How to Find Home in a Coliving Community and Own Where You Rent

Daniel and Gareth discuss what it means to become a resident through ColivingDAO

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

Welcome everyone to yet another episode of CoLiving Dow Insights. This is your co-host Daniel, and I'm joined today by my co-host Gareth as well. Hi Gareth. Hey Daniel. Great to have you here, and uh today we're gonna talk about something very exciting because recently in the last two weeks we discussed uh what co-living down looks like from the perspective of the community starter. So if you want to start a co-living community, definitely go and check that out. And then we spoke from the perspective of a property investor, so definitely very valuable as well, especially if you are either a current investor or if you're looking to start investing in property as well. And today we'll be talking from the perspective of the co-living resident. So if you live in a co-living right now, or maybe you'd love to try out this lifestyle, maybe you've been curious and you've never done it before, or maybe there are specific reasons why you haven't done it, uh, which may well be different in uh co-living down communities. Uh maybe this is the perfect place for you. So, Gareth, let's uh see from the co-living resident perspective what co-living Dow looks like.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27

Yeah, Dan. So I'm really excited about this episode because this is what it's all about, right? This is uh the co-living resident is the whole reason why we formulated co-living DAO. And we have the tagline own where you rent. So this is all about owning where you rent, and it's also about having a real voice to shape your community from a co-living residence point of view. This is what it's all about, right? That's exciting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55

Exactly. And uh Gareth and I, of course, experienced a lot of challenges uh from the resident perspective, also a lot of joy, a lot of uh excitement because uh we did experience this lifestyle a while ago. Uh so before we tell you exactly how the Co-Living Doubt platform effectively facilitates the resident experience. Gareth, do you want to share a little bit more about how we met, what being residents in a co-living space was like for us, and how we came to the realization that there can be an even better way, and that's exactly why we're here.

SPEAKER_00: 2:33

Yeah, so we actually met and became friends living in one of the UK's biggest co-living communities, and we were neighbors actually, we lived right next door to each other. And well, actually, I was in a different room to begin with, and one of the staff members said, Hey, you might get on with uh Daniel. There's a spare room next door. And I was like, Okay, cool, sounds good. Maybe that staff member had some sort of sixth sense that they knew we they sensed we might revolutionarize co-living in the future. Um and so yeah, we were we were neighbors and we became friends, started hanging out, and it was a lot of fun, and we met other people living in the building. There was social events on in that particular co-living, and they ran, you know, every week there was a regular event, a social event. There was an event called Friday Night Drinks where you could meet other residents, and that was a lot of fun because you could really, you know, you just hang out with people in the building, it's so easy, so convenient. You don't need to travel anywhere. We live in a big city, right? We live in London. Going to events involves quite a lot of traveling on the tube sometimes. You didn't need to do that at least once a week, you could just hang out in the space that you live in, which was amazing. And then, of course, as well as meeting like-minded people, we had everything covered in one easy rental payment every month. It covered you know the main needs. We had Wi-Fi, we had our bills covered, and so it just took a lot of the hassle out of the bureaucracy of of living in a flat share, for example, if you compare it to a flat share in London. You have to organise the bills and you have to split the bills every month, you have to get your name on it. It takes out all the bureauc bureaucracy and and and the paperwork. But uh you know, more than anything, it was fun and it was social, and you really become part of a community, and we still have good friends from that co-living, we still hang out with even after we moved out. So, yeah, it was fantastic. Great experience.

SPEAKER_01: 4:44

Absolutely. So we noticed that effectively co-living is a great place for a lot of reasons, and I know we spoke about this many times on the podcast. We have effectively interviewed a lot of people that are mostly co-living professionals or co-living lovers. Uh, so we're not gonna um just repeat the same over and over again because I'm sure that by now, if you've been uh listening to a few episodes, you know uh a lot of advantages of the general co-living model. Uh and if you haven't, then uh by all means go back and uh check out those episodes because uh there's uh a lot of interesting conversations that we had in the past few weeks. Um, however, we realize there are some limitations, and these are important because we want to tell you exactly what we're doing here at Co-Livendow to enhance the experience. So, on one hand, we address the problems that co-living residents have been facing, and on top of that, uh we literally add a few extras that are effectively not simply just some nice to have, but I would personally say uh a major game changer, something that a lot of people never even thought possible. So, Gareth, what were the main challenges as a co-living resident? And effectively as a colleague resident, what do you think a co-living space could have done differently, but maybe couldn't really do differently after all with the current system, right?

SPEAKER_00: 6:07

Yeah, that's right, Dan. So, I mean we'll start with the most obvious one when you rent, uh you don't own anything, right? And in a co-living, it's pretty much a rental arrangement these days in any other co-living space. It's always a rental space. And so you we stayed there for years, and at the end we left and we didn't have any ownership in the building, obviously, because you don't get ownership when you rent, and that is in marked contrast to co-living DAO, where residents gradually become co-owners of the co-living community. And the other big thing was that the landlord or the investors or the co-living operator really get to control things, right? They have the most power, and when it comes to big decisions or even small decisions, they get to choose the way that suits them best, essentially. So, for example, in the co-living we lived in, when they went through some financial challenges due to COVID and after COVID, there was a big focus, it seemed from a resident's point of view, on cost control. And so they started taking away a lot of the support that was there for the community and a lot of the the things that made it fun, the social events, the funding for social events, and the things that connected people, started to become more like a short-term apartment or even like a hotel where there was less community, less social events, less interactions between people. And that was a real shame because it started to feel like a regular apartment building and the community cohesion parts of it started to really suffer. And this is a big problem because landlords or co-living operators in the traditional system are obviously making decisions that ultimately suit them because uh the residents tend to be quite short term, relatively speaking. And so they just if someone leaves, they just get new people in, right? They just replace the residents and get them in. They're just money-making units from the landlord's investors' point of view. Now they did, you know, there there was some input for the residents in the form of like a regular town hall meeting where residents could raise issues and say, hey, we've had some problems in the building with whatever the issue is of the day, you know, the gym, maybe the gym equipment needs replaced because some of it's broken, or the laundry machines need upgraded or maintained. Some of the you know the basic essentials can be communicated to the property managers or the co-living operator, and they do make then take that feedback on board and they fix things, but ultimately they make the decisions, they call the shots, they decide when things need upgraded. And a lot of concerns are just kind of ignored, right? Because the residents are more short-term, they can just get again get new people in. It's not really a multi-decision-making environment. It's not really a place where the residents' views are truly taken on board and where residents really have a say in those bigger decisions, how the communities run, what events to take that are going to take place. All these things are kind of run and decided by management and by the co-living operator.

SPEAKER_01: 9:42

Exactly. And something like that can really impact people because after all, it's a place where people are living in. It's not just a place where people spend uh a tiny amount of time uh occasionally, it's their home, it's uh the dwelling, it's really a very important place. It could be the center of their personal life, sometimes even professional life, could be a center of affection for many people. So it really matters. And having a landlord that could just uh change the rules of the game at any moment and kick people out and uh threaten to kick people out, which can be very, very um um unsettling for a lot of people as well. Effectively, this results into a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of uh really lack of sense of belonging with a major, major impact on the community. On the other hand, when you see people getting together, uh feeling that cohesion, it certainly settings a lot of people that the landlord is not on board and and there is um no alignment, no agreement on a many, many levels. So knowing that there's someone that can make decisions that overrule or override what the residents want all together rather than making decisions together, as opposed to that, uh, is really a major limitation because this means, first of all, that everyone feels like they're short-term. So no one can really see themselves leaving a place for long because they know that it doesn't even depend on them, that they could just be kicked out, or maybe something major could change that um the whole community doesn't want, right? Because if you take an individual, okay, maybe an individual has a different taste, but when the entire community wants something, uh they're still far from a guarantee that that thing will stay in place. Whereas being owners uh would mean knowing that you can keep something in place if the whole community wants to keep it in place. So, what this means is that effectively the community is impacted in a number of different ways. People don't feel they belong there, people don't want to uh really stay along, as we said. Also, sometimes people really start some sort of fights against the landlord, against the manager, and this adds a lot of unnecessary stress as well. Now, these are just some of the things, of course, as you can imagine, when when there is such a disconnect, you could have people not really treating the space in a nice way, and that's the moment where you could see people damage the facilities, steal part of the equipment. I remember, for example, that in the early days when the community was working well and the landlord was nice to the community, uh, all the kitchens were well equipped. Then I don't know what happened, but after a while there were no coloring anymore. There was no coloring, no forks, no knives, no, no plates. Like what happened? Did it just disappear? Or maybe having a different attitude toward residents in some way, shape, or form changed the behavior of the residents as well, which went from being respectful, even adding things, even providing additional items, additional um um equipment that the community could share. And sometimes you'd enter a kitchen and see, oh wow, the landlord is providing some things, and then the residents have volunteered to share some other things, and this is great, to a point where residents were just uh not providing anything and maybe even taking in some cases. So, this is an example of why uh living in uh in uh these conditions um is really suboptimal, and uh it's not the only reason, of course. There's uh other things that can happen. The fact that the building potentially can be set for short term because the landlord wants simply to earn more. So in in many cases, we've seen that uh short-term lets can generate more revenue than long term, uh, but there's also more costs, more marketing costs, more sales costs. So, overall, you might not even be a financially viable decision in the long term, but very often some investors have a very short time horizon because they're planning to exit anyway, uh, or there's other dynamics in place where the the landlord could decide to repurpose the entire building altogether and so on. So use it as a cash cow for a short period of time, and a number of other things. So, all these dynamics, they're usually detrimental for everyone in the long term, including the landlords and investors, uh, but in the short term can certainly favor one um actor over the other, one party over the other. And this means that a lot of dysfunctional uh power imbalances uh can uh exist uh and they're very, very detrimental, right, Garth?

SPEAKER_00: 14:25

Yeah, exactly. And from a resident's point of view, you know, when things are really uncertain in this way, when they're liable to change, when the management decides, no, we're just gonna get rid of this thing that you love because it's gonna save money, it really generates resentment and disloyalty to the community, right? So residents become disengaged, they don't want to take part anymore, they become anti-social instead of pro-social, and they just you know, if you're in an uh an environment of uncertainty where someone else is calling the shots, of course you're gonna behave in that way as a resident. And also it can be really quite dispiriting if the co-living operator or the landlord is seen to be prioritizing those short-term lets to get people in to get that churn just to generate some short-term cash versus somebody that's been there for years and is a loyal customer, a loyal resident, right? And and many loyal residents are pillars of the community in a co-living community because they've been there a long time, they know a lot of people, they hold the place together in a sense, informally. And so when you don't have control and you don't have power as a resident, all these negative events can potentially come into play. And so, what does it look like from a co-living dial perspective, Dan? How do we how do we solve this stuff? This is where it starts to look much more positive, right?

SPEAKER_01: 15:54

Exactly. So these are the main dynamics that we're really addressing. So, first of all, the lack of ownership and lack of governance and all the consequences of that. Uh, and then there's a lot more that we enhance as well, and we'll talk about that in a moment. But let's see what we do here at Cole of Indau uh to really make sure that we're creating a space where people can feel a sense of belonging, and it's not just theoretical, it's not just because people bind to the vision or or feel that way, it's because there's actual fundamentals, there's uh an actual entire system that is set up that way so that people really have a true voice to shape their community, as well as a fair and equitable distribution of wealth and power within a certain community uh and beyond the community as well, which is quite interesting. So, the first thing that we've identified is the importance to make sure that people become owners. So we don't want to see anyone living in a place without having any form of ownership whatsoever. Surely some people will want to own more than others, some people might only be short-term visitors in a long-term community, which means they they won't own the same stake as everyone else, of course. But the fact that everyone, simply by paying rent, is earning shares in the business, which may well in turn own the property, so that's also exposure to the value of the property, this means that residents are becoming investors straight away. And in some cases, it would really be simply a matter of paying rent and earn shares. In some cases, residents are welcome to buy as much or as little equity as they want on top of what they're earning by making rental payments. Meaning, if someone has a little bit of money and maybe they want to buy a house, buy home, but they've chosen a nomadic lifestyle, or maybe they want to live for a couple of years in a place and then move out, and they don't want to go through that process of committing to a specific building, getting into debt, having to go through credit checks and all that that effectively tie them down to one specific property and having the burden, having to manage their property as well and so on. And what if they move out? Do they sell it? Do they keep it? Do they rent it out? There's a lot of maintenance costs to pay as well, stamp duty, uh, the cost for the agency to sell. There's so many different parameters involved, they can get very messy and very complicated. So a lot of residents say, you know what, I'm just gonna rent for two reasons. Number one, a mortgage is is a big deal. Number two, uh, what if I want to live with other people? It's not even an obvious way to live with other people in a co-living setting and uh buy. It's usually on a rental basis anyway, right now. So, what this means is that a lot of people they miss they miss what they can potentially be their best years to acquire equity and property um when they're young and they're working, they're paying rent, therefore missing out. Uh, we want to change that. And uh, and the reason is um obviously twofold in this case. One of the reasons is why should residents not become investors if they're living in a place, they're providing value to that place as well, on top of the money they bring in. They might be good neighbors, they might be great members. Um, sometimes people move into a community because they already know someone in that community, or maybe they don't know anyone specifically, but they get the vibe, they get the energy, they love that place, they choose a place not just for the facilities, but also for the actual people that live there. In that case, by adding value to community, why not reward that by receiving a number of shares? So that's definitely a reason. And the other reason is really making sure everyone has a sense of ownership, which translates into a sense of belonging, and that changes everything in the way people relate to that particular space, right, Gareth?

SPEAKER_00: 19:46

Yeah, absolutely. So, as you say, every time you make a rental payment in a co-living DAO community, you have you earn some shares in the co-living community company, right? And so you become a Shareholder, and this means you become a co-owner, and this means obviously legally you have governance rights, and so it moves from hey, let's have a town hall where we we might listen to some of your views every quarter, to actually the co-living operator or the landlord, they really need to listen because you're now a shareholder, they need to listen and they need to take on board your views, and that really unlocks some amazing benefits in terms of community cohesion. Because if you think about it, even if you're only going to be there for three months, let's say you're just living a very nomadic lifestyle, as you said, Dan, you're moving around, you want to test different places to live, but you end up at a co-living DAO, co-living community, you only stay for three months, you're welcomed in as a co-owner, even if you're only there for three months. So imagine the dynamic. It's like almost like coming home to a family that you never had, right? And even if you leave after three months, you're still a co-owner, you still hold on to those investors' shares. And you could take that those shares, you could hold them as an investment to see if they appreciate over time, or you could sell them right away and use that money to go traveling if you're a nomad. And that's just for the short-term residents, for people that stay there even longer. The more they stay, the more they become a co-owner, the more shares they accumulate, and the more they'll have a say in how the community is run and how it's shaped. And that becomes really exciting in terms of the character, the personality of a co-living community. And now we're getting into an arena where maybe the co-living community has a certain theme around it, right? So you could have a co-living community of artists, for example, all artists in one building. Maybe there's maybe it's a big co-living, maybe there's 150 people in the building, and all of them are artists. Maybe all of them are focused on one specific niche area of art. Maybe they're all modern artists. And so now you have a community where there's a lot of like-minded people with a very strong interest in their professional uh scope and what they want to do with their life in their from a professional sense. So you now have a situation where you're calling the shots on what that community is going to look like, what kind of events are running, and it's all themed around a very strong shared interest, and that unlocks some amazing benefits, right? Can you and we can think of many, many examples of themed communities and how these will develop real strong community bonds?

SPEAKER_01: 22:49

Absolutely, and we can imagine, for example, let's say having a community for families. I see a lot of young families uh with young kids that are really struggling with loneliness, uh managing a household, just a single family household with no external support, maybe their own family, they their parents, their grandparents, they live abroad somewhere else. Uh so whether a young family is nomadic or whether they choose to live in a place that is not the same place their parents live in, it can become a big challenge to have to have kids and also have a career and uh a personal life. Uh or imagine all the people that would love to have children, but they choose not to for this specific reason. Maybe they keep delaying that and postponing that, and then the biological clock starts kicking in, and this is what happens that eventually they never have kids, or if they do, they know they have to give up a major, major part of their life. And even for the kids, living growing up in a certain way, uh semi-isolated for the the rest of the community, the rest of the people out there. Um, and even if you imagine all the sort of transport that is required, imagine uh a father or a mother having to drive the kid around uh all over the town for one thing or another, or maybe even if uh let's say the kid gets uh tuition or uh maybe a tutor of lesson, like guitar lesson, chess lesson, music, whatever you can imagine. Imagine all these uh tutors and teachers having to travel around uh across an entire city to go to all these different places. It's still possible with co-living, so no, nothing stops that. But imagine having everyone in one place. So um a community uh designed around the needs of a young family with young children and where they can share a lot of resources, they can share childcare, uh, they can have events designed specifically for people that have these needs, uh, some of them uh for children, some of them where they literally uh help parents take some time off their own children and so on. Uh, there could be so many resources there. Uh, and that they could share again the same tutor, same um teachers, not having to um travel across the entire city. So sure, surely something a lot more sustainable for the planet as well saves a lot of time, a lot of energy and resources, but also a lot more functional and promoting strong bonds. Because if I think about my childhood, proximity was a big deal. People that lived closer to me, I ended up making friends a lot more likely than people that live further away. Uh, and sometimes it's not about personality, it's not about anything else, it's simply proximity. Proximity is one of the major factors in bonding in humans. So, for people uh to grow up this way could be a major game changer, and it may help a lot of um family that are choosing not to have children to actually do that because it's a very different way of doing that, right?

SPEAKER_00: 25:44

Yeah, absolutely. And you know how amazing would it be if you were like a tennis coach and you lived in the local neighborhood and you could go to one building and teach 20 kids at the same time how to play tennis, and then you go back. And equally for the parents and the families and the kids living in a family co-living, they're all in the same place. Those parents don't need to drive those kids to the tennis lesson individually. That would be 20 cars, right? 20 cars going to somewhere where tennis lessons are available in the local neighborhood. Maybe it is in the same place, but it's still 20 cars, or even if they double up and we're somehow in some sort of car sharing scheme, it might be 10 cars or five cars. Now it's zero cars apart from the tennis coach who's maybe driving over. And so that really unlocks time for the parents, social for the kids, opportunities for local businesses to plug into the co-living dial community and offer their services, right? You can have a chess coach, you've got a tennis coach, coaches that teach kids um, you know, a whole variety of things writing, creative play, whatever it might be. And the parents get childcare on their doorstep, and I'm sure that would be a massive benefit if there's any parents living listening to this podcast. Imagine having childcare on your doorstep almost every single night. That has to be a huge benefit. And then so, what does it look like for other themed communities and other benefits? How does it how does the co-living DAO setup bring in additional benefits for different types of themed communities, Dan?

SPEAKER_01: 27:31

Yeah, this is very important because uh initially one may argue, wait a second, can't we have themed communities without co-living DAO? Why do we need this entire system? And the answer is very, very straightforward. Imagine living in a place where there is such a major disconnect and imbalance in power between the residents and the landlord. Would you raise your kids there, knowing that the landlord anytime might just repurpose the building, kick everyone out, and your young children they're forced to move out and uh lose their friends and uh at a very early stage of their life have such a big trauma? Or what if simply the way the landlord is managing the building is just not suitable for children? Or or um what if all of a sudden they decide to organize events uh that are not in line with the presence of children? There's so many different things that could happen, uh, and these events can be pretty traumatic. And uh that's why a lot of families would say, One moment, I want to live in a place that I own so I can raise kids, knowing that I'm safe, knowing that I can represent my own interests because I own a certain place. So moving into a community where there are a lot of peers, so people in a similar situation ensures that the fact that those people they have very likely similar views about their needs and so on, having that voice legally recognized uh alongside the voice of the landlord makes sure that the landlord can just literally uh disregard what the community needs and do the opposite. So the Kolivindau setup, the Colivindau model is really the enabler for something like this. I don't see how, on a rental basis, we we could have a long-lasting um anti-fragile community of families without incurring all the risks of the community having to disintegrate because of a central point of failure. So, this is really how we make things possible, and this is really the deep level, the uh systemic level. Uh, there's obviously a lot of practicalities that we look after as well. So we'll tell you exactly how we do it in practice, too. Uh but Gareth, do you want to add a couple of words on really from a conceptual point of view, uh, how this setup really allows for a complete different type of governance uh and a different way to relate to what we own?

SPEAKER_00: 29:54

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess the co-living DAO, the DAO part of co-living, um, is really where this comes into play, and that shared decision making and governance function that enables the community to be much better connected than a standard co-living rental situation, right? And this is on a fundamentally deeper level. So if you imagine some real-world situations where you have a co-living community, and we can stick with the family co-living community for now to provide some examples. What kind of activities and events do the parents want to have for their kids in the coming months, right? Or the coming month. Using the DAO, you can go on, open up a web app on your phone or on a desktop or any other device, and access the Co-Living DAO platform. And then as a resident, you can then say pitch a proposal to the other residents and say, Hey, I've got an idea. How about we do some tennis coaching for the kids? I think they should do more sport. We've had you know a lot of focus on the academic side in the previous months. What does everyone else think? And the DAO gives them a ready-made decision-making platform. It could be partially automated, even that the platform might say, for this kind of proposal, this is the kind of vote that we recommend that you pitch to the other residents. This is the structure. And so the proposal goes out to the residents, and everyone gets to vote on it. And they can also choose to abstain or not get involved if they if they choose to do so. The decision-making platform in the DAO will take all those variables into consideration, and then the proposal gets voted on and it gets actioned, right? And all of this happens very seamlessly and very quickly and very smoothly compared to the you know traditional decision making where you might go into a town hall situation and people raise a proposal and then there's a huge debate for four hours and nobody can make a decision because there's no real governance structure around it. And because everyone's a co-owner, everyone has legal power there, you know, there is legal backing to all of these decisions, which is fantastic, and everyone knows that everyone else has a stake and is a co-owner, and so it generates an atmosphere of respect and and cohesion, and we're all in this together when decisions are made, and it really generates some of those more long-term benefits because if you vote in a way that um benefits the community for the long term, and you're gonna stay for the long term, which you probably would in a family-themed co-living, then some of those benefits will come back to you in the future. You know, there's an altruistic feedback loop, so you want to make your decisions as beneficial to the community as possible, and the DAO and the decision-making enables that and it enables it through giving you the decision-making tools that you need to make that happen. And that's really exciting because it takes all the hassle out of your hands, right? It takes some of the decision-making hassle out of your hands that how the decision is decided takes that hassle out of your hands as a resident.

SPEAKER_01: 33:29

Exactly. And it's important to think this way it's not an extra burden, it it's never something that will uh complicate things. Uh, having more rights is a benefit, and uh, it doesn't mean you'll constantly have to make decisions on everything, can always delegate, can always uh choose to support someone else's decision and so on, but having the right just ensures that uh an entire category of people, namely that the residents, can protect their own interests, which is really, really critical. Um, speaking of niches, another big one uh is potentially students, young students especially, because um right now student houses are primarily on a rental basis. Um, it's very hard to think of a student owning something already at such a very young age. But why not? Why not having a student house with all the benefits of the student house plus students owning already something so they effectively become homeowners very, very early in their lives? Imagine the potential for appreciation of the equity as well at an age where their peers certainly don't have many investments lying around. At that point, it might even be parents' money paying rent. And uh, and uh what this means is ultimately that uh the kids could be potentially already accumulating a little bit of equity, and at the end of their stay at uni, uh, when they move out, they can either keep that or they can sell it and use that little fund um for a bunch of reasons. One could be sort of business, why not? Or maybe just use that money in a in a number of different ways. So that's uh or maybe actually as a deposit to buy something else or to move into a nuclear living Dow uh structure, because why not? There'll be one for every stage of the life. Uh, and we can mention a lot of these, but I want to get a little bit more uh into the practical details on how we uh make that happen, because the actual tools that we use to realize this uh vision and this concept and this structure is uh Web3-based. So the product that we're building, the Web3 Hub, really has a number of functionalities that enable this uh in a very seamless way. Starting from things that are a big problem. For example, when you move into a place, whether it's a co-living or just a rental house, how do you know that your deposit will be returned without any hassle? You probably don't know, and I've heard a lot of stories of people losing their deposit or having to go through a lot of hoops to just get their deposit money back. Uh, what if that is stored securely on the blockchain? All of a sudden we take that problem away because we don't need to trust a landlord anymore, we're just trusting the blockchain. So this already ensures there is a lot of protection in there. Imagine all the payments being done cryptographically securely. Uh, it could be through fiat, could be through crypto, a cryptocurrency, or or different tokens and so on. Either way, everything is done transparently on the blockchain and uh very securely as well, and seam and uh and also seamlessly, so in a way that is really easy to do. Why would we want to move paper shares when we can have tokenized shares that we can buy, then we can sell, uh, and we could even create liquidity pools? I don't want to get too technical there, but imagine having the ability to buy your more shares or sell your shares without necessarily having to find a buyer or a seller as a counterpart in that particular time. So, what if there is a pool of shares and you can take more or deposit more and you effectively trading with the pool as opposed to having to find someone? Uh, what this means is again, we are removing unnecessary uh intermediaries, we're making sure that there's a system there uh that is web3-based, blockchain-based, and can be functional to what we need to do. And there's a lot of other benefits as well that stems from blockchain. A big one as well is the ability uh to keep your shares, as they are tokenized shares, you can actually choose to lock them. It's something that a living down community will enable people to do. If they choose to lock them, which effectively what does that mean? It's a promise not to sell those shares for a period of time, promise that is backed by uh the blockchain, so people can't really cheat on that one. So if someone decides to promise I'm not gonna be selling these shares for a certain period of time, great. I'm gonna reward you by giving you some benefits. How about you pay less rent, for example? What does that mean? So, effectively, if you own more shares, you own more equity indirectly in the property you live in. So it's only fair that you pay a little bit less rent. That's just an example. Something else could be hey, I'm gonna give you the ability to get partner deals. If you go to a restaurant, you're gonna pay less because you're effectively become you've you've become an investor in this as well. So you're gonna get special treatment because you're contributing to the long-term vision of this community as well. So, surely, if people want to sell shares, they get the ability to do so because it's their assets, they owners. Therefore, it's fair that they can transact as they prefer to do. At the same time, with a specific system of incentives to incentivize holding the shares, uh, we ensure that the community feels strong and the community um is cohesive as well. So imagine having this special status in the community thanks to this uh uh token locking, which means getting better deals and more partnerships and more opportunities after all. Gareth.

SPEAKER_00: 38:55

Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, this all runs through standard um systems that people would be familiar with as well. You have a mobile app, you can have a desktop app, and then you can just log in and it's all set out in a nice user-friendly way. Although it's on blockchain and web 3, it will look like any other co-living community platform, right, for residents, where you can go in and say you've got stuff to sell because you want to you know declutter where you live, you can go in and sell your stuff and and chat to other residents on the platform. So although it sounds complicated and it offers all these advanced features, residents can interact with it the way that they're familiar with interacting with other standard um digital technologies, right? It just adds this advanced functionality. And if I think of another practical benefit, you can put your tenancy on a smart contract and eliminate some of the bureaucratic hassles that we're familiar with from science. Rental contracts, right? A lot of this can be automated or semi-automated on the blockchain with smart contracts, very fast, very fluid, nice and smooth. Can do identity checks and other steps automatically. And like you said, Dan, those community management and partner deals, though they could be super valuable because when you um lock your tokens and get those discounts to all the partner services, there could be external providers that are providing some of those services, and that then generates a better partnership with those businesses in the local community, and the residents will start to feel those benefits because more businesses will want to come and partner and offer their services to the co-living community. And so there's a whole bunch of other benefits that are unlocked through the Web3 Hub and by using the blockchain and tokenized shares system. And that's really cool. I mean, imagine being a resident and having decision-making power, the ability to get discounts, the ability to become more of an investor, the ability to automate some of the needless bureaucracy that we're familiar with. You know, all of this starts to unlock a whole array of benefits by using the blockchain technology, right?

SPEAKER_01: 41:22

Yeah, and you don't need to know anything about blockchain really. This can all be done through a very simple user interface. That's exactly what we're building here. We are not expecting people, the average person, to be too familiar with blockchain. And just like you don't need to know the ins and outs of how the internet works, uh, just use a website, interact with a website, uh, you will not need to know much about the underlying technology. Uh, all you'll have to do is just tap here and there in a very simple way. It will be very easy to learn, very easy to do, a very natural, straightforward, intuitive. That's exactly uh what we what we're envisioning, what we're building, and uh this is what enables uh mass adoption because that's the direction that blockchain is taking anyway, of course, as a new technology. Um, you may be hearing a few buzzwords, you may be seeing some complications with uh the current state of the technology. It's normal when a technology is nissant to have uh uh be more complexity. I mean, imagine the first emails, the first computers, they were not really ready for mass adoption, took a little bit, but that's exactly what we're working on, and we know that not just us, but the industry as a whole uh is just becoming more and more user-friendly as we speak. So, yes, this is something that can be adopted, uh, and we can have even uh co-living spaces for the elderly, and uh they'll be able to use it because it really doesn't take any uh technical knowledge whatsoever. So there's one more advantage that I wanted to mention because this is really something that a lot of people are not immediately realizing, but the fact that being part of a community um classed as Kalivindau, a Kalivindau community, what this means is that you're not just part of that community, you're actually part of something much, much bigger, namely a federation of community. So imagine the ability to move effectively into a new community and still be plugged into the system, being able potentially to transact maybe with the shares you already have, or maybe you're just uh easily converting your existing shares into the new shares for the new place to get rent reduction into the new place. So nowadays, when you move to a co-living, you're just in that co-living and that's it. And especially if you're a digital nomad and you want to change place every few months or even a few years, it's kind of like starting your life again over and over. Uh and although it can be exciting to be in a new place, it is. Uh, it can still be equally exciting, and on top of that, you don't have to have to hold the hassle of starting from scratch, not knowing what the system is, taking new risks because you don't know what to expect. Having something that already looks familiar, works in a familiar way, and uh is facilitated uh in a similar way is a major, major advantage, let alone uh the network effect advantages uh too, right, Gareth?

SPEAKER_00: 44:13

Yeah, absolutely. And if we move into summing up the three main benefits for co-living Dow residents in the future, for me it's number one, own where you rent, you become a co-owner, right? How amazing is that? Number two is you have a real voice to shape your community because you have governance rights and decision-making rights and real power. And number three is exactly what you just said, Dan. Not only do you have these two amazing benefits that don't currently exist, you can also move around freely inside the community in a federation of communities and potentially with a global network, move to different countries, different cities, and different places for different purposes at different stages of your life. How cool is that? Imagine being a co-living Dow resident in that setup. I would do that 100% right now if that was available today.

SPEAKER_01: 45:08

It's just something a lot bigger than us, and being part of something bigger is uh not just exciting but also very rewarding, very comforting for a lot of people, knowing that you're not just moving into one community, you're becoming part of a much larger family with a lot of synergy and a lot of possibilities that all of a sudden open up in front of you. So, with this um beautiful image, uh, I want to thank everyone for being here. Thank you, Gareth, for uh sharing these uh insights as well. It's been great to have you here. And uh what we're gonna do, we're gonna sign off right now. We are gonna be back next week. So make sure that you're subscribed if you haven't yet. Uh you really want to make sure um you come back to this podcast. And if you haven't checked out the previous episodes, uh there's so many interesting topics that we discussed around co living, shared governance, shared ownership, and so on. So, you definitely want to stick around. We will all be with you again next week.