Governance research lab

We research how groups govern themselves — cooperatives, DAOs, open-source projects — and we build the tools that come out of it. We are a worker cooperative ourselves, which is the reason the subject is not abstract for us.

What we research

The subjects, as the lab has always listed them: cooperative and decentralised governance, and the future of cooperativism. Cybersecurity and the security of distributed ledgers. Resilience of communities. The future of work. The future of education and self-directed learning. Autonomous funding for open-source projects.

Research that becomes a product

The research is not filed away. Memba, our multisig wallet and DAO governance tool, is the direct output of work on DAO transparency and voting — the studio builds what the lab argues for.

Where it crosses the film crew

One of the lab's standing subjects is films, art, events, culture and decentralisation. That is not a side interest — it is where the film crew and the engineering studio work on the same object, which is what Labs is for.