Social infrastructures complement technical infrastructures provided by blockchain networks. This program is designed to provide capital to fund a wide range of benefits to 0L members in alignment with the mission, vision and values of the community.
What is Social Infrastructure?
Social infrastructure is also called “soft infrastructure”
Soft infrastructure refers to all the institutions that maintain the economic, health, social, environmental, and cultural standards of a country.
~Wikipedia Entry on Infrastructure
Unlike a country, peer-to-peer networks are fundamentally opt-in. They form a new kind of constituency distinct from nation-states. Peer-to-peer networks bear a closer resemblance to other opt in systems providing membership benefits such as credit unions and professional associations. Like benefits offered by professional associations and credit unions; members may help define and opt into benefits programs.
Why Fund Social Infrastructure?
It is increasingly common for community and industry organizations to offer benefits programs to address welfare gaps emerging in society. An example one such program is Freelancers Union which specifically addresses the benefits gaps for freelancers relative to their peers. The growing web3 ecosystem suffers from many of the same benefits gaps that freelances suffer from, and some case more sever gaps may emerge depending on the members geography and/or specific industry.
While the decentralized nature of peer-to-peer networks decouple them from any particular industry or geographic region, they do not eliminate their members’ physical needs. Any membership benefits programs that aims to address social and economic welfare will need capital.
By including a social infrastructure program in the 0L community wallet set, validators make it possible for OL to actualize our vision of providing social infrastructure for its members. Availability of capital significantly reduces the financial burden of deploying and operationalizing such programs.
How Will These Resources be Used?
The resources collected by the Social Infrastructure Program will supply capital to membership benefits programs focus on social and economic welfare. The term welfare is often used for specific government programs because benefits programs or provided or mandated by. However, here we reimagine benefits programs targeting social and economic welfare as social infrastructures provided for and by communities to serve the needs of those communities’ members, as whole persons, not merely as economic actors. Welfare ecompasses support intend to ensure that members of the community meet basic human needs. A nonexclusive list of examples:
- Housing
- Health
- Education
- Physical Safety
- Economic Security
- Arbitration & Dispute Resolution
Building on the example of the Freelancers Union, an example of the type of initiative this program might fund is a health plan managed by the association which members may opt into.
However, the long term vision for such programs extend beyond typical employee benefits programs to encompass support for any social infrastructure the community collectively deems necessary to redress welfare deficiencies identified amongst the membership.
Practical Considerations
Since this program’s primary purpose is to provide capital to social infrastructure initiatives in the future, it is not expecting to deploy any capital for at least a year after the launch of the 0L mainnet. It may be much longer as social infrastructure has significant dependencies.
There are other 0L programs focused on research, design, development and deployment of social infrastructures and the technical infrastructures which enable them.
Donation Details
Donations to the Social Infrastructure Program are accepted at the address: 19E966BFA4B32CE9B7E23721B37B96D2.
Donations will be used to cover the capital costs of specific social infrastructure initiatives.
We aim to disburse program funds in accordance with community wishes. The program address is deployed with automation: it is a class of “CommunityWallet” on chain. Specifically, funds will be transferred to another address unless 2/3 of validators reject, for any reason.
To cover costs of managing this program, BlockScience may receive an administrative fee up to 4% of the funds awarded to teams; this disbursement is also subject to community approval. As a CommunityWallet if the validators see fit to Sunset this account, BlockScience will accommodate. We may transfer operation of this program to another entity (or entities) and in such an event the community will be consulted and notified.