Blog

June 29, 2024

When we first suggested the theme of Ethereum Localism in anticipation of the GFEL conference, it was a totally open ended provocation, meant to stir up a diversity of interpretations. The result was definitely generative, putting varied bioregional thinkers in sync, exposing members of the Ethereum community to the Collaborative Finance (CoFi) meme, and even helping to spur the creation of the MyCoFi book. It also sprouted a conversation which eventually led to the temporary suspension of PDX DAO until...

May 26, 2024

Generative Ledgers as Decentralized State hero

This piece was published roughly two years ago under the Commons Technology Project, a core piece of the collaboration that would later become Ethereal Forest. The premise of an organizational inspiration guided by “the material problem at hand, a heretic faith in the terrain” runs through Ethereal Forest and is a key theme in the project of the Open Protocol Research Group, a key element of our vision of Ethereum Localism. We are, in the...

May 6, 2024

TL;DR: GFEL is taking place from Friday, September 13th to Sunday, September 15th in Portland, Oregon, with pre- and post-conference days on Thursday, September 12th and Monday, September 16th.

Apply to attend

Attention anons, regens, neotechnics alike. GFEL 2024 nears. Once again we chose Friday the 13th as the date because, why shouldn’t we? The odds are against us. For the regenerative systems we work for to succeed, some entrenched power interests are going to need to have some very bad luck....

April 4, 2024

The Open Protocol Research Group is Ven Gist, MacksWolf and Exeunt. We are a research initiative of Portland’s Ethereal Forest DAO, and currently conducting interviews in the Portland region to gain insight on the informal structures that animate our present - and the promise they hold for our future.

Last year, Portland’s crypto localist initiative Ethereal Forest - which had already been concerned with intersections of web3 and urban resilience strategies - went a step further in its research practice to...

February 8, 2024

Tl;dr As a corollary and expansion to Vitalik Buterin's philosophy of technological optimism (d/acc), we invoke Lewis Mumford's *neotechnic revolution, a transition to decentralized power structures catalyzed by alternatives to fossil fuels. Mumford envisions a technologically advanced form of the medieval workshop and horticulture based production modes, a decentralized manufacturing apparatus which we argue aligns with both Vitalik's defensive technology thesis and the web3 project at large. We end by proposing a Quadratic Funding round to catalyze research and development...

January 30, 2024

At Ethereal Forest we take it as our duty to spread the twin ethos of decentralization and direct democracy, to energize people’s sense of the organizationally possible and to awaken people’s capacities for coordination and commons self-management. One of the best ways we can do this is by evangelizing the web3 tool of p2p-enabled, low-overhead spontaneous organizations that we call DAOs with their now vast library of composable inputs for radical democracy and participatory economics.

In accordance with this mission, Ethereal...

November 8, 2023

Wherein we rid ourselves of the PDX DAO name, so that its ghost might possess us.

In the aftermath of the General Forum on Ethereum Localism, after taking a breath from our immersion in the web of new connections and entanglements, we’ve come to consider the event a wild success. A global community gathered to discuss (in makerspaces and warehouses, DIY saunas and ecovillages, and never without a joint on the loading dock) the enigma of localism, the hydra of its...