This Gitcoin governance forum post represents a sophisticated synthesis of two complementary regenerative economics frameworks: Kate Raworth’s Donut Economics (balancing planetary boundaries with social foundations) and the 8 Forms of Capital model (recognizing wealth beyond financial metrics). The integration shows how decentralized organizations can operationalize regenerative principles by tracking value creation across multiple capitals (living, social, material, financial, intellectual, experiential, spiritual, cultural) while respecting ecological limits and ensuring social wellbeing. This framework challenges both extractive capitalism’s narrow focus on financial returns and naive Web3 economics that ignore ecological impacts, offering practical tools for building genuinely regenerative coordination systems.
Key Highlights
-
Donut Economics Integration: The framework applies Raworth’s “safe and just space for humanity” model—operating within planetary boundaries (ecological ceiling) while meeting everyone’s needs (social foundation)—to DAO governance and public goods funding, showing how decentralized systems can embed sustainability constraints and equity commitments at protocol level.
-
8 Forms of Capital Expanded: The post details how wealth manifests across eight interdependent forms: Living Capital (ecological systems), Social Capital (relationships/networks), Material Capital (infrastructure/tools), Financial Capital (money/tokens), Intellectual Capital (knowledge/IP), Experiential Capital (skills/wisdom), Spiritual Capital (meaning/purpose), Cultural Capital (traditions/values)—providing language for value creation that markets ignore.
-
Holistic Impact Measurement: Rather than optimizing single metrics, the framework enables evaluating projects across multiple capitals simultaneously. A public goods initiative might create social and intellectual capital while preserving living capital, even if financial returns are minimal—recognizing genuine value creation that conventional economics misses.
-
Regenerative vs. Extractive Clarity: The integration makes explicit the difference between regenerative approaches (that enhance multiple capitals and stay within planetary boundaries) and extractive ones (that deplete living, social, or cultural capital to maximize financial returns). This provides clear criteria for evaluating whether Web3 projects serve collective flourishing or individual accumulation.
-
Gitcoin Application: The post shows how Gitcoin’s quadratic funding mechanism can allocate resources based on holistic capital creation rather than pure financial ROI, directing funding toward projects that build commons, enhance ecosystems, and strengthen community even when profit potential is low.
-
Operationalizing Planetary Boundaries: The framework addresses how DAOs can respect ecological limits through carbon accounting, energy efficiency, and supporting regenerative land use—moving beyond treating sustainability as external constraint to embedding it in coordination protocols.
-
Social Foundation Commitments: The integration shows how decentralized systems can hard-code commitments to meeting basic needs—ensuring that coordination mechanisms serve collective wellbeing rather than assuming markets will address social foundations as side effect of growth.
Practical Applications
This integrated framework enables regenerative design across contexts:
-
DAOs can adopt the 8 capitals framework for treasury management and grant-making, tracking whether funded projects enhance living, social, and cultural capital alongside financial sustainability—creating holistic evaluation replacing narrow ROI metrics
-
Public goods funding mechanisms can integrate donut economics principles to ensure supported projects operate within planetary boundaries while addressing social needs, using quadratic funding or retroactive funding to reward ecological and social value creation
-
Impact measurement systems can expand beyond financial and carbon metrics to assess project contributions across all eight capitals, recognizing that regenerative value often manifests in enhanced relationships, preserved ecosystems, and strengthened culture
-
Token design can incorporate the framework by creating incentives for capital enhancement rather than extraction—rewarding participants who build social capital, preserve living capital, and contribute intellectual capital rather than only financial accumulation
-
Community organizations can use the capitals lens to articulate their value creation to funders focused narrowly on financial sustainability, showing how their work enhances multiple forms of wealth that markets undervalue
-
Policy advocates can reference donut economics and 8 capitals when arguing for regulation that recognizes holistic wealth, protects planetary boundaries, and ensures social foundations rather than optimizing for GDP growth
-
Researchers can apply the integrated framework to comparative analysis of coordination systems, evaluating which governance models enhance multiple capitals and which deplete some to maximize others
The framework’s combination of theoretical rigor and practical applicability makes it immediately useful for regenerative system design.
Connection With SuperBenefit
-
The 8 Forms of Capital framework provides language for SuperBenefit’s understanding that regenerative coordination creates value across multiple dimensions—living capital (ecosystems), social capital (relationships), cultural capital (traditions), experiential capital (wisdom)—that conventional economics and even most Web3 tokenomics completely ignore, offering practical tools to evaluate whether coordination primitives genuinely enhance collective capacity or merely redistribute financial wealth.
-
Donut economics’ dual commitment to planetary boundaries (ecological ceiling) and social foundations (meeting basic needs) challenges SuperBenefit to ensure that regenerative systems don’t just reduce harm but actively operate within ecological limits while guaranteeing wellbeing—moving beyond sustainability rhetoric to concrete constraints and positive commitments that must be embedded at protocol level.
-
Gitcoin’s implementation of this integrated framework demonstrates that alternative economics can work at meaningful scale with real capital deployed, providing evidence for SuperBenefit’s conviction that quadratic funding and public goods mechanisms can reward community benefit over individual accumulation when properly designed.
Related Concepts
- Commons - Shared resources and governance approaches
- Governance - Decision-making for collective resources
- Coordination - Mechanisms for managing shared resources
- Sustainability - Long-term resource stewardship
- Community - Groups managing commons together