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Civic Protocol Economies

What happens when civic economy meets protocol economy?

In an era faced with large transformations and complex societal challenges, we ask ourselves: What happens when the civic economy meets the protocol economy? This exploration delves into the potential synergies between these two paradigms, aiming not to provide definitive answers, but to open up directions and questions for future research and experimentation.

The promise of the civic economy is that, through its focus on relationships rather than mere transactions and collective well-being rather than individual profit, it can foster a stronger society, robust neighborhood structures, and enhanced livability. Yet, in order to function at scale, such civic economies need systems for value exchange, administration, and governance. The promise of the protocol economy is that, through decentralization of governance, automation via smart contracts, and its affordance to accommodate multiple forms of value-storage and exchange, it could make its economies more relational and enhance communities’ agency to set their own values and rules.

We therefore see the protocol economy as a possible approach that could provide directions for the needs of the civic economy. Yet at the same time, we also acknowledge that that same protocol economy – when left to libertarian and anarcho-crytpo-captilalist interpretations of it – could also strongly undermine the potential of our economies to become more civic, plural and relational. Our guiding questions are therefore twofold:

1. Could the mediation and automation of value exchange and the governance systems of the protocol economy drive the further development of civic economies, and make them more scalable, spreadable, or adoptable?
2. The protocol economy is also on a pathway to develop further according to the libertarian extractivist logic of shareholder capitalism. How can we infuse it with public and social values?

As there are obvious crossovers between the two approaches, it is important to start experimenting how these can be made productive. This exploration aims to inspire such experiments, laying out directions, dilemma’s and research questions and opportunities to do so.

In 2024, the Civic Interaction Design lectorate, in collaboration with the Centre of Expertise Economic Transformation (CET), organized a research residency titled “What happens when the Civic Economy meets the Protocol Economy?” This initiative, led by researcher, curator, and technology strategist Iskander Smit, aimed to explore how these two significant economic and technological developments might complement and strengthen each other.

The exploration delves into the potential synergies between civic and protocol economies, aiming to uncover new pathways for future research and design. The civic economy, focusing on community, collaboration, and social well-being, offers an alternative to more extractive and profit-driven winner-takes-all economic models. Meanwhile, the protocol economy, leveraging decentralized technologies, presents novel approaches to value exchange and governance of economic systems. By examining these two paradigms’ intersection, we envision a “civic protocol economy” that could potentially address complex societal challenges and foster more equitable, sustainable societies.