A new era for Cabin

⚙️ DAO Proposals
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Cabin pioneered the concept of network cities and spent the last four years looking for the combination of product and market that would allow us to sustainably grow our global network of neighborhoods.

We started out as a residency program for internet people to get together in person, built a global network of rural coliving hubs for digital nomads, and are now growing an accelerator program for neighborhood builders. Throughout each phase, we’ve tried to stay true to our community-centric ethos and long-term vision while also building something that could grow with a sustainable business model.

Three years ago, Cabin approved a proposal to create its current governance token and sell some of the tokens to 52 community members, angels, and venture capital firms. Almost a year later we sold more tokens to venture firms. Since then we’ve run dozens of experiments in an effort to find a business model that made sense for Cabin. In the last year alone, we rapidly iterated on a wide range of product & business models, and explored paths for building financial sustainability around our network of neighborhoods.

Our conclusion from these experiments is that venture-backed businesses, DAOs, and community-driven networks serve different purposes, and that this tension is holding Cabin back. Venture-backed startups work best as small, focused teams that rapidly pivot to find hyper-growth business opportunities that are financially viable in the short-term. DAOs work best as a credibly neutral governance mechanism for distributing ecosystem grants from an existing cashflowing protocol. Community-driven networks work best when they serve as the loose connective tissue for many people to independently explore adjacent paths building what they find most interesting and valuable.

We believe that Cabin should stop operating like a venture-backed startup or a DAO and continue as a community-driven network. Therefore, this is a proposal to:

  1. Distribute the money in the DAO treasury proportionally to token holders
  2. Focus on weaving our global network of place-based community builders

This proposed path is more open-ended, locally focused, docratic, volunteer-led, and decentralized than how we have operated in the past. Instead of focusing on Cabin itself, we would focus entirely on supporting each other in building our own local place-based communities.

Distribute the money in the DAO treasury to token holders

If this proposal is approved by the DAO, here’s how it would work:

  1. Cabin would stop funding new governance proposals immediately.
  2. We would convert the tokens held by cabindao.eth into USDC.
  3. 14 days after the proposal passes, we would take a snapshot of token holdings and distribute the USDC in the treasury proportionally to all addresses (except the DAO multi-sig) holding CABIN.
  4. Cabin Labs would use its remaining funds to execute on winding down DAO operations and legal entities.

Cabin’s governance process has become gridlocked, with several groups of token holders wanting to take different strategic approaches. With this proposal, everyone who has meaningfully contributed to Cabin will be directly empowered with resources to build towards the version of the future they believe in.

We are hopeful that this can lead to a wellspring of new energy and resources for individuals and groups in Cabin’s network to pursue these adjacent visions independently with lower coordination costs. Cabin is about more than a shared treasury—it is a network of people and places that can thrive with direct access to these resources.

Weave a global network of place-based community builders

Cabin is a network of people covering the world in place-based communities. Folks in our network are building coliving houses, apartment buildings, friend compounds, neighborhoods, villages, and startup cities. We are at the leading edge of many of the world’s most interesting place-based community projects.

The network we’ve woven together over the last four years remains strong, and we can keep weaving it. With this proposal we can fully orient towards building our network as a mission-focused community of practice. Place-based community building doesn’t require a lot of money, but it greatly benefits from the mutual support, accountability, mentorship, and ideas that spread through our network. Here are some ways we can continue supporting each other in place-based community building:

  1. Focus on our own backyards: We can make the change we want to see in the world in our own neighborhoods. Whether you are running a coliving house, building an ecovillage, growing the social fabric of your neighborhood, or just saying hi to strangers on the street, the best place we can all invest is right where we live.
  2. Grow the Neighborhood Accelerator: The Neighborhood Accelerator is how we help more people become more effective place-based community builders. Over the past year, the Neighborhood Accelerator Program (NAP) has grown to a network of over 75 place-based communities around the world. The NAP is currently on its fourth cohort, and has nearly doubled in size in each successive cohort. You can watch some of these beautiful stories from neighborhood stewards to get a sense of what they are up to. With the Neighborhood Accelerator’s approved proposal, it will continue to operate independently into the future.
  3. Join community gatherings: We will continue to get together in-person for self-organized community gatherings. In February, Savannah and Dahveed hosted a gathering in Boulder alongside ETHDenver. In March, Andrew Rose and I hosted a gathering for Cabin and Fractal community members at Culdesac in Tempe, Arizona. Dan completed MTN Haus in Park City in February and is now hosting more events and residencies in SF. If this proposal passes, gatherings like these will be fully decentralized and self-organized by members of the network. Do-ocracy!
  4. Build things together: If you have always had an idea for how to build your version of Cabin’s vision, now is your chance to make it a reality. Any token holders who want to continue building together can pool their CABIN tokens into a new multi-sig or send them to one of the existing contributor pods before the deadline. They will receive a proportional share of the treasury that they can use to execute on their vision.

Over the last four years we explored the frontiers together, planted the seeds of a network city, and created a dense web of relationships that will last a lifetime. We are incredibly proud of what we’ve dreamed of and built together. We continue to have deep conviction in Cabin’s vision and values and can’t wait to see what this community does next to build the future we all believe in.

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This is well written. I support this proposal 100%.

Cabin has been a leader in internet-driven neighborhood building. The products and experiences Cabin launched have been meaningful for moving the broader startup societies space forward. I’m proud of the work that was done.

There have also been genuine attempts to make $, but the results suggest that while such attempts can theoretically be worthwhile, they are on a very long time horizon.

I have not seen any recent proposals that give me strong confidence in a single direction to funnel Cabin’s funds. I think capital would be more efficient and useful at the neighborhood level. Let people invest locally to continue to grow awesome neighborhoods. Additionally, let folks who may have joined Cabin with a different vision exit to build their own adjacent projects. And let the investors who took a risk recoup some of their funds.

This seems like the right thing to do. If it passes, I hope that the Discord stays active, or that I can otherwise stay connected to people building neighborhoods around the world. There are a lot of really great people here and we can still collaborate in useful ways.

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+1 to @jxn ‘s comments above. Cabin as a DAO has been a wonderful experiment but I’d like to see the remaining treasury go to support new initiatives (I’ll be sending some of my tokens to the Neighborhood Accelerator)

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Thanks for sharing this @jon, it’s been quite the journey to get to this place but honestly couldn’t agree with everything written here.

As someone that’s participated and supported Cabin through most of these phases, the experiment does feel like it has run its course, and the lessons you outline here are the high-level takeaways that help this decision make the most sense.

Two follow-ups I’d like to include here:

  • As a Cabin member, I’d love to create an event for people living in The Bay to perhaps to on a hike or something in order to share our memories and commemorate the closing of this chapter with Cabin. I’ll be posting in the Discord to coordinate as the timelines become finalized :ok_hand:
  • In the spirit of “Focus on our own backyards” and “build things together”, I’d love to hear from anyone that’s excited about open-source, hyper-local community software, as I’m officially building neighborhoodOS and would love to collaborate with Cabin folk as I plan to launch it over the summer! Please send me a DM on Discord or this Forum if that’s interesting to you ◡̈

It’s been an incredible journey with Cabin and it has fundamentally changed my life for the better. Feeling a jumble of gratitude, melancholy, and optimism after reading this post and am looking forward to building what’s next alongside the rest of the Cabin crew :heart:

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Thank you Jon for your proposal. A few days into digesting, I am noticing that I am on quite the emotional rollercoaster because of this. I’m going through all the phases of grief (multiple times a day, you can ask @Dahveed and @Kat, who patiently read my messages) I have moments of anger , many moments of denial (nah. it’s not over! Cabin will come back, it’s just a temporary low), I find ways to bargain (what if we just try this? why not do that? If we all just lean in more and engage more in Discord, it’s probably not over…), many many moments I simply feel sad. But then I also have moments of acceptance and I can feel when something is ready to die in its current form. And I know that just because something dies in its current form it’s never the end of it all. So I am curious to see which seeds will get planted and grow once Cabin turns into soil…

I feel so grateful that I got to be part of this community. I met incredible people and hope that the friendships I built here will continue to grow. I learned so much in my time here and Cabin will always have a very special place in my heart.

Thank you @camlindsay for bringing up the desire to commemorate and for sharing your emotional landscape with us. Messages like yours is why I love Cabin so much.

I would love to propose some form of a closing ceremony, a final community call to share memories and close this chapter together. :heart:

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Hi @KathiInPorto I really appreciate your words here. You’ve been such a gift in this community and in my life. I remember how exciting it was to be introduced to you on the Cabin discord and discover that a stranger from the other side of the planet wanted to create community in their neighborhood with me. How your enthusiasm and deep care for the people in your life hit me, hits me.

I also really love the idea of closing ceremony too.

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It seems like my first post on this forum may also be one of my last.

Cabin has had a significant impact upon my life - from my first outing at Elkenmist to trips to Boulder for picnics in the park. I have felt like part of something bigger, and the enthusiasm for Cabin was shown to me at ETHDenver two years ago.

Thanks for a great ride, all. I would also like to participate in some sort of closing ceremony.

  • Neil Thawani
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Support, love, and gratitude for what Cabin is and isn’t. So many good memories, so many good people. It has had such a huge impact on my life. Happy to help in whatever way I can.

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Yes. I re-read this multiple times and took some time to process. But at the end of the day, I agree. What we’re doing is not a VC play at all, nor should ever be. And as much as I believe in the potential of DAOs, experience showed the DAO structure being a distraction and even hindrance to the actual building more often than an asset to it, despite our best efforts.

One of the big questions that I heard (and myself pondered) since joining Cabin, is “What is Cabin exactly?” I’m still not sure, but something along the lines of a “community building organization” rings true.

In the aftermath of this proposal, I want to see a Cabin with even more building, even more collaboration, and even more excitement to share insights and journey together while building in our own backyards.

I see that passion in many of the Cabiners I’ve talked with recently and excited to find new ways to Cabin together.

On a practical level, I do hope that the Discord and Forum remain up and used, while also exploring how else can we communicate better.

Anyway, this proposal is a “yes and” for me.

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Thanks for the comments; it’s been heartwarming to read them. I’ve just moved this proposal forward to a vote: https://snapshot.box/#/s:cabindao.eth/proposal/0x3cb06231931031807654574341032d487ff5156f102b7d6c70e692b4dc1ff61d

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Hey @jon, I am curious about a couple of things for the time after the distribution of the treasury.

What happens with the Cabin token? Will it still serve as governance token, if there are any decisions that need to be made?

What happens with the discord, the forum, the website? How will the get maintained, where will the funds come from to pay for the operating costs (I assume there are costs…)

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Great questions Kathi!

If this proposal passes, Cabin will stop funding new governance proposals (and won’t even have anything to fund them with once the treasury is distributed). Nothing else will change there, and the token would still stick around in your wallet.

That said, there are tokens that have taken on a new life after their initial purpose was served. I’m not saying or implying that’s gonna happen with Cabin (it probably won’t). But as long as Ethereum is running, the token will be out there and anyone who wants to take advantage of the composability of crypto tokens can do so.

A lot of people have asked to keep these running. That brings me joy and I’m gonna try to keep all three online, at least for a while. However, each requires maintenance to stay useful and I won’t have much time for that. So if it starts to feel like they’re not getting used or there’s too much overhead, I’ll shut them down (with plenty of advance notice if it comes to that).

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Thanks Grin! I’m very curious to see what comes out of this.
I can imagine that this could be the start of a whole new level of grassroot ownership of the community, when there’s no central treasury to fund things anymore but the folks who want to keep using discord, the forum and the website have to generate the money to keep them running. either through donations or other forms. It’s fairly exciting actually. Feels like a chance to become more mature as a community. And self sufficient.

Cabin will stop funding new governance proposals (and won’t even have anything to fund them with once the treasury is distributed).

But that means proposals that don’t need any fundings would still totally be possible, right? For example if we were to create unpaid service positions, like someone who welcomes new people in the discord and forum, we could vote who should have that position, right?

I’d love if there was an overview of all the different tools and platforms that Cabin is using…and who’s currently the admin of all of them. I think having all this information gathered would help a lot if there is interest to create something new and use the building blocks we already have…

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Yea that will still be possible, and also this is a great example of the kind of thing where no vote is necessary. If you or anyone wanted to start welcoming new people in the discord, you can do that right now. You don’t need anyone’s permission :smiley:

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Ya, I know I can do it any time without permission. And I’m already doing it here and there. :wink: Was just trying to find an example…

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I’m glad and excited for this new era of Cabin!
For me this comes after a looong time grieving what I thought Cabin was but it turned out wasn’t. (A network of properties in nature where people could colive).

I think the VC funding was actually blocking the development of this network into something more mature and I’m excited for what comes next. We’ll all need to step up and collaborate to create the sufficient centralization for “Cabin” or whatever comes next to be a coherent thing.

@KathiInPorto I think your desire for having a mechanism for voting is actually really important. Yes we can all just do things, but part of being a part of an organization is having mechanisms for collective decision making, reputation and legitimacy. With the passing of this proposal the primary mechanism for CabinDAO will be defunct, but we can create a new one. Let’s jam on that and make a proposal to the forum, maybe we can make a new multisig and folks can donate cabin tokens for maintenance of any systems we might need.

@grin I’m grateful you’re going to maintain the digital spaces where we can continue to connect and share info. I would love for there to be a bucket of money set aside for the maintenance of these spaces, and some way to know its level / how to contribute if needed. That’s something I’d definitely contribute to in the future if they are being used!

I’m still interested in creating some sort of Gatherer’s Guild so I could formally carry on the Cabin legacy. I’m still creating coliving experiments in nature, notably next month at Edge Esmeralda in a spot called Fitch Mountain Cabin. While I can share with participants that I’ve been involved in Cabin in the past, and that I learned my skills from this org, since there is no centralized validation mechanism I don’t feel I can say this is a “Cabin house”. Closest I feel I can say is that it’s “an unofficial Cabin house.”

Although not all of my coliving experiences are through Cabin, I learned so much by working with Chalice and Kaela to create pop up coliving events for Cabin. I’ll be using these skills for FMC at EE, and probably in the future. Dan did this for MTN Haus, but he had submitted a proposal through the DAO mechanism, so it was legitimately a Cabin collab.

If you’re interested in creating mechanisms for legitimacy that allow folks to carry on this pop up coliving legacy, let’s jam!

I’d also love to host anyone who wants to come crash and commiserate in person at Edge Esmeralda at our Cabin. Dm me!

Also interested in a closing ceremony and more clarity about what the diverging interest groups are.

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