NFTs, Smart Contracts, & DAOs
NFTs, Smart Contracts, & DAOs
A Resource for Creatives
A report to help creatives capture the opportunities of blockchain technologies, while protecting themselves from legal risk
When we started seeing many BIPOC artists moving into the blockchain space several years ago, we started building our own expertise in this area.
That’s why we commissioned Alex Glancy at Gundzik Gundzik Heeger LLP to author this report exploring the legal challenges artists face on the blockchain.
To support creatives as they engage with this new technology, this report seeks to provide information in the legal areas of copyright, business entities, securities, contracts, and trademark, as applied to these emerging tools.
Ultimately, we hope this report serves as a resource to help creatives capture the opportunities of blockchain technologies, while protecting themselves from the risks.
Debt Collective
Debt Collective
Building collective power via a new debtors' union
Debt Collective
Debt Collective is a debtors’ union fighting to cancel debts and defend millions of households. Join them to build a world where college is publicly funded, healthcare is universal and housing is guaranteed for all.
Debt Collective is building new forms of collective power for debtors.
Debt Collective is the nation’s first debtors’ union, and they organize around intersecting forms of indebtedness – from medical debt to carceral debt, housing debt to student debt – that characterize life for working people, disproportionately in Black and Brown communities.
The Debt Collective’s work shows that people do not go into debt because they live beyond their means. They go into debt because they are denied the means to live. Housing, education, and healthcare are all out of reach for most people, and people are even forced into debt for their own incarceration. The Debt Collective organizes debtors, including artists, to collectivize their debt and their political voice to force debt relief and changes to the legal and financial system to protect individuals from predatory financial practices. Debt Collective is building power to decommodify basic needs—education, food, shelter, and health—and make sure everyone has a material share of what is rightfully theirs.. Its recent significant wins of student debt relief in 2022 have elevated conversations about how debt exacerbates the racial wealth gap.
If I Only had a Heart: A DisCO Manifesto
If I Only had a Heart: A DisCO Manifesto
Value Sovereignty, Care Work, Commons, and Distributed Cooperative Organizations
DisCO.coop
The DisCO.coop is meant to further the ideas and practices put forth in the DisCO Manifesto with a comprehensive framework designed to support the worldwide development of “Distributed Cooperativism”. DisCO.coop aims to prototype new and radical forms of ownership, governance, entrepreneurship, and value accounting meant to counteract pervasive economic inequality.
The DisCO Manifesto is a deep dive into the world of Distributed Cooperative Organizations.
There are lots of ways to build and reimagine collective power, but one of the ones that has most intrigued us are DAOs–Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. DAOs promise, via smart contracts and blockchain technologies, to enable decentralized ownership and governance at scale - pretty exciting stuff! And while the hype around DAOs is huge, the reality is still to be determined. We have concerns about the ways this ecosystem is shaping up, and in particular the threats of replicating the same inequities on the blockchain that exist in other parts of society and the economy today.
And yet, the promise is real! That’s why we were so excited to stumble upon DisCO.coop and The DisCO Manifesto, which names DAOs’ challenges with clear eyes, yet shares a vision for ways to leverage that technology and combine it with tried and true cooperative practices in ways that enable shared ownership and governance at scale. It’s a heady, visionary, and joyful examination of the opportunities DisCOs offer to reimagine shared ownership and governance, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it.
