SOMEONE BLEW UP THE BALLOONS:
The BoostDAO
A story of failed innovation in Sweden
The BoostDAO (2022-2022) was the first Web3 experiment in Sweden to explore decentralized fund distribution in a public entity.
It was a collaboration between the Innovation department of the city of Helsingborg (link), BoostHbg (link), and The Time Travel Agency.
The BoostDAO launch signified a transition in how city funds had been distributed historically: from a centralized decision taken by a few to a mechanism that provided agency in the process of funding films in Sweden.
City controllers canceled our party as we were setting up.
“It felt a little like you had done most of the planning work for a party and then, before anyone could show up, the fire alarm got pulled and the building had to be evacuated and everything was just left behind.”
The BoostDAO was also a party to celebrate three years of building Web3 literacy as a 21st century skill in Sweden with Boost via The Eye and The Index and The Walking City.
Region Skåne in Sweden (where the city of Helsingborg lies) exists so that everyone who lives in Skåne feels good and has faith in the future; and the city of Helsingborg has a special interest in building a smarter city with innovation.
Our collaboration answered their challenge “How can we make residents more involved and co-creative?”, nested under Democracy.
Region Skåne in Sweden (where the city of Helsingborg lies) exists so that everyone who lives in Skåne feels good and has faith in the future; and the city of Helsingborg has a special interest in building a smarter city with innovation.
Our collaboration answered their challenge “How can we make residents more involved and co-creative?”, nested under Democracy.
The DAO challenged our point-of-view about who decides how we fund public goods, and aimed to provoke the community’s curiosity about the methods and tools that could be used to test a change.
At the time of its cancelation, we did not believe this project had run its course.
The Time Travel Agency and BoostHbg decided to make a map with our investigations, intentions, and vision, so that anyone could find the BoostDAO’s origins when/if the time was right, and threw the party of a lifetime!
At the time of its cancelation, we did not believe this project had run its course.
The Time Travel Agency and BoostHbg decided to make a map with our investigations, intentions, and vision, so that anyone could find the BoostDAO’s origins when/if the time was right, and threw the party of a lifetime!
The object you are discovering here is a product that documents the story of our failed innovation– the saga of BoostDAO. It is a party invitation, and a map to get to its current state.
“This object contains the development of our project, emphasizing its most relevant elements and the relationships between them. It provides a set of materials that can be used by people in the future to keep working on it. It rises awareness to the limits of the system you might be about to alter.”
By exploring and using, among other things, blockchain technology and the concept of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), BoostHbg wanted to firstly test how a community-based fund could be used to create engagement within their target group and drive new initiatives with genuine anchoring in the target group.
Secondly, to test how a public sector could adopt these new technological solutions in a way that increased their relevance and ensured democratic and transparent processes.
At the end of this process, BoostHbg was to assess the possibility to make history and turn one of their individual grants into a collaborative one using Web3. The Time Travel Agency would be the first team to ever do this in Sweden.
As we were setting the party up, ready to onboard pilot members, an abrupt change in direction from the management of the innovation funds determined we couldn’t run a project where real money was involved with distributed and decentralized decision making with the way that the legal framework for municipalities was currently phrased.
As we reached the point where the system had to test itself, it wasn’t even able to accommodate this type of work with its current design, and the legal counsel couldn’t sign off on it any longer.
It took BoostHbg almost a year and a half to really begin to wrap their heads around what Web3 is and could be in their context. The time that city decision makers and lawyers had to dedicate to the project wasn’t near that amount, which meant that they had to operate from what they knew (how things had been done and from the current framework) – a key challenge with the adoption of new technologies and processes within the public sector in Sweden.
Our spirits are unchanged– we are grateful for the opportunity to innovate in a fantastic land, and to have found a stubborn part of a system whose citizens consider important to change to support democracy, inclusion, and transparency; and together with BoostHbg we are happy to let others play with what we’ve made. If others in Sweden are exploring, we are here. Failing strong <3
For those paying attention to our object, for those set on the direction of Web3, and for those curious to play with our map (perhaps on a future trip to Sweden or future time travel with The Time Travel Agency), this is for you:
Explore the object’s parts in the following gallery:
1. When extended, the three publications become invitations to the party, The Flyer. Flyers contain the location, date, and people involved.
The choice of images for the flyers is not deliberate: they are three pictures coming from the same party, which can be seen as scenes from a party that happened and didn't happen.
The flyers unfold like an old-school map; and the cut in their middle is a stabbing wound– a wonderful scar of success for having gotten so far, as well as the mark of a party cut too short.
2. When folded, the three publications become the events imagined for the party, The Lineup. This is the process of all the work done.
The choice of the three graphics is not deliberate either:
“Story” is the experience that Hillevi Gustafson and Jocelyn Ibarra had while planning the party. Their answers follow a concentric structure sharing the same central event; it is similar to a spiral that, when followed, gives deeper detail of one core experience.
“Vision” is the intention, inspiration, and idea. The content is a radial structure representing the directions that the vision was taking.
“Research” is a Venn diagram showing the simple relationship between the data sets “Web3 literacy, culture, infrastructure, and tooling” and “Community research”. When they overlap, the concept for BoostDAO can be seen as a world.
3. The three publications together are the password to enter the party room, The Key. This is how you access all the material, how you can continue the party.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE AUTHORS’ WISHES, ….
We would like to remind you that the work done
this far possesses a clear and engaging
vision to be realized, and a list
of tools to do so. And that it
is clear that there are parts
of the community who
wish to incorporate
this into future
innovations.
The balloons were blown up.
But everything is still there.
Waiting.
You have two options:
Go through the saga and weep, or take the key and throw your own party ;)