“Decentralised Tech & the Future of Organising” offers a thoughtfully curated overview of web3 projects with genuine social impact potential. Compiled by Richard Bartlett (co-founder of Enspiral and The Hum), this resource cuts through the speculative hype to highlight initiatives using blockchain and decentralized technologies to address real social challenges. By focusing on practical applications rather than financialization, the directory provides a valuable orientation for those interested in web3’s transformative possibilities beyond cryptocurrency investment.
Key Highlights
- Public Goods Focus: The resource emphasizes projects developing infrastructure for public goods funding, including Gitcoin’s quadratic funding mechanism and Giveth’s donation platform. This section demonstrates how web3 techniques can mobilize resources for shared needs that traditional markets and governments struggle to address.
- Coordination Tooling: Bartlett highlights innovative approaches to collective decision-making and resource allocation, including conviction voting, optimistic governance, and sybil resistance mechanisms. These tools demonstrate web3’s potential for enabling new forms of large-scale coordination that overcome traditional collective action problems.
- Practical Governance Experiments: The directory presents real-world applications of novel governance mechanisms by initiatives like AraCred, SourceCred, and Coordinape that enable transparent, automated distribution of rewards and recognition within decentralized communities.
- Regenerative Economics: The resource showcases projects building blockchain-based systems for environmental regeneration, including carbon markets, biodiversity credits, and land stewardship initiatives. These examples illustrate how tokenization and transparency can create new economic models aligned with ecological flourishing.
- Local-Global Bridges: Bartlett highlights initiatives creating connections between digital protocols and place-based communities, showing how web3 tools can support bioregional economies and local resilience while maintaining global knowledge sharing.
Practical Applications
This directory provides value in multiple contexts:
- For social impact organizations exploring how web3 tools might enhance their work but unsure which applications are substantive versus speculative
- For community organizers seeking practical tools to address coordination challenges in their networks
- For funders and philanthropists looking to support meaningful innovations in the web3 space
- For policy makers trying to understand the constructive potential of blockchain beyond financial speculation
- For entrepreneurs and builders wanting to develop projects with genuine social benefit rather than simply chasing token appreciation
The resource is particularly valuable because it doesn’t present web3 as a panacea but instead offers specific, contextual applications where decentralized technology offers distinctive advantages over traditional approaches.
Connection With SuperBenefit
- Aligns with SuperBenefit’s focus on using web3 for transformative social impact rather than financial extraction, featuring projects and practices that exemplify the cosmolocal approach.
- Many highlighted governance tools implement what SuperBenefit describes as “coordination scale” operations, enabling groups to make decisions and allocate resources without centralized control.