostic approach, so, basically, I think that a lot of people are doing very similar things with very different narratives, so we are trying to be the entity doing some kind of narrative bridging or semiotic bridging between the different groups to show them that they are actually doing very similar things. Yeah, so there was some. There was some lacking there. So we had this like huge database with hundreds of projects more or less interesting, more or less developed, more or less post-capitalist or regenerative, and we decided to select 20 of them and to focus on them and to generate some research about them also, like both as a way to research them and to enable collective research on them and as a way to promote them at the same time.
Speaker 1:
And this project was I mean it it's called the commerce economy roadmap. You can check it out at commonseconomyorg, but I guess the links will be shared in the description and it took two years I mean actually it took like it's my whole career as converse to this project. I say so I. So I'm very excited that finally it is started and it's alive and there's some appreciation of it from different groups. It took six years and two years to design the protocol and it's finally started in January. And it kind of works for iterations because it's a kind of scientific approach, scientific experiment, in which we select 20 projects which we consider the more interesting or more promising or more solid in these alternative spaces.
Speaker 1:
So we have basically two sets of criteria One how are they solid from an economic point of view? Are they generating revenues? Are they resilient? What is their track record? What are their plans for the future? And one is the adherence to common values, so like internal democracy. What kind of externalities are they producing? What's the ownership structure and so on.
Speaker 1:
And basically there are two components in the protocol, which is a common economy roadmap, which are one, the knowledge base, which is simply a notion knowledge base with the 20 projects and the knowledge that we were producing and gathering about them, and one is the promotion protocol, which is a series of social media outreach actions basically. So at the time is mostly, now is mostly Twitter and our newsletter. At the time it was mostly Twitter and our newsletter. So subscribe to the newsletter because it's the main point of gathering of information and updates about it, and the idea is that the projects can support the roadmap and get extra knowledge generated on them. So it's like a way for them to say, ok, there's an external entity generating knowledge on us, so it's good for us to support it because they give us visibility and more research on us, on our problems or our challenges. Yeah, basically that's it.
Speaker 1:
And the idea is that the first iteration is centralized, meaning that the CryptoComm Association is the only curator of the process. So we decide everything and but then we want to open the governance so that from the second iteration on, there is more and more projects involved in the governance of the process. So both in selecting the projects involved in the governance of the process. So both in selecting the projects, creating the knowledge that we produce on them and defining the promotion protocol. Okay, so this is it in short and literally anybody can give all kinds of input and proposal and idea is a very it's meant to become a distributed protocol. So yeah, if you're interested, let me know. We're very willing to hear what they have to say.
Speaker 2:
Cool. First of all, congrats on the launch. Really cool to see a tool like this and an educational database right. Essentially, you're bridging a lot of narratives, which I think is really cool. Yeah, we'll direct a link on our on our show notes. A lot of our listeners would be familiar with a few of these projects um, you know cellos on there, but then there's a lot of other you know really cool uh protocols that are, you know, bridging a lot of these traditional web to economic capitalist type narratives with with new regenerative finance type type stuff.
Speaker 2:
So I really liked what you said about the, you know, degen to regen narrative. I think that's a lot. Why a lot of us are in the space is that, you know, we see these blockchain tools as instruments to, you know, help alleviate suffering, bridge economic gap and equity gap. So I love your approach to narrative agnostic. I think you hit it on the head. We're a lot more similar than we are different, and if we can show people that we're all doing very similar things with similar interests and it just so happens maybe we have a different language or different words to describe it I think that's really cool. So, yeah, I was really drawn to what you were talking about first, when, when we talk about commons, we're essentially kind of talking about public goods, the, the commons that people share. You talked about externalities, so it's kind of that uh, that shared, uh place of um of existence. Is that kind of what you mean by the when you're talking about uh commons economy?
Speaker 1:
yeah, yeah, good question. Um, so basically the commons economy? Yeah, yeah, good question. So basically, the commons are almost everything, like the natural environment and the biosphere, but also culture, but also social practices and softwares and whatever. And what is important to understand is that they are the things themselves, so, like the air, the water and, I don't know, Wikipedia, are all commons, but they are also to make things commons, because you have to have entities or communities or actors managing these commons to make them thrive and survive or evolve.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so basically, instead of, this is actually connected to what we are speaking about today, I guess, on Reefi, because there are these two dimensions of what happens what are the projects doing for real and how they narrate it or how they communicate what they are doing which are very tied between each other. They influence each other a lot. It's not like that you can separate them, but at the same time, it's problematic, especially in the Web3 space, if I have to mention some like critical concern about it, even that we have been in this space since a while now, and with social sciences perspective or a political economy perspective, which is completely lacking in the ecosystem, and it's okay. I mean, it's not the end of the world, but it's also not good. Yeah, there's a complete misalignment between the reality of what the projects are doing and how they communicate it. So, uh, to be more concrete, like, um, yeah, I don't know, we very, very, very simple example decentralization, decentralization.
Speaker 1:
And then you have, like, most of the blockchains being very centralized and in the hand of you, big token holders, or regeneration, and then you don't know, you know you're just building financial tools in the internet and they have no relation to the real world, and okay.
Speaker 1:
So, um, yeah, so then, sorry, we can move on to the next question, but just a comment on the roadmap. Yeah, we, uh, we try to focus more on the practice side, so what the projects are doing, instead of how they narrate it, and to be the entity saying, okay, these things are doing good to the commons, and we think it's a good exercise, because, um, there's really a multitude of narratives, uh, which is natural and it's good, but we think also is necessary to to create a shared narrative to guide global actions around what is needed to do to change the system, to regenerate the planet. So, yeah, the Commons Economy Roadmap is an approach to develop this language that then can guide more cohesive, more coherent, more effective action and at the same time, it's also showing the projects that are actually practically doing it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think that's really important. The audit side of it, the accountability side, I think is really important and I think you hit it on the head and I'd love to dive in a little bit more of what some of your feedback for the refi space could be how projects could be more impactful and more authentic, because I I do I do see what you're saying there. You know the whole ethos of the blockchain, you know, from the beginning was a decentralized, inclusive approach with transparency, and there there are a lot of projects that are centralized and aren't doing that. So I wonder just kind of, yeah, from from your perspective, you know what, what drew you to refi? Why? Why do you think blockchain has the power to solve some of these comments, failures, and then, yeah, how? How can we still like improve the space?
Speaker 1:
sure. So I I will be kind of critic now because, uh, I think it's more interesting than just reverberating what we already know is good in the space. But before that, I want to state that I love ReFi and I've been involved into it since the beginning. Like two years ago, the meme was not alive yet, it was just moving around in the undercurrents and Gregory Landau was one of the first to to use it explicitly. And then, even that we just had an event on the crypto commons.
Speaker 1:
We said this new refi thing is coming up. Why we don't do an event about it? And we gathered some people and we did it and it was the first big refi events. And then there was refi Spring, refi DAO, and we stayed within the process since the beginning. We are not being super involved because we had our events to do, but we've been near the main team, the core team, let's say, of Refi DAO, for example, and we love how things are going there. Monty, which is the new lead of the group, is brilliant and lovely and is doing amazing work. So, yeah, agreed, a lot of good things happening, despite the lack of funding in the space that we can see in the numbers I don't know there's a good vibe.
Speaker 2:
It's been inspiring. No, I totally feel you. I I went to school for political economy with a focus on sustainability a decade ago and it was very um uninspiring with the space we were in in the state of affairs until I found refi. I think there is there's hope with the connection of tech and community and and on on the ground in real life projects, projects doing things. So that's what I really like to focus on too, and I like that you're focusing on how are these projects actually implementing, instead of just their narrative and what they're saying they're doing, but what are they actually doing?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and also we've been together with Monty and a bunch of other refi people in a traditional factory in Portugal in November. It was a great gathering. It's been amazing and I want to go so bad, especially the fact that both the content of the event and the people were good, which is usually not easy to to find. But, uh, yeah, this including regeneration to the personal life and community life, and not only to the economics, but having the full stack of regeneration, let's say it's clearly the way to go. I mean, I don't know. I mean, given that I experienced, it is like it's even difficult to explain. It's obvious. But, yeah, go to places where people are nice and probably nice things would happen there and not as well.
Speaker 1:
Putting back what we just said of, like, the practical reality of what's happening and the narrative, and using a quote which I think is cool, from Stafford Beer, great thinker. So it says that the purpose of a system is what it does, which seems like odd as a sentence, but it means, like that a system is what it does, practically not what it says it does, and it kept reverberating in my head because it's so simple and still so powerful. And regarding the regenerative finance space. Yeah, I think this is very it's very important to have this frame, this sentence in mind, because we are saying to each other that we are going to develop this new financial infrastructure for the communities of the world, for the activists, for the regenerative farmers and all these kind of nice stakeholders. But if you look at the numbers or if you look at the business plan of projects and if you look at what could happen in the fine now if a bull market comes back again and interesting climatic finance comes back again and there is a huge inflows of capital that people are expecting, I think that we are in a dangerous situation because, with this narrative that we have, which is good and the narrative we need, there is bad actors coming in and exploiting or doing more harm than good. Because, yeah, we know that Web3Space is mostly funded by venture capitalists, or has been so far. 3fi space is the same. I mean, most of the funding for the first projects have been coming from venture capital and now the space is discussing about alternative forms of funding. So great, but the reality is still like this and most of the funding will still be that in the next years, I guess. I hope not, but I guess it will happen.
Speaker 1:
So the question is, yeah, are we prepared to these inflows of capital coming in and are we sure that they will come in in a good way and not come in and disrupt all our values? Because practically we are forced to do tools that are useful only for them and not for all the other stakeholders, and not for the communities, not for the farmers, and so on and so on. So I think that this problem is still unacknowledged. I mean, me and some other people are personally going around and saying it, but it's not truly the dominant narrative in ReFi. So that's why I'm concerned. Um, yeah, so I think that, as every process, there is good things happening and bad things happening. Good things we cover.
Speaker 1:
I think the main bad thing that could happen, and is very likely to happen, in my opinion, is that, uh, yeah, this venture capitalists flooding the space with out of money and bringing us to develop infrastructure which is not really useful, it's not democratic, it's not degenerative, and yeah, and then the space grows and we keep doing more harm than good. And we keep doing more harm than good Also because sorry, then you can the core element of the refi space now is carbon credits and, more broadly, the concept of ecological credits markets. And this is what drives the financial attention not to the space. Because it makes sense that the ecological awareness will grow. The people and companies will want to do something about it, and offsetting is a thing. So there will be marketplace for ecological credits so the companies can offset their pollution and whatever, set their pollution and whatever.
Speaker 1:
But the scientific literature about them does not have a consensus that this complex infrastructure is more useful than damaging. So I think that at least we should be ready to the possibility that in some years, more and more data comes out that these tools are actually more damaging than useful. And so, yeah, because this is I, I'm not a big fan of ecological uh, credit marketplaces. I think it's just um, if you, if you see the how the space is fractured now and how corporations historically have behaved, I don't see why giving them a tool to offset their damage quote, unquote by paying for it is going to resolve anything. But okay, we don't have the time for the discussion and it's very nuanced and very technical.
Speaker 2:
You bring up a really good point, the carbon tunnel vision, for one. I mean, how do we actually measure, report and verify biodiversity? It's a lot easier to measure a ton of carbon, right? I liked what you just said. Is Refi going to be a tool to offset damage or reward regeneration? Because I do see it as finally being a way to monetize doing good. So right now, regenerative farmers are just getting the marketing kudos of being like, hey, I'm regenerative and people support them and they want to give them money because they're regenerating while they farm.
Speaker 2:
But I do agree with you. We saw this in the bull market last time of all the degens that came out of DeFi, and decentralized finance was supposed to be a tool to bring economic inclusivity and economic equity and then we just saw a bunch of whales and degens and people breaking the system and scamming bunch of scammers right Scammers going to scam, and it really took away from the decentralized ethos of blockchain technology. So I do really appreciate your critical eye of how is this space going to evolve? Where's the money coming from? I think that's a really important question for everyone to ask is who's funding it? That's why you know I love Gitcoin and quadratic funding and the you know matching grants and you know matching from the ecosystem and people, everyday people that are in the space supporting projects. So I think that's a really good critique and we should all kind of keep that in mind as the next cycle ramps up.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and really comment on what you said. Yeah, the carbon tunnel vision is a problem. I think the space is already beyond it in a way, because there is awareness that it's not enough and in this sense I recommend to listeners if you didn't look into that, but I think so because you also you interviewed Douglas of the Ecological Bending Frameworks. That's really great work. That's really amazing work. That's really amazing work and I'm sure that will be useful in any scenario. So that's really knowledge infrastructure to support.
Speaker 1:
But I don't think the problem is much. I mean, there is a meta problem which I think is related to in general, like quantifying all aspects of nature and financializing them, that this operation is the problem. Then I'm sure that for some dimensions of addressing climate problems, these will be effective, for example, things that are more like B2B, like for businesses, or regarding quantitative aspects like energy resources and so on. I see a role for ReFi there, but I don't see a role for ReFi in making the whole world a data ledger and then plugging all the things that everybody's doing to the financial markets and then every market for every kind of micro aspects of ecological value. I think that's a nightmare and it's not needed and it's just diverting resources from what we really need. And there's a lot of things which are already proven to be super effective. Which are already proven to be super effective For example, regenerative agriculture, which addresses, like, food, water, community empowerment, all the good things and so I think that the Reef iSpace should seriously say, okay, what are we focusing our attention now and where we should focus it?
Speaker 1:
Maybe because, yeah, um, yeah, anyway, we are going to discuss all these topics intensely in an event in barcelona in april. Uh, yeah, the event of refi barcelona from the 15th to the 20th april. The the link is in the description and, yeah, looking forward to that because it will be really great. Barcelona is a great city with a lot of regenerative efforts going on. The DeFi DAO local node in Barcelona, run by Luis as a lead, is great. So, yeah, looking forward to see you there. And actually, it's also super interesting because and tragic because Barcelona is facing water scarcity problems that are wild, really, really concerning. So our focus will be both on, like the global refi movement and the global protocols and what we just discussed in the podcast, but also on the local context of uh Barcelona, to see what we could do locally, what we could instantiate locally for this global movement to help the community there.
Speaker 2:
Very cool. Yeah, the the mixture of local and international I think is really impressive. In the refi space there's a lot of that coming together. So, yeah, we'll put a link in the show notes to that event. Julio, I've loved this conversation. I think we need to have you back on and keep kind of diving in Anything we didn't cover before we sign off. I think we touched on collaborative finance and kind of like circling around it, but do we want to kind of end with that nugget before we sign off?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, sure, so basically, collaborative finance is an emerging movement, very young, been born a year ago or so and we organized the first big CoFi event as well. But it actually comes from Ethan Buchman of Cosmos, which got interested into optimization of the payment graph, which is very technical but basically mean using mutual credit tools and structures to diminish the amount of transactions that you do so that you can do more, which is also a way to say that you can do a lot of economic activity without transacting money or cryptos, but just adjusting the ledgers. So I think this is what ReFi needs to work with, as a minimum. We're very excited about GoFi because it's not actually forcing any technological tool or financial tool to the local economies and the communities, but it's going there and it says you are doing what you're doing. We think that we could improve what you're doing by using network science and low tech technologies and you can save a lot of money by doing that.
Speaker 1:
Um, yeah, so there is no time to go in detail, but basically it's a way for um communities and economic networks and also businesses I mean banks and corporations are using it since a lot of time to cancel their transaction out instead of transacting. So it's not like something idealistic. It's something that the mainstream economy is doing since centuries, and now this movement is trying to bring it to the local economies okay.
Speaker 2:
yeah, that's really cool. We talked about Douglas Gaten earlier in the episode he was on. He really encouraged adoption of practices that allow for inclusivity, and one of his critiques of blockchain was the accessibility to blockchain tech and what barriers to entry there are. Those are getting less, but you bring up a really good point. So how can Ko-Fi bring inclusivity in a way that maybe blockchain tech is lacking?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and we are organizing an event in July we put the link in the description as well on Ko-Fi, so if you're interested about that as well, you can join.
Speaker 2:
Cool. Yeah, we'll put a link in the notes. I love where your head's at, julio. This is really cool stuff. I think we all need to be thinking about this a little bit more and figuring out ways that we can better live and work together and play together. That's great. Thank you, man. Yeah, thank you for coming on. We'll put Link in the show notes and have our listeners support the work you're doing and check out the projects on the Commons Economy. Yeah, have a good day. Thank you, sir Cheers. Yeah, bye-bye. Thanks to Matthew Patrick Donner for the ReFi Generation production, including the music mixing and editing. As a reminder, none of this is financial advice and feedback is the breakfast of champions. Please subscribe to our show and send your thoughts, critiques and ideas for future content. Be well, take care of each other and do something good today.
