Latest / Crypto Altruists: Real-World Stories of Social & Environmental Impact with Web3 / Episode 272 - The Great Funding Reset Part 2 - From Charity to Solidarity: What Mutual Aid Can Teach Web3

Transcript

Episode 272 - The Great Funding Reset Part 2 - From Charity to Solidarity: What Mutual Aid Can Teach Web3 · Crypto Altruists: Real-World Stories of Social & Environmental Impact with Web3

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today you'll discover what mutual aid is and why moving from charity to solidarity is a powerful way to think about supporting each other.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Four case studies of innovative mutual aid models from around the world, involving everyone from Dutch freelancers to Swiss small businesses and elder care in Japan, how Web3 projects like Bread Cooperative and Grassroots Economics are building on the traditions of mutual aid, and what Web3 builders can learn from mutual aid and the benefits that blockchain technology can bring to the table.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to CryptoUltras, where we explore the intersections of Web3 and social good to the stories of impact-driven builders and offer actual insights to empower your journey into the world of blockchain for good.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Drew Simon.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now before we dive in, please remember that this is not financial or legal advice, and always do your own research on any of the projects or investment opportunities that we discuss.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the CryptoUltras Podcast.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining me today for episode 272.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to give a shout out to a few people.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: First off, a big thank you to our friend of the show, Fiona Bood, for supporting us on Buy Me a Coffee.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your contribution and all you do to uplift the space.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you for being a longtime supporter, member of this community, and just for being an all-around awesome person.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And also a big shout out to our friend Sam Flanagan for being an awesome co-host for our monthly GMN Catchup Space, which we hosted earlier this week.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you missed it, don't worry.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have another one coming soon.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I'll make sure to let you know when that is scheduled.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh also thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to the conversation.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was a very hopeful conversation.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean I left feeling hopeful.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think others did as well.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you do want to give it a listen, don't worry, you can.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is recorded.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can find it on our X page.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for now, let's move on to today's episode.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if you caught our last episode, you'll remember we talked about the two funding storms hitting impact builders right now at once.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: The first of those being the cooling of Web3 Public Goods funding, and the second being the largest drop in international aid on record.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And near the end of that episode, I made a point that I want to pick up today.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I said that community-owned funding might be the oldest and most resilient funding model there is.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because it never depended on outside money in the first place.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So today I want to dig into that idea properly, because long before there were foundations, aid agencies, token treasuries, or quadratic funding rounds, definitely before the last one at least, people found ways to take care of each other.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: They pulled what they had, they showed up for each other in hard times, and some of the models they built are still working today, decades or centuries later, and in places you might not expect all over the world.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what this episode is about.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a look at the intersection of mutual aid and web 3.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And here's how we'll approach it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: First, we'll look at what mutual aid is.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'll walk you through four remarkable mutual aid models from around the world.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then we'll take an honest look at the limits of mutual aid, because it's not going to solve everything.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, we'll explore the Web3 projects building on these traditions and what builders in our space can learn.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're going to wrap up by exploring how blockchain can help scale mutual aid models.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really about learning from the past and building on that rather than building something for scratch.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going to be an interesting episode, hopefully, and let's dive in.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the basics.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: What is mutual aid?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: At its simplest, mutual aid is people supporting each other as equals.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: A group of people pools their resources, whether that's money, time, skills, or care, so that everyone in the group can get help when they need it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: One way to frame it could be to look at it through the lens of solidarity versus charity.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the difference.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Charity usually flows in one direction.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a donor and there is a recipient, someone with more gifts to someone with less.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: On this podcast, I've covered dozens of charitable organizations that do enormous good in the world.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a power dynamic here, and mutual aid works differently.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: In mutual aid, support flows in every direction.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Today you might be the one giving, tomorrow you might be the one who needs help.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is permanently the helper, and nobody is permanently the helped.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone is part of the same circle.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this dynamic changes the relationship.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about generosity or in some cases pity from above.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's about recognizing that we all need each other at some point and building something together so that no one has to face hard times alone.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wait a second.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: No hierarchy?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: No taking orders from someone above?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds kind of like a little thing we like to talk about on this podcast called decentralization.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I digress.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Mutual aid is also ancient, and it's everywhere.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Really, it's all over the place.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: It shows up in things like saving circles, burial societies, collective work traditions, cooperatives, so many other forms.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you listened to our episode with Jakumo in Tanzania, for example, you heard how saving circles have helped communities build financial resilience for generations.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in our conversation with co-op legend DG Safir, we explored how cooperatives have been proving that decentralization works for over a century.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Today I want to go beyond those and introduce you to some case studies of lesser-known mutual aid models that I think have a lot to teach us.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels like the right moment for it too, because when funding from governments, foundations, or platforms can disappear overnight, as so many people have experienced this year, models that rely on each other rather than outside money are far more resilient.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we look at these projects, I told you I was going to be honest about the limitations of mutual aid, and I want to acknowledge that mutual aid alone isn't enough to fill the gap.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: The gap of the hundreds of billions of dollars cut from aid budgets over the past couple years, and the millions of individuals who will, unfortunately, die due to the cuts of life-saving care.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: It is devastating, unconscionable, and will have massive impacts on the world for decades to come.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mutual aid alone can't fix that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mutual aid is one piece of the puzzle, along with innovative new funding models, traditional charitable funding, and yes, even government funding, because it is still the biggest contributor of aid.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I see mutual aid as a form of diversification, about giving communities the tools to lessen the shock of when big decisions happen that are out of their control, like massive cuts, while also making them less reliant on the centralized funding pools in the future.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, over time, we can scale it to be a much bigger piece of the puzzle.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: With that, let me introduce you to some of the case studies that I think are doing an excellent job demonstrating how mutual aid innovations are thriving around the world, and how they're very similar to a lot of the stuff happening in Web3 as well.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Our first stop is in the Netherlands, and to frame this one, I'd like to start with a practical problem that I'm certain some of our listeners have faced in their countries, along with myself, and that is that if you're a freelancer in the Netherlands and you get sick, you generally don't have the same income protection as an employee.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, private disability insurance exists, but it's expensive, and the large majority of Dutch freelancers simply don't have it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now there is a bill working its way through Parliament right now that would make basic cover mandatory, but it hasn't passed and nobody expects it to actually kick in before 2030.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So for the moment, if you're self-employed and you get sick, you're kind of on your own.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So back in 2006, a few entrepreneurs came up with a different idea.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: They called it Brudfonds, which literally means breadfund.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how it works.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: A group of between 20 and 50 independent entrepreneurs agree to support each other if any of them get sick.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that I find really clever.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: There is no central pot.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Each member puts a fixed amount every month into their own personal account, the money stays theirs, and if you leave the group having never claimed, you walk away with your balance.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if you fall ill, every other member sends you a monthly gift out of their account, and together those gifts add up to a net monthly income of between 750 and 2500 euros for up to two years.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it has grown far beyond a small experiment.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: As of mid-2026, there were 677 BRET funds in the Netherlands with roughly 32,000 participants.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the part I love most is how, well, human it is.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's no insure, no medical screening, and definitely no claims requirement.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, members just know each other.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: They meet in person, when someone gets sick, other members reach out, not just to send money, but to see how they're doing and offer help.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of a community than just a fund.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And one group even named itself the Soup Fund, because as his chair put it, when someone gets sick, you bring them soup.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: The lesson here is that trust scales best through small relational groups.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: By capping groups at 50 people, everyone stays connected and accountable through real human relationships.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I take that over paperwork and surveillance by an insurance company any day.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to be fair, the model isn't without its critics.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some experts in finance and insurance remain wary of the risks of having members self-manage the funds.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But this case shows it is possible as tens of thousands of Dutch freelancers have decided that the trade-off is worth it.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Also, insurance companies have proven to, well, not always be the most honest operators.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I'd probably choose community over a centralized insurance company any day.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So let's move on to case study number two, which takes us back to the 1930s.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: During the Great Depression, small businesses in Switzerland, like those in most places around the world, faced a crisis.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Money was scarce, banks weren't lending, and businesses that had perfectly good goods and services to offer couldn't trade, simply because there wasn't enough cash moving around.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Enough liquidity, in other words.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So a small group of business owners decided to create their own solution.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: In 1934, they founded a cooperative called, oh boy, here we go, the Wirtschaft String.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: That sorry for butchering that, that's spelt W-I-R-T-S-C-H-A-F-T-S-R-I-N-G, Wirtschaft String.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: It later rebranded to WIR Bank, which is much easier, so I'll use that moving forward.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: What they did was they let small and medium enterprises settle invoices with each other using what's called WIR credits instead of cash, keeping trade alive despite the lack of physical cash moving throughout the economy.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's still going today, more than 90 years later.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Tens of thousands of Swiss small and medium businesses trade in WIR francs, and at its peak, the system was turning over well north of a billion francs a year.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Here's one thing that really fascinates me.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: An economist named James Stodder studied decades of WIR data and he found something pretty cool.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: WIR spending tends to rise when the wider economy contracts.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, when the economy struggles and regular credit dries up, businesses lean on WIR more.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: It acts kind of like a shock absorber.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the flip side of that, which I think is actually just as interesting.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: In recent years with cheap credit and low interest rates, demand for WIR has actually declined, which sounds like bad news until you remember that that's the thing that it was built for.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: When ordinary money is flowing freely, you don't need it as much, so it's not a bug, it's a feature.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: The lesson here is that community currencies can provide resilience when traditional systems falter.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in an uncertain world, where many of the systems we once relied on are starting to falter, that's a pretty good feature.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: That said, some researchers argue that WIR is no longer a pure mutual credit system and has evolved into something closer to a bank with its own unit of account.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's also a reminder that as these models grow, they can drift towards the very institutions they were created to work around.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's important to be mindful of this so that these initiatives don't lose their soul as they scale.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: On to our third model now, which I think might be my favorite because it's just so wholesome.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mutual aid soup for the soul, if you will.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to take us to Japan, which has one of the oldest populations in the world.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And caring for elderly people there has long been a pressing challenge, especially as the overall population drinks and there are fewer working-age people to provide that care.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: One project called Furei Kipu, which translates to caring relationship ticket, is a creative response to this challenge.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So here's how it works.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: People can earn credits by helping seniors in their community.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's helping them with groceries, preparing a meal, or giving someone a ride to an appointment.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the extra cool part.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those credits can be saved when you become sick or elderly yourself or transfer to someone else.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Family members living in other parts of the country can earn credits and send them to their parents, for example.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine you live in Tokyo and your mother lives in a small town hundreds of kilometers away.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be there to help her, but you can help an elderly neighbor in your own city, earn credits and send those credits to your mother so someone in her town can help her.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's a web of care that stretches across the whole country.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a claim about Firai Kipu that I find particularly interesting.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Some accounts suggest that older people may value care provided through time credit systems differently from care paid for in Yen, partly because of the personal relationship involved.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the evidence behind this claim is limited, and researchers have warned against drawing sweeping conclusions, so I think it's best to treat it as more of an intriguing possibility that rather than like a proven finding.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be upfront that this one comes to us secondhand.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: It traces back to Bernard Leitar's work in the late 90s, and researchers who've looked closely at Furei Kipu since have pointed out that the system is complex, the data is patchy, and it tends to attract rosy generalization.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So hold it loosely, but even as an anecdote, I think it points at something real, and there's a lesson that we can learn here.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that lesson is that care itself can be currency, and that sometimes money can actually crowd out kindness.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is an honest caveat though.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Furei Kipu was largely supplanted by Japan's government long-term care insurance program, which was introduced in 2000, but it has inspired time banking programs all over the world, and its core insight still remains powerful.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: That said, I do believe that elder care is a human right, so people shouldn't have to rely on these types of models to get by, but in many places around the world, the care provided to the elderly can be substantid at best, so models like these are needed to help fill that gap.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, I think it's a cool experiment with a very cool lesson that can be drawn, and that lesson is that mutual aid isn't just money, it's care too.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, our fourth case study comes from San Francisco, and it solves a problem that many immigrant families know too well.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: In many cultures, people have practiced saving circles for generations.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone contributes a set amount each month, and each month one person takes home the whole pot.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great system, and it's built entirely on trust.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a problem.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Banks can't see any of it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So someone could have years of perfect repayment history in their community and still have no credit score in the eyes of a bank.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Mission Asset Fund found a way to fix that.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Its lending circles build on traditions like the Mexican tanda to create a safe zero interest pathway to building credit.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: The key innovation is simple.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: The organization services these zero interest, zero fee loans, and reports the payments to Credit Bureau so participants build credit.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the results have been great.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: More than 13 million in zero interest loans have circulated, with 99% repaid, an average credit score increase of 130 points, and more than 2.4 million saved in predatory fees and interest.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And an earlier independent evaluation put that credit score bump even higher at around 168 points.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: So depending on where you look, you'll see different numbers.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, the direction is the same.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: One other caveat to add to that is that some people start with a credit score of zero, so that would obviously inflate those numbers a bit, but still impressive nonetheless.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the lesson here is that you don't always need to replace traditional practices.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the breakthrough is simply making them work with the systems that people already use, and this is something we talk a lot about in Web3, and I have talked a lot about, and that's meeting people where they are and being interoperable with legacy systems.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, I've shared four examples, and I know what you're thinking.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But Drew, what's the catch?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fair question, and I don't want to romanticize mutual aid, although so far it seems pretty sexy, right?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these models are remarkable, but they also have real limits, and understanding those limits is important, especially because it's where technology could help.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: The first limit is that trust is hard to scale.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Broodfonds caps groups at 50 people for a reason.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond a certain size, people simply don't know each other well enough to hold each other accountable.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: The second is that self-management carries risk.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Running a mutual aid group takes time and skill, and it often falls in the shoulders of volunteers.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Groups are especially vulnerable in their early days, before they've built up any reserves.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: The third is that growth can lead to centralization.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: As we saw with WIR, successful models can gradually drift towards looking like conventional institutions they were meant to be an alternative to.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the fourth is that many mutual aid models are bound by geography and paperwork.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: They depend on local banking systems, physical proximity, and formal structures, which can limit who is able to participate, especially across borders.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: These are all very complicated challenges, but they're also the kinds of challenges where technology, if thoughtfully designed with communities, might help.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not by replacing trust.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can't replace trust.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: On the contrary, it's about extending it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this brings me to the next section of the episode, where I'd like to highlight a few Web3 native projects that show a glimmer of what tech can do if used properly.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love Bread Co-op, and what they are is a worker cooperative that is building some pretty cool things called Solidarity Tools.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Their flagship is the Bread Solidarity Fund, and it works in a pretty neat way.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: You deposit stable coins into the fund and receive Bread tokens at a one-to-one ratio.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Your deposit generates yield, and every month that yield goes to Bread's member projects based on a community vote.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your principal stays yours, and only the earnings, that is the yield generated by the stable coins deposited, get shared.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I love about Bred Co-op is how they've designed the governance.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Each month, half of the yield is split evenly across all member projects, regardless of the vote, so that capital alone doesn't decide who gets support.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the other half is distributed by vote, and voting power is based on how much bread you hold on average over the previous month, so it rewards sustained participation rather than someone showing up at the last minute with a huge deposit.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like conviction voting in a way.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: They describe it as participatory budgeting, but on-chain.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: So far, it has distributed nearly 65,000 to member projects with almost 400,000 bread in existence.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there was even a proposal put forward recently, a attempt check on the Gitcoin governance form, about using Bread Co-op's Tech Stack to help fill the gap left by Artisan Fund.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'll attach that link in the show notes as well so you can check it out.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pretty cool proposal.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what makes Bread such a perfect fit for this episode.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just building a funding tool, they're building a whole mutual aid toolkit, directly inspired by the traditions of mutual aid.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Their projects include Stacks, a blockchain-based reimagining of rotating savings circles, and SafetyNet, a community-based insurance model based on the Broodfond's platform.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, the Dutch Bread Fund we talked about earlier is the direct inspiration for one of Bread's upcoming tools.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's still listed as coming soon, but it's the clearest example in this whole episode of Web3 learning directly from a mutual aid ancestor, if you will.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I love how they describe their approach.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Even though Bread is blockchain native, it takes a traditional approach to human relationships, where human connection remains the main source of trust.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the lesson of Brute Fonds carried forward.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about Bread Co-op, definitely check out our episode we did with Josh DeVilla, who is one of Bread Co-op's founders, which is episode number 232, which I'll link in the show notes.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now moving along to the second project I'd like to highlight, and that is Grassroots Economics.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: They have been working in Kenya since 2010, and I also had their founder well in the podcast in episode 241, which yes, I'll post in the show notes as well.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry for all the self-promotion.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: So their approach, uh, called commitment pooling is inspired by centuries of indigenous economic systems.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: In Kenyan villages, neighbors have long come together to build houses, farmland, or provide childcare, repaying each other in labor rather than money.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: One such tradition is called moraria, and sorry again if I didn't pronounce that right, and one of the best ways I've seen it explained is the idea of you help me harvest today, I help you build tomorrow.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: The two things are very different.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: One is harvesting crops, the other is building a house, but yet they can both be exchanged for one another.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Grassroots economics brings this tradition onto digital rails.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Through commitment pooling, people exchange community asset vouchers representing commitments for goods and services, without having to rely on scarce national currency or volatile markets.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the scale is meaningful.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Over a two-year period on the Cello Network, Sarafu Network, their commitment pooling ecosystem, recorded more than 26,000 users, over 285,000 peer-to-peer exchanges, and 188 active commitment pools.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there's one story in particular from Grassroots Economics that I think perfectly connects this episode with the last one.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: They worked on a project that was originally supported by USAID, and when that support ended, well, something pretty cool happened.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: This project kept on going, even after USAID's formal support concluded, they continued to thrive.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: In a year when devastating a cuts have shut down so many programs, this is an example of communities that kept supporting each other after the outside funding stopped.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is the power of mutual aid.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: It helps shift the power from the funder to the community.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Moving on to another example, I want to draw on Mission Asset Fund.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just as Mission Asset Fund made savings circles visible to credit bureaus, we've seen Web3 projects explore how on-chain records can make people's financial reliability visible too.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: In our recent episode on the pilot in Kenya with Blockbeam and Shava Network, we heard how verifiable repayment records helped informal traders, many of whom have been turned away by lenders, start to build a track record.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same lesson.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: There is already so much trust within communities, so how do we tap into that?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I want to spend a moment on circles, because it takes the idea of trust-based money in a cool direction.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Circles is a community currency project built on Gnosis, and its core idea is relatively straightforward.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every participant mints the same number of circles tokens, one per hour for as long as they're active.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: However, instead of everyone sharing one currency, each person issues their own personal version of the currency, which they can send to and receive from people they trust.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: If I trust you, I accept to accept your circles and you accept mine.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you and I have never met, we can still exchange circles through people we both trust, with those shared connections acting as intermediaries and forming a web or circle of trust.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: In the current onboarding process, users need an invitation and three existing users to establish trust connections before they can start sending and receiving circles, and that creates a social layer of trust rather than relying solely on a bank or centralized identity provider.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: What I find so interesting is how many of today's projects that we've discussed you can see in circles.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like WIR, it's a currency created by a community to keep value flowing rather than relying on scarce outside money.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And like Fury Kapoo, its value comes from relationships.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: The latest version also lets communities form groups where members can convert their personal circles into a shared group currency, enabling communities to coordinate economically at scale.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: It even borrows an old idea from community currency movements where all balances shrink by 7% a year, to encourage spending rather than hoarding, which keeps money circulating through the community.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a lot like Grassroots Economics' idea that a healthy pool should flow like a river rather than sit still.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Circles is still very much an experiment, but it's one of the boldest attempts yet to show what money could look like if it were built on trust.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: In a recent reflection, Will of Grassroots Economics wrote about how projects like Circles, Gnosis, and Commitment Pooling all get more interesting when trust is treated as the layer underneath, rather than just another component in the stack.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think that captures this whole episode pretty well.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Trust is the foundation, and technology is just the scaffolding.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what can those of us building the scaffolding in Web3 learn from all this, and what can technology add?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with what Web3 can learn from mutual aid, and I draw five big lessons from today's episode.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: The first is keep it human scaled.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: RootFonds works because people know each other.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: The temptation in Web3 is always to scale to millions, but some things work best in groups of 20 to 30 people who know each other well and trust each other.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes less is more, and that's okay.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second is to put relationships first and mechanisms second.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: The soup fund matters just as much as the money.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: For me, mutual aid is a mix of equal parts social and financial.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a balance that can be hard to maintain, but it is vital.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: The third is don't let tokens crowd out care.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fure Capoo showed us that the way we compensate people can change the nature of the relationship itself.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not everything needs to be financialized, and builders should think carefully.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Carefully about when introducing a token helps and when it might undermine the very thing that it's trying to support.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth, honor what already works.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: The most powerful projects in this space aren't inventing mutual aid from scratch.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're building on the shoulders of those who came before us and learning from communities that have been practicing it for generations.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Decentralization isn't unique or new to Web3.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's been around a very long time, so let's learn from that and build on it.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And fifth, build for the bad times.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: WIR wasn't built for when everything is going well.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was built for when shit hits the fan or when the economy heads into a recession and the flow of funds becomes more scarce.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Resilience is the true test of a mutual aid system, and it is much more important than growth.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So those are five lessons, but this is the CryptoUltras podcast, so of course I have to chat about the value out of Web3, and on that I also see five opportunities.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: The first is transparency, because shared verifiable records can make it easier for people to trust each other and to see that commitments are being honored.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: The second is that it can bring portability across borders.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Just like Fure Kapoo let people send care credits across Japan, Web3 could let people support each other across the world.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: The third opportunity is to lower administrative costs.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of mutual aid's biggest challenges is the burden on volunteer organizers.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Smart contracts can help automate key processes and make self-managed troops much easier to run.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: The side benefit here is it can also help automate key governance processes.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth is visibility.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Just like mission asset fund-made savings circles count towards one's credit, on-chain records of these transactions, which are easily audible, can help open doors to greater financial opportunity.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: We need to just make sure that they count first.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, and perhaps most importantly, it can help with building trust between strangers.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mutual aid groups are strongest when people know each other, but what if they don't?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or what if someone doesn't have a pre-existing network?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Blockchain can help strangers coordinate by giving them shared, verifiable records and transparent rules for how a system operates.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't replace the need for trust, but it can reduce some of the uncertainty involved when working with people we don't already know.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So where does this leave us?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's bring it all together.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Mutual aid is the oldest safety net in the world, and we've seen it applied in so many unique ways.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dutch freelancers bringing suit to a sick colleague, Swiss businesses keeping trade alive through a depression, a daughter in Tokyo sending care to her mother across the country, Kenyan neighbors helping each other harvest and build, people have always found ways to take care of each other.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's in our nature, and in times of uncertainty, like the ones we're living through right now, it's often the safety net that holds.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: While we see all those stories of people holding up and hoarding resources as they prepare to ride out tough times alone in their bunker, history has shown time and time again that the best means of survival and of thriving is having community and a network of support.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: No well-stocked bunker or a bank account can match the resilience and ingenuity that community enables.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: If there's one thing I hope you take away from this episode, it's this.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't invent this.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: We inherited it.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the best web through tools aren't the ones that try to replace these traditions.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: The best tools are those that honor these traditions, learn from them, and help them reach further than they ever could before.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the beautiful thing about mutual aid is that it's something we can all practice.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're joining a saving circle, baking some bread, starting a commitment pool, or simply checking in on a neighbor who's having a hard time, solidarity is something we get to choose every single day.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to go deeper, I'd recommend checking out our past episodes with Shikumu on Saving Circles, with DG Safir on Cooperatives, with Josh on Bread Coop, and our latest episode, The Great Funding Reset.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'll link them all in the show notes with all the other models that we discussed today.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who believes in taking care of each other, and thank you for all you were doing to help build a world of care, empathy, and community.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that wraps up today's episode of Crypto Ultras.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for tuning in.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you're inspired to explore more stories at the intersection of Web3 and Social Impact, be sure to visit us at CryptoUltrux.com for articles, resources, and more.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you love what you heard, it would mean the world if you could rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Your support is huge in helping us reach more listeners like you and keeping the platform going strong.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining us, and I look forward to having you back for the next episode.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, let's keep showing the world the good of crypto.