Samouraï Governance Research Lab: A New Milestone for the Cooperative

1. Who We Are

For eight years, Samouraï Coop has been imagining, experimenting with, studying, and building the foundations of a new generation of social and distributed organizations. By its nature, DNA, and culture, our organization has always seen itself as a collective laboratory—at the crossroads of technology, art, and society.

Our deliberate rejection of modern marketing methods and our dissatisfaction with conventional organizational models have led us to forge a distinct identity: independent, rigorous, and sustainable, grounded in rare and complementary fields of expertise.

This approach—both pragmatic and visionary—belongs to a tradition of open experimentation: learning by building, sharing by documenting, and teaching by making knowledge accessible.

Over the years, the cooperative has structured itself around several expertise hubs—research, development, creation, production, and auditing—while preserving a horizontal governance true to its founding spirit: freedom, rigor, solidarity, and curiosity.

Our Fields of Expertise

Samouraï Coop is now structured around two complementary hubs:

Technologies

• R&D on distributed governance, cryptography, consensus, and peer-to-peer systems.

• Development of open-source applications and tools. Our contributions range from building a decentralized operating system for communities to essential security tools such as a multi-signature wallet adopted by several actors in the Cosmos ecosystem.

• Expertise in open-source ecosystems and developer relations.

• Governance and security audits: analysis of distributed organizations, smart contracts, decision-making mechanisms, and technical operations (short-term missions or “flash orgs”).

Production & Creation

• Production of films, documentaries, design, UX, and educational content. For example, we launched the Samouraï Grants, a creative fund supporting independent documentary filmmakers, whose works are later showcased at our Paris event, Hyperhacktive.

• Motion design, visual identity, and event production.

• Independent media: samourai.tv.
  

These two hubs interact continuously, fostering a transversal approach that bridges technology, creativity, and collective organization.

Terminology note: For readers unfamiliar with technical terms used in this document, detailed definitions are provided in the glossary at the end.

2. A Cooperative Status: Guarantee of Experimental Independence

Since its inception, Samouraï Coop has established itself as a proactive player within distributed ecosystems: a structure contributing to the emergence, study, documentation, and development of initiatives around distributed governance and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

By strategic, legal, and ethical choice, its founder laid the foundations for a sustainable organization, adopting the status closest to distributed architectures: the worker cooperative (SARL SCOP). This choice stems from a long-standing reflection on how cooperative statutes could provide both a legal and philosophical framework for the organizations of tomorrow (see our 2018 article “The Cooperative 3.0”).

This cooperative and entrepreneurial framework has enabled the creation of a healthy and lasting environment, maintaining flexibility for diverse roles—employees, freelancers, contractors—within a single collective project.

Thus, Samouraï Coop has become a socio-technical and legal experiment built on full autonomy:

• no external investors,

• no loans, no debt,

• a model entirely self-financed through activities in France and abroad.
  

This financial, political, and intellectual independence forms the foundation of our autonomy and freedom of action, ensuring an open field for experimentation.

Our resilience has been reinforced by a set of founding choices:

• a loyal, demanding client base chosen for collaboration quality;

• long-term investment in internal expertise and high-potential niche topics;

• a constant effort to reinvest in research, experimentation, and open-source tools, including public “sandboxes” and social experiments;

• coexistence of two main hubs: international services and creative production.

Through this architecture, Samouraï Coop stands as a free and independent structure, capable of weaving multiple collaborations while maintaining a rigorous yet open model—bridging the traditional cooperative world and emerging distributed organizations.

3. Eight Years of Experience and Experimentation

Since its founding, Samouraï Coop has grown step by step, consolidating its base before expanding its scope of action—each stage contributing to a unique model: independent, experimental, and sustainable.

• 2017: Foundational phase—production structure, first developments, internal tools, and reserves.

• 2018–2019: Building & Testing phase—creation of original content, exploration of Web3 tools, first collaborations, and onboarding of new talents.

• 2020–2021: Bootstrapping Community v0—launch of Samouraï TV, release of The Underground Sistine Chapel documentary (freely distributed via IPFS and YouTube, premiered at Le Grand Rex in 2021). The annual Paris P2P Festival gathers top global experts in cryptography and peer-to-peer technology for a 5-day free event.

• 2022: Expansion of the engineering team to strengthen development capabilities and contribute to the creation of Gno.land, a new Golang-based smart contract platform and virtual machine.

• 2024: Creation of a (d)App Studio, a development framework to accelerate app creation from concept to growth in a few months—bridging internal R&D with real-world applications.

• Late 2025: Launch of the Samouraï Governance Research Lab, formalizing eight years of accumulated experience into open, shared resources for social and decentralized organizations.
  

Throughout this trajectory, our goals have remained constant:

• support innovative and open-source projects;

• build flexible and responsive teams (“flash orgs”) for complex projects;

• self-finance creation and research;

• consolidate a hybrid model between production agency and experimental lab.

This evolution reveals three distinct stages:

1. Experimentation (2017–2019) – testing tools, methods, and collective learning.

2. Structuring (2020–2023) – stabilizing competencies, economy, and recognition within distributed ecosystems.

3. Governance Research (from 2024) – documenting and formalizing knowledge for future social and decentralized systems.

This third phase marks an essential milestone: transforming accumulated experience into a shared, reusable knowledge base.

4. A Governance Laboratory

Since 2025, the cooperative has formalized a dedicated research initiative: the Samouraï Governance Research Lab.Its mission: to document, question, and equip new organizational forms—cooperatives, DAOs, and commons-oriented projects.

The lab extends Samouraï Coop’s historic ethos: learn by building, formalize by experimenting. Its goal is to turn accumulated experience into open, reusable resources for the cooperative world, Web3 actors, and the social economy.

The lab welcomes Maël Rolland, researcher in economics and social sciences, specialist in cryptocurrencies, governance, crises, and decentralized infrastructures.His mission: to study and document governance in social and decentralized organizations—from cooperatives to DAOs—through written research, interviews, and field documentation, while supporting the design of robust, open, and replicable governance models.

Through this initiative, Samouraï Coop enters a new cycle: bridging practice and research, sharing knowledge, and contributing to the design of sustainable, open, and cooperative models.

5. A Sustainable Trajectory Open to Support

To this day, Samouraï Coop remains fully self-financed—with no external backing, institutional funding, or loans. This independence preserves our freedom of research and experimentation, but it also requires constant effort to maintain a balance between economy, creation, and exploration.

Our long-term approach is clear: document over time, experiment openly, and produce reliable resources for the social organizations of tomorrow—SMEs, cooperatives (SCOP/SCIC), associations, or start-ups alike.

In this spirit, we are now opening to potential financial partners willing to support and strengthen our independent path, under clear principles:

• all our work, content, and developments remain open source;

• financial support does not imply capital entry;

• total freedom of analysis for our researchers and teams is guaranteed.

In return, we commit to honoring our supporters in line with our cooperative values.Rather than an investment logic, we promote patronage and mutual recognition. Depending on contribution level, partners will be acknowledged publicly on our website under cooperative-inspired titles (Companions, Builders, Pillars), receive exclusive invitations to public events (screenings, seminars), and gain direct access to our research publications.

By 2026, our goal is to stabilize a sustainable budget of around €25,000/month, allocated as follows:

• €15,000/month – funding two to three independent researchers;

• €6,000/month – documentation, artistic creation, and production;

• €4,000/month – operational costs (tools, hosting, infrastructure, maintenance).

This path aims to consolidate a unique model: a research and production cooperative—free, open, and durable—serving the commons and the organizations of tomorrow.

Our independence and working conditions remain unchanged and non-negotiable: only through this can we ensure the quality, sincerity, and longevity of our work.

If you share this vision and wish to support our initiative, we would be delighted to discuss the modalities of partnership. Contact: research@samourai.coop

Glossary

Blockchain: A peer-to-peer protocol for storing and transmitting information transparently and securely, operating without central control. Data is organized in cryptographically linked blocks.

DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization): An organizational structure whose operating and governance rules are defined and executed by smart contracts, enabling coordination without central authority.

Distributed governance: A mode of shared governance among members who may be distributed across different locations or organizations. Unlike centralized governance, it relies on the distribution of decisions, responsibilities, and power within a network—often linked to a blockchain.

Flash org (Ephemeral organization): A temporary team formed by the ad-hoc convergence of individuals or collectives to rapidly execute coordinated actions around a common objective.

IPFS (InterPlanetary File System): A decentralized protocol for storing and sharing files, enabling content distribution and access without central servers.

Motion design: A creative discipline combining graphic design and animation to create visual content in motion (videos, title sequences, animated interfaces).

Open source: Software or content whose source code is freely accessible, modifiable, and redistributable. This approach promotes transparency, collaboration, and the creation of digital commons.

Peer-to-peer (P2P): A network architecture in which participants exchange directly with each other, without centralized intermediaries.

Smart contracts: Autonomous programs that automatically execute predefined instructions when specified conditions are met. They operate on a blockchain and guarantee automaticity, transparency, and immutability of interactions.

Task force: A specialized working group, temporarily formed to solve a problem or carry out a targeted mission.

UX (User Experience): The overall quality of interaction between a user and an interface, application, or digital service (ergonomics, fluidity, satisfaction).

Web3 (decentralized Web): A vision of a decentralized internet where users control their data and interactions through blockchain technologies and distributed protocols, breaking away from the centralized model of Web 2.0 platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.).