The Ownership Economy

In this engaging conversation, Jenn and Ilia Murtazashvili share insights from their work at the University of Pittsburgh, focusing on communal property rights and self-governance. They unpack the concept of the commons and delve into the challenges of resource management, from climate change to local development needs. The duo discusses the importance of decentralized governance and highlights empowering community-led initiatives. They explore real-world examples, including the dynamics of ocean governance and the interplay between government action and market stability.

In this episode of the Ownership Economy, Martin and Jahed connect with Adam Jackson, the Co-Founder and CEO of Braintrust Network. The conversation begins by discussing how to jumpstart network effects in marketplaces using blockchain technologies and marginal stakeholder incentives. Adam then discusses what decentralization really looks like within a web3 labor marketplace, and offers clues and insights for founders considering building in the space.

In episode 063, Jahed sat down with Camille Canon, founder of Apiary.xyz, and previously founder of Purpose Trust. Camille pioneered the Purpose Trust, a trust built for non-charitable purposes, that creates alternatives for SMEs looking to exit their business whose only option before was PE. Camille talks us through insights learned in the legal engineering of purpose trusts, and how she backed into the real problem—governance and decision-making. We round out the pod by covering a case study of Apiary in action with Radicle DAO, using their tools to help Radicle understand their stakeholders and radically change their decision-making structure for more alignment and quick execution.

In this episode of the Ownership Economy podcast, we welcome Dr. Corey Rosen, a champion of employee ownership. Dr. Rosen dives into the shortcomings of the current ownership model, marked by opaque practices and short-term horizons. The conversation shifts to Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), outlining their benefits, limitations, and reasons for their non-dominant representation in the economy. Dr. Rosen discusses strategies to increase employee ownership, such as contractual preferences, taking companies private through ESOPs, and leveraging policy ideas like the Employee Equity Investment Act. This episode is a concise guide to understanding and fostering an equitable ownership economy.

In this episode of the Ownership Economy, Jahed and Martin welcome back Nathan Schneider, a thought leader who enlightened us on the intricacies of platform cooperatives, DAOs, and the burgeoning Ownership Economy in our 2021 conversation. In this episode, we catch up with Nathan to understand the remarkable transformations that have swept these spaces over the last two years, and how these shifts have influenced his perspective. Together, we dissect Nathan's profound assertion about the dire need for democratic financial mechanisms analogous to venture capital and a supporting software stack for enhancing democratic governance. We further analyze Nathan's provocative piece on creating a robust policy platform for DAOs, its crucial importance, and how Section 230 has shaped the digital world. This discussion delves into the unique features of network-native organizations, and issues of transparency, sufficient decentralization, and participant control within the DAO space. Our conversation culminates with an exploration of Nathan's vision for DAOs: a tool to pivot the online economy away from digital feudalism towards shared ownership, fostering a culture of effective self-governance in our communities and governments. Join us for this riveting conversation as we journey through the evolving contours of the digital economy and governance.

In episode 060, Martin and Jahed sit down with Dakotah Apostolou, CEO of Cohere Network, to learn how Cohere is expanding access to the real estate asset class by tokenizing equity in a global co-living network. In the conversation, we cover Dakotah’s background training as an architect at Taliesin, The School of Architecture started by Frank Lloyd Wright, and how the built environment can be leveraged for better social, environmental, and governance outcomes by leveraging existing legal structures such as the LLC and combining them with blockchain tools to enable liquidity and optionality for network participants. It’s a fascinating experiment showing how one can use a fully-compliant legal approach to enable broad access to equity, and enable optionality for nomads, retirees, and anyone looking for more meaning and flexibility in their living arrangements.

In this podcast, we explore the evolution of the social contract between employers and employees, discussing how the traditional framework has remained relatively unchanged since the early 1900s, while loyalty as a core belief has largely eroded in modern times. With a predicted 50% of the US labor force participating in freelance and gig work by 2025, the conversation delves into the challenges faced by the employment industry, such as market and technology fragmentation, and the need for interoperability.

In episode 058, Jahed & Martin sit down with Tyler Morrey of Upside Cooperative. In the conversation, we cover how difficult it really is for companies to share their equity with a large number of stakeholders, the state of the art for equity ownership for SMEs, ESOPs, and legal structures, and the innovations that Upside Cooperatice is unlocking by making legal innovation broadly accessible with the Hedera blockchain and ecosystem. We hope you enjoy the episode.

In this episode, Jahed sits down with David Dao, founder of GainForest and PhD candidate at ETH Zurich, to discuss how GainForest is blazing the trail for valuing natural assets with bottom-up participation of land stewards. In the conversation, we cover what ecosystem services are, how they contribute to the economy, various ownership and property rights regimes for them, and what an equitable future looks like if we value ecosystem services inputs to global GDP. We also touch on data ownership, governance, and provenance. We hope you enjoy the episode.

In this episode, Martin and Jahed speak with Raphaël Haupt, co-founder and CEO of Toucan Protocol. In the conversation, they cover the historical arc of the carbon markets, how we got to the market we have today through greenwashing and in some cases fraud, and what Toucan is building to enable transparent and auditable climate finance at scale. They touch on the recent Verra controversy, and how Toucan is building tools and financial infrastructure to help registries, marketplaces, brokers, and corporates understand what they are buying so that they can finance the economic system change we need to power through this century’s energy and environmental challenges. We hope you enjoy the episode.