After reflecting on recent developments and @jon’s comments in the NAP proposal thread where he frames:
I feel compelled to share why I can no longer support this proposal as Cabin’s strategy is focusing on a perception of growth over depth of community engagement and impact.
While I deeply respect @savkruger’s commitment to community building and have seen firsthand the positive impact she’s had, I believe the NAP risks perpetuating extractive business practices under Cabin Labs’ current strategic approach that continues to consolidate power and narrow the scope of what’s possible, and therefore have voted to reject this proposal as is.
I hope that @savkruger can still be empowered to lead the NAP, and that with time some of these concerns can be addressed and a revised proposal put forward alongside @jon & @grin’s upcoming 2025 proposals so that the DAO can evaluate the collective set of efforts.
My primary concerns are:
1. GROWTH IS PRIORITIZED MORE THAN IMPACT
As articulated, the NAP’s success metrics and Cabin Labs’ overall strategy seem to prioritize rapid network growth over meaningful community impact. The focus on “achieving network scale first and foremost” is misaligned with building resilient, values-aligned neighborhoods. The DAO should prioritize the depth of relationships and community health rather than number of neighborhoods.
2. Pods are passing proposals in silos
The DAO is being asked to commit significant funding to the NAP without adequate context on the dependencies and roadmaps of adjacent pods like Cabin Labs and Technical Needs that are crucial to the NAP’s success. Evaluating the NAP in a silo risks over-allocating resources without the necessary supporting infrastructure and contributor capacity.
3. The distribution of resources is hierarchical and not equitable
Even with the updated allocation of 16,500 CABIN for neighborhood stewards and 4,000 CABIN for Savannah, the proposed budget still reflects a concerning imbalance in how the DAO is valuing and compensating different types of labor. Jon and Grin receive >50,000 CABIN per year, while the entire NAP program is only allocated 20,500 CABIN total. The budget should reflect the DAO’s belief in the importance of this work.
4. Lots of $ is being spent with little visible impact
Cabin’s combined weekly burn rate across Cabin Labs, Technical Needs, and the NAP is approximately $11,500. At this pace, over $600,000 per year will be spent without a clear plan for sustainable revenue or meaningful impact. Before committing to such a high burn rate, the DAO should see evidence that these investments are resulting in thriving and highly engaged communities beyond 1-person.
5. Cabin Labs is focused on extractive business models
Cabin Labs’ overall strategy seems overly dependent on extractive business models that position Cabin as a middleman between neighborhoods and existing systems rather than empowering neighborhoods to build regenerative economies. The DAO should be wary of perpetuating power imbalances via centralized value capture.
6. There is little focus on decentralization
There is a lack of clear mechanisms for the NAP to decentralize stewardship, spin out self-sustaining neighborhoods, or equitably distribute power to edges of the network. The DAO should consider how to avoid calcifying power hierarchies in favor of rich mesh networks.
7. Diversity and Inclusion is an afterthought
The NAP proposal and broader Cabin Labs strategy lacks any concrete plan or commitment to fostering diversity, inclusion and deeper opportunities for engagement across neighborhoods. For the NAP to build truly regenerative communities, it must have robust strategies for cultivating participation from a wide range of identities and backgrounds.
8. Local impact should be prioritized
The framing of “Cabin’s population” as a core metric raises concerning parallels to the enclosure of the commons. Historically, state and corporate powers have enclosed shared community resources to extract and concentrate value, displacing residents in the process. By aiming to subsume neighborhoods into a “Cabin network city” identity, we risk replicating this pattern of appropriation rather than empowering neighborhoods to steward their own resources and culture while participating in a broader global network of mutual support and entrepreneurship.
What Next?
I believe the DAO would benefit from critically re-evaluating Cabin’s overall strategic direction before doubling down on an accelerator program that, while well-intentioned, may be operating from an old paradigm playbook. Here are some suggestions for the DAO to co-create an alternative path forward that is fundamentally community-centric, non-extractive, and designed for autonomy:
- Allocate more funding to emerging pods and efforts that aim to take a more community centric approach like the Ideation Pod, Gatherer’s Guild to encourage a greater diversity of experiments and more opportunities for collaboration.
- Create a compensated working group to collaborate on a strategic plan that concretely defines Cabin’s target operating model, transition plan, and mechanisms for distributing power, rather than siloed and year-long proposals which entrench systems of hierarchy and control.
- Launch a process to surface and synthesize perspectives from the wider community on Cabin’s future direction, rather than relying on purely-opt-in engagement on the forum or discord. In the age of LLMs, why doesn’t Cabin have a chat bot?
- Refine the DAO’s vision and onboarding process to establish a shared culture that prioritizes diversity, transparency, inclusion, and accountability, serving as a foundation for all pods and community initiatives.
I’m excited about Cabin’s potential, but I believe we need to build with intention towards the future we want, not simply scale what seems to be working in the near term. I look forward to further discussion from the community on how we can realign ourselves with the regenerative culture and systems we originally came together to create 
And as a final note, I’ll leave this tweet from Andrew as inspiration:
