Digital Public Utilities are neutral and decentralized services, often in the form of an autonomous protocol, that preserve the rights and freedoms of online communities.

What would it look like to design a generative brand? Instead of a logo and approved assets, can we design a language that can compose a web of attuned media? In this case we wouldn’t be selecting a font but a family of fonts. In the same way, we could select a group of artists or artistic movements. Finally we can select or create UNICODE iconography. This makes the brand live within the broad standards space of online media, instead of separate to it. Not a signal, but a meme.

I whisper to myself: “There is no spoon.” I hold the utensil in my hand and its concept in my mind. The spoon is normal: silver, metal, unremarkable. I bought this one at IKEA, a store known for the universal nature of their products. Their motto echoes in my mind: “Democratic Design”. Or maybe the spoon is part of a wedding gift? The memory slips along the surface of its mundanity.

Creators are now “Content Liquidity Providers”, in a similar manner way capital providers provide liquidity to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.

Welcome to the first public update from the Summer of Protocols program. Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading about how people gather online, trying to tease out a clear definition of a Swarm. No such luck so far, but hopefully getting closer.

If you've been following my work, particularly on Twitter, you might have recognized a recurring theme: I explore community dynamics, with a unique emphasis on online coordination, and more recently, onchain activities. This summer, I’ve had the privilege to join the Summer of Protocols and fully focus on this research. The program is sponsored by the Ethereum Foundation and led by Venkatesh Rao, the author of Ribbonfarm. If you haven’t read about the program, I’d recommend you take a look at the Pilot Study that was published this March.