In this edition of the RCON3 Interview series, Ela Kagel (co-founder of Supermarkt Berlin) and Peter Harris (founder of Resonate) drop by for a chat about their personal journeys in the decentralized space, views about governance approaches within and between cooperatives, proliferating cooperative networks into the digital world, and the future of RChain Cooperative worldwide.
 

Supermarkt Berlin: Cooperative space for collaboration and advancement into the digital realm

 
Peter and Ela met each other at Supermarkt Berlin during the first iteration of the cooperative space. The pair immediately struck a chord on the topic of championing the efforts of cooperatives to collaborate across borders.
Coming from a digital strategy background, and having long-term relationships with artists, Ela decided to start something that could help transform current corporate structures for creative workers. She teamed up with partners to rent out an abandoned supermarket and began running programs geared toward incentivizing creative laborers to provide collective value through their individual artistic endeavors.
Supermarkt currently hosts informative workshops, community gatherings, and collaborative work that intertwine technology, money, and society.
Platform coops face many challenges since they approach the world differently than traditional businesses. To help circumvent these issues, Supermarkt holds “Case Clinics” to offer individuals and groups the chance to exercise problem-solving in this context and develop new methods of approach.
Alternative economics, decentralization, environmentalism, community activism, and sustainability are at the heart of Supermarkt, which makes participation in RChain Europe a wonderful new endeavor for Ela and many others involved.
 

 

Resonate: Ethical music streaming cooperative

 
In the modern music industry, struggles for control over intellectual property rights are prevalent. Resonate Cooperative members believe in prioritizing collective benefit between music producers and consumers over third-party ownership.
Resonate has dedicated itself as a cooperative facilitating and maintaining synergy between musicians and fans. Although this business model may not meet the pressing needs of traditional venture capital with immediate equity, the co-op structure is a refreshing long-term solution for artistic provenance and procurement.
It took another blockchain co-op to understand for Resonate to come to fruition.
Amidst the first round of token sales and project efforts, Resonate launched in 2017. It immediately became clear that operating on top of the Ethereum virtual machine would not satisfy the desired transaction volume for the music streaming service.
Scalability has always been a major point of concern for Peter Harris in regards to blockchain-hosted digital media sharing. An exciting solution emerged during a discussion with Greg Meredith about RChain. The shared fascination with RChain’s correct by construction model on-chain and governance model off-chain drew Resonate to RChain.
 

RChain Cooperative: Facilitating social mobilization for collective good

 
Ela and Peter strive to advance cooperatives that have the potential to transform human behavior into more equitable sets of interactions. They implore us all to openly and actively participate in working organizational models that shift away from institutional power dynamics in order to navigate away from rigid hierarchies.
Decentralized applications backed by blockchain can securely enable localized organizations to launch and sustain themselves with worldwide support.
“We need to take these governance approaches and transfer it into the digital sphere,” says Ela. The RChain Cooperative embodies the human effort to proliferate a blockchain platform that drives the transition of cooperatives, such as Resonate, into the digital realm effectively.
 

RChain Europe: A valuable piece to the global puzzle

 
RChain emphasizes fostering collective spaces that motivate every willing individual to contribute something great regardless of locality. A major goal of RChain Europe will be privacy and identity solutions that link into blockchain records. This is a vast field that requires rigorous research and development through experimentation for success. Ela is confident that the cooperative is up for the challenge and willing to embrace obstacles with forthright, group optimism.
RChain as a blockchain technology platform will facilitate co-op to co-op interactivity that mirrors the peer-to-peer interactivity that has thus far been occurring on-chain. This allows cooperatives to grow and sustainably create value for all parties involved.