Bloom helps more people participate in local economic development through a feature-rich social network that helps on-the-ground actors share knowledge and incubate their projects. Governed as a federated DAO of Local Bloom nodes, we've built communities around the world since 2008, through regional food security, Indigenous solidarity, and alternative economies. https://bloomnetwork.earth.

👋🏽 We are 33 Local Bloom hubs across 11 countries, and 30,000+ people on the ground. We've jumpstarted over 7,000 local urban and agroecology farms worldwide, 400+ community enterprises, and built permanent foundations for regenerative cultures. We have decades of experience building local economies. 

The purpose of our project for this grant is to design a cooperative patronage token that:

• Incentivizes P2P knowledge sharing while funding community-led economic development
• Has community currency properties so network members can utilize their tokens to receive goods and services they might not otherwise seek out or discover in their local area, to bootstrap local and bioregional economies
• Establishes stronger real world <> on-chain relationships with the continued development and adoption of the Optimism economy
• Provides a new innovation at the intersection of platform coops powered by blockchain tech, grassroots community economic development, and tokens that are backed by networked economic activity for resilience.

Rifai Sicilia, moringa agroforestry + mutual aid + web3 onboarding. Broadfield Enterprises, Uganda, African food and economic sovereignty.

Cooperative Patronage Token

This builds on our existing Local Action Rewards protocol, which finances collaborative community labor and bioregional innovation.

🌸 How it works now:

• Earn FLO (Flowers) / [X token]: Local Bloom members earn FLO by documenting the outcomes of their community actions.

• Impact Reporting Interface: A user-friendly web2 UI allows rich image uploading and social networking features, making it easy for the public and peers to engage and learn. Automatic deployment to on-chain systems for grants interoperability.

• Grants Distribution: A verifier (increasingly local as we scale) reviews the report for completion and truthfulness. FLO is issued using Inverter Network's bounties contracts. Grants are then distributed based on FLO earned, benefiting individuals and local treasuries. Details.

The local treasury can be used to pay a stipend to community organizers, venue rental, farm equipment, or invest in a local business. It's up to each Local community to self-manage their treasury.

Grants, as well as profits as the coop becomes profitable, are routed to the members on the ground who are doing the kinds of place-based labor that humanity needs to massively scale to mitigate climate impacts and solve common societal problems.

It's worth noting that we have already workshopped the legal side of our approach, with an all-female legal team, using the Colorado Limited Cooperative Association as the initial example, to reduce risk for existing real world communities who are new adopters of Web3.

Phase 2: This Grant's Funds Go Toward the Following

We aim to enhance FLO with community currency properties to support local business discovery and economic development, expanding local-first on-chain connectivity.

For example, say I live in the Lisbon area. I have 300 FLO / [X network token] from helping plant a local food forest. I type that into the UI, and see offers from near me that I can receive in exchange for the token. I learn about local businesses near me who are values-aligned with this network,

This mechanism allows locals to share our surplus and establish relationships with potential customers. If you're a techie, it helps you deepen your experience with people and projects working around you.

This token approach and the social architecture around it is designed to kickstart flywheels for bioregional economies. It does some of the heavy lifting of the initial marketing bootstrapping to get a business revenue-positive. It onboards more people to the Superchain. Importantly, more people participating in real world environmental and social regeneration will be able to participate in Optimism governance, so growth is anchored to real world use cases.

Your contribution will help us:

• Design a hybrid cooperative patronage token/community currency.

• Research mechanisms for token backing and grants distribution. For example, perhaps the person I paid with my token is the one who gets the grant/profit distribution at the end of the period. Inverter Network's bonding curves for token economies is another path we're considering.

• Collaborate with other network states on the Superchain for interoperability. Examples: Cabin, ReFi DAO, Cohere Network, GreenPill, and Celo Regional Nodes.

• Consult with Grassroots Economics, Local Bloom organizers and Web3 protocol users.

Imagine if you're able to work 4 hours per day at your tech job and earn money for 2 hours of your day doing gardening at your local agroforest to break up the screen time and touch grass.

Benefits of This Approach:

• Legally above-board as per cooperative legislation.
• Diverse Value Programming: what is eligible for funding from the company can be liberated from only building apps or products, to include social missions, with transparent and easily understandable reporting and accounting.
• Enhanced Governance: Reputation scores can be used to assign Web3-native governance power, increasing Web3's connectivity and leadership by real-world operators.

Why Bloom?

👩‍🚀 Experienced Team: Our platform team is 100% women-led with decades of experience in technology transformation.

👩‍👩‍👧‍👦 Community Builders: Local Bloom organizers have been building communities since 2008.

🌿 Proven Impact: We excel in achieving local food and economic sovereignty and are now scaling what we know works, in relationship with Web3.

We welcome your support and volunteering.

Roadmap

Pictured: IntegriTea Cafe and community center, Vallejo