Trusted Seed: A Value-Driven Community Advancing Regen Economies

A fine tilth, that perfect seedbed, takes time and care. When selecting seeds, several parameters are considered, like physical purity, moisture content, viability, germination, and seed health. As they start seeding, it is the gardener's responsibility to nourish the soil and protect them from plagues, diseases, etc. Trusted Seed is a growing, healthy community that can provide abundance to future Commons and shade to those who want to build public goods. Commons Stack represents the soil to experiment, grow and multiply collaborative economic connections. Trusted Seed, deeply rooted in the Commons Stack culture, is ready to shoot up and provide value not only in our community but also across the larger blockchain ecosystem.

Trusted Seed is a Swiss Association that supports early-stage regenerative economies culturally and financially. Created in 2019, it has been a reputable network of trusted actors who apply wisdom, expertise, and capital to early-stage crypto communities committed to creating regenerative microeconomies for public goods through token engineering and DAO governance.

As it continues to extend its branches to different ecosystems within the ReFi cosmos, the Trusted Seed members aim to create value, take part in collaborative economics and sustainably fund public goods while generating a reputation across the blockchain.

When designing cryptoeconomic networks, we must consider more than just the technical parts (e.g. well-documented code & audited smart contracts), and account for the cultural aspects as well (e.g. aligned participants & thoughtful processes). The initial conditions for both must be taken very seriously, and Trusted Seed is a key cultural initialization tool for blockchain networks, as evidenced by the many projects researching how best to approach their design.

Imagine what would have happened to Bitcoin if Satoshi had cared more about profits than the underlying value of the Bitcoin network. If they had cashed out in 2011, where would the cryptocurrency community be? All successful blockchain networks have been propelled by a group of people that care more about building a useful network than taking profits. Satoshi is the benevolent whale of Bitcoin, just as the Ethereum Foundation and other early ether holders are for Ethereum. These trusted groups were needed while these networks were young and small; however, now that both Ethereum and Bitcoin have reached a sufficient level of decentralization and proven their value, they would still survive even if Satoshi liquidated his bitcoin, or Vitalik went rogue.

For these reasons, Commons Stack has established Trusted Seed: a group of trusted community members that hold the non-transferable $TRUST token, representing their reputation within Commons Stack. The members of Trusted Seed are offering more than just contributions to Commons Stack — they form a reputable network of trusted actors with skin in the game who can lend their wisdom and expertise to make good decisions in the early stages of a Commons’ governance.

The DAO space is expanding at a rapid rate, and many DAO participants are unknowingly entering into general partnerships, which come with their own set of required considerations. For one, DAO members could be held individually liable for actions of other DAO members that are done in the name of the DAO. By joining the Trusted Seed’s legal Swiss Association, you will have mutual aid for some of the potential risks involved with a general partnership.

Benefits of being a Swiss Association:

1. Legal entity with simple constitutional requirements

2. Members, not investors

3. Global membership available to all

4. Satisfies minimum viable centralization

One of the purposes of Trusted Seed is to help design, simulate and create commons-based regenerative microeconomies to sustain public goods through incentive alignment, continuous funding and community governance. Every Trusted Seed member is encouraged to participate in projects and DAOs that are aligned with this goal, such as Token Engineering Commons (TEC).  However, as mentioned earlier, DAO members might incur potential risks from their participation in such projects. To strengthen our goal and push it forward, Trusted Seed provides financial support to our members who suffer a financial loss as the result of a legal proceeding against them due to participation in or membership in such DAOs.

Trusted Seed considers itself a mutual aid group that, in the case of any issues, will make a stand to protect its members acting in good faith from litigious action. We expect to make sure that a legal precedent is set that working in DAOs pushing the boundaries of public good creation is heroes' work.

Imagine if the TEC, the first community to use the Commons Stack design pattern, does a design audit on a project’s token economy, and the audit suggests that the economic design has critical flaws and the price of their token drops. If the core team of the audited project was so inclined, they could claim that the audit is defamation and sue individual members of the TEC for damages (especially the Hatchers and stewards of the community), since they are general partners that participated in the founding and operation of the DAO. However, since they are also members of the Trusted Seed, the legal Swiss Association is prepared to fight for its members in situations like this. If they attack one of us, they attack all of us.

The first step is to apply to become a Trusted Seed member. The Gardeners —  the curators and community builders of Trusted Seed — will then review your application. Once you’ve been accepted, you can proceed to activate your annual membership by sending a minimum of 1 DAI (or any equivalent token) to our Giveth project to receive your initial TRUST score and continue building it with your contributions to Trusted Seed and Commons Stack.

For a detailed step-by-step guide, check this link.

Your TRUST score is a non-transferrable reputation score represented by the $TRUST token. It represents the “skin in the game” value-driven members of Trusted Seed have put towards advancing regen economies in our community. Learn more.

Anyone holding $TRUST is a member of Trusted Seed.

Existing members of Trusted Seed can increase their TRUST score by:

To become a member, you must first apply. Once you have been accepted to officially become a member of the Trusted Seed Swiss Association, you must send 1 DAI or more to our project on Giveth. This will give you 12 months of membership with all the benefits. The membership can be renewed annually to continue enjoying the benefits.

We want to maintain an active healthy responsive community. Upon the approach of your membership renewal date, we will send notices to renew. Members who choose not to renew their membership will have their membership terminated and the status changes to Inactive. The reputation score in $TRUST tokens will be recorded in our registry as pending and the tokens will be burned.

Don’t worry though! If you fail to renew, your TRUST score is recoverable. The Trusted Seed Gardeners will keep track of your TRUST score on-chain so that when you reactivate in the future, your previous amount of $TRUST will be restored and you will be able to enjoy the full benefits of being a Trusted Seed member again.

Holding $TRUST also means having the power to help Commons Stack choose the next Commons and design its token economy in a collaborative approach. Trusted Seed members are highly encouraged to participate in the governance of future Commons and other existing DAOs that recognize and welcome the value of Trusted Seed.

Membership in the Trusted Seed can be revoked. If any member of the Trusted Seed begins displaying a pattern of extracting profits from the Commons/DAOs they join, to the substantial detriment of those communities, that member will be subject to a system of graduated sanctions, the most severe of which could be the revocation of their TRUST Score.

Ready to become a Trusted Seed member? Follow the steps in this guide.

For more information, you may reach out to our Trusted Seed Gardeners: iviangita#3204 and Yineisy Mota#1449 on Discord.

Some parts of this article are taken from the legacy article, co-authored by Jeff Emmett and Griff Green, that reflects the base nutrients upon which Trusted Seed has grown and the old Trusted Seed membership guide created by Kris Jones - huge praise to them! Also special thanks to Mafer, Ivy, Griff and Yineisy for contributing to this newer article.

If you want to get more involved, there are several ways to engage with Trusted Seed and the community:

🌏 Explore our website

💝 Donate to our project on Giveth

🐦 Follow the latest news, updates & events on Twitter

🗣️ Join the conversation on Commons Stack’s Discord