[Dec 3 Note]
This is a really high level post that will get built out in coming weeks that seeks to answer the question of what are some mechanisms by which farmers actually “own” the data network and what does mean, practically.
This page can be read in conjunction with the Cooperatives and DAOs post here.
Two of the critical things that any organization needs to address is who benefits from the economic value generated and how are decisions made; more simply, economics and governance.
Some practical questions include:
How much capital are investors providing and for what stake in the enterprise? This looks pretty different for VC funded startups vs. cooperatives
What decisions are handled by management vs. a board of directors (and who makes up that board) vs. shareholders directly?
Below are some examples of interesting models that could inform our approach; these will be organized is a more coherent framework in the coming days.
Joindata is a data cooperative for dairy farmers in the Netherlands. The Supervisory board, which manages the organization, reports to the General Assembly where all the members are able to vote. There are two sounding boards (tech experts and farmers) which advise the company.
BigGreenDao is building a distributed philanthropy whose goal is to make grant-making more inclusive by giving NGOs that receive grants from the philanthropy a role in selecting who to fund going forward. GreenDAO is legally a 501c3 and uses two types of tokens to allocate decision making: an Exec token for committee members to decide how to run the organization and a GovToken given to community members (the Exec committee and also grantees that are selected by GreenDAO) which is used to decide which orgs to fund and how much.
