Non-Profit Crypto Finance Working Group

221A announces the initiation of the Non-Profit Crypto Finance Working Group. With a network of cultural, educational and non-profit partners, the working group will gather and develop the knowledge about crypto finance needed to benefit the non-profit, educational and cultural sectors. The group is assembling a cross-sector team of organizations, from the worlds of visual art, design, film, architecture, music, and digital culture. The questions the group will research—e.g., fiduciary duties, risk/reward equations, governance mechanisms, regulatory environment—will comprise a basis of knowledge that can be further disseminated across sectors. The real stakes initiative that drives the first project of this working group is to collectively research and prototype a collaborative cryptocurrency staking pool. Together, we will begin the process of creating a playbook for how our sectors can navigate the complexities of the still emerging world of crypto finance.

A longer term outcome of 221A’s own digital strategy, Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks, could be the establishment of an Institute of Crypto Finance for Nonprofits. As far as we know, no such organization currently exists in the world. This working group will lay the ground for this planning. In the knowledge we disseminate, the partnerships we forge, and the future organizations and infrastructure we build, the working group will continue to promote the values that have informed 221A’s approach to operating equitably within digital culture. This is important because an equitable, values-based approach isn’t always a priority in the business and tech communities. Blockchain applications will form the basis of web 3.0, enabling communities to get far greater benefit from daily internet use—through new means of data sovereignty and emerging forms of peer-to-peer collaboration. 221A is working to be a leader in helping communities better understand and adopt web 3.0.

The working group’s research investigates the potential for staking pools as tools for data equity and sovereignty, as well as a source of sustainable revenue for nonprofit, cultural and educational pursuits. Our first public outcome is to produce a report, to be published on our website in late 2022, with an associated events series to disseminate learning across the sector. Cryptocurrency networks are building the foundation for the next era of the internet. The first internet was built through mass collaboration. Open-source software allows developers to opt in to projects they want to collaborate on. Facebook users mass-collaborate on the content that makes it the world’s most populous and valuable online community. What if communities were better able to harness the value created through their collaboration? With this potential, communities can now redistribute this collaboratively generated value amongst the community itself, in order to advance its own self-organized goals.

Cryptocurrencies are also open-source and a product of mass-collaboration. The cryptocurrency innovation is to use the network’s data to create value (cryptocurrency tokens). Blockchain technology makes this possible by replicating the record of each unit of value across its network, and then reconciles all data in the network at regular intervals. The first generation blockchains (e.g. Bitcoin on the proof-of-work protocol) are energy-intensive, but the next generation (e.g. Ethereum transitioning to proof-of-stake protocol) point to a more computationally and energy efficient future for this technology.

Contributors

Rosemary Heather is a art journalist, curator, and researcher with a specialization in Blockchain. She writes about art, the moving image and digital culture for numerous publications, artist monographs, and related projects internationally. Recent interviews include Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Anna Khachiyan, Chris Kraus, Kent Monkman, Ursula Johnson, Dynasty Handbag, Ken Lum, Kerry Tribe, Hito Steyerl, Phil Collins and Candice Breitz. She is a co-author of the collectively written novel Philip, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2006). Exhibitions she has curated include: Screen and Decor (2013); Ron Giii: Hegel’s Salt Man (2006-2007); Serial Killers: Elements of Painting Multiplied by Six Artists (1999); and I beg to differ (1996). From 2003-2009, Rosemary Heather was the editor of C Magazine (Toronto). Since 2015, she has worked in the blockchain industry as a writer and researcher. Clients include: Wellpath.me (Brooklyn); BitBlox Technologies Inc. (Toronto); Pegasus Fintech (Toronto); Blockgeeks (Toronto); Bitcoin Magazine (Tennessee); Decentral (Toronto). An archive of her writing can be found at https://rosemheather.com/
Sprillow is a design, development and consultation studio based in Victoria, British Columbia, focused on co-creating systems change initiatives. We are a small team lit up with a will to create, and bring impactful projects beautifully and functionally to life. Sprillow’s leads include Pegah Vaezi, who is a transdisciplinary designer and curator. Pegah completed her Master’s of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies from the University of Toronto. She was awarded the best symposium of the year by NOW magazine in 2019, for her thesis project “What do we mean when we say content moderation: Digital Censorship, Surveillance and Creative Workers”, which explored ramifications of content moderation in the digital space, with a focus on its implications for creative workers. As well as, Connor Turland, who is a developer and facilitator who is obsessed with seeing the systems that our lives are woven into. Economic, environmental, political, and everything in between that connects them, are all fields of fascination. Connor has the urge to get hands-on and apply the precious time of his life to confront systemic challenges head-on. He has been devoted since a young age to the arts and crafts of digital technology, but is also aware that tech isn't a silver bullet. Connor has fun with everything from getting deep in the code, to working face-to-face facilitating at hackathons, workshops, classrooms, and client meetings. https://sprillow.com
Visitor Media is a production company that works with storytellers to produce film, television, digital media and audio projects. We centre the artist’s vision. We tell stories that envision a more creative, interdependent world. We actively reduce harm and fight oppression in all of our practices and projects. And we believe that stories shape the future. Visitor’s founder and principal is Sean O’Neill who is a producer, director, and writer. He leads the company’s strategy and the development of the company’s film, television, digital and audio projects. He co-created, produced, and hosted the award-winning CBC arts documentary series In the Making (2017-19), a primetime show that took viewers inside the lives and work of notable artists at pivotal moments of creation. Over two seasons, the Canadian Screen Award-winning series screened at MoMA PS1, the National Gallery of Canada, the Remai Modern, VIFF Cinema, and other festivals and museums across Canada. The series was named by NOW Magazine as one of the year’s best upon its debut, and CBC Radio’s q described it as one of their “favourite shows on television.” https://visitor-media.com
The Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) is a socially minded public non-profit contemporary art gallery that is a space for the creation and appreciation of art and culture. It is an affiliated and supported unit of York University. Throughout its 32-year history, AGYU has always operated at the forefront of contemporary artistic, curatorial, and art institutional practices. It has honed and expanded its mandate to establish a unique history and place as an art institution by using the following guidelines when defining its program of exhibitions, lectures, performances, publications, screenings, education and outreach activities, and residencies. https://agyu.art
Described as Hogwarts meets Wakanda meets 'coworking space', the Ethọ́s Lab is at the intersection of culture and innovation. Ethọ́s Lab is creating a STEM (science, technology, education, maths) and culture-focused Innovation Academy (Akademie) for youth ages 13-18 to incite curiosity, build community, and promote personal growth and development in a rapidly changing world. With in-person workshops, a physical co-working space, and an engaging, safe online community, Ethọ́s Lab, is an accessible tech-infused environment that meets the diverse needs of youth right where they are. Ethọ́s Lab participants gain real-world problem-solving, engineering, and science skills while exploring the fullest expressions of their authentic selves, making for happier, smarter kids, better equipped to navigate the environment around them. https://www.ethoslab.space
Named after the IBM chess-playing computer, Deep Blue is a non-profit space dedicated to the thinking machine, thinking about machines, and thinking with machines. Its output is registered in sequences, frequencies, and oscillations purposed to move bodies in space and space in bodies. Within a community in step with electronic music, Deep Blue has become a centre for the production and distribution of a variety of local and international practitioners of contemporary dance music. Deep Blue provides studios for artists while also offering a diverse range of public programming within the disciplines of sound, music, and the sonic arts. Deep Blue is entirely self-funded, involved in neither federal nor provincial government grant systems. The organization provides space for artists working in electronic music, sound art and other auditory practices. Today, Deep Blue has 11 studio spaces shared by more than 28 artists. Deep Blue is located on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl ̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, presently known as Vancouver, British Columbia. https://deepbluestudios.org

Unceded Territory

221A acknowledges that the area called Vancouver is within the unceded Indigenous territories belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. 221A recognizes that the colony of British Columbia was created through organized dispossession and colonial violence. 221A seeks to shift its organizational practices to work together with Indigenous people to end ongoing violence, dispossession and displacement.

Keep artists in the city.

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