COLDS Collective Q1: Laying the Foundation for a New Human Age

April 3rd, 2022

COLDS started as an intimate effort to disseminate valuable insights to like-minded people and connect with a diverse range of creators, leveraging our resources and networks to help each other flourish. A choice to whisper to the tribe versus shouting to the multitude.

Our community has naturally evolved into a highly engaged group of individuals sharing with and investing in each other; connecting each other to jobs and opportunities, supporting ideas and projects, and sharing insights to grow wealth and sustain holistic health.

Since our official launch in December 2021, we have grown into a digital-native organisation leading initiatives to support African creators as they navigate the Web3 landscape. We have also launched programs to accelerate accessible adoption of Web3 and crypto across emerging markets and create sustainable impact on the lives of people.

Let’s recap what we did in Q1 and the things we learned from them:

COLDS Cohorts

We introduced our COLDS Cohort program, an incubation program designed to assist creators with launching their Web3 projects and unleashing their maximum potential. The Cohort program provides end-to-end support to creators from idea to product. Some of the services we offer our Cohorts include education and onboarding, creative direction, funding, technical support, and marketing.

SGaWD, a prolific Nigerian artist and our inaugural COLDS Cohort, launched her NFT project ‘Savage Bitch Juice NFT’ on the Solana network through Holaplex. She has used this project as a means of sustenance for herself and her collaborators, Bvbby and Yaya, whilst creating new avenues to drive value for her supporters and connect on a deeper level.

NFTs have been defined many different ways, but we like to think of them simply as data structures with ownership as a single variable amongst a multitude of others. By thinking of NFTs this way, it is easier to imagine how the technology of tokenization can be harnessed in new, novel ways. We are excited to keep working with creators of different disciplines — artists, musicians, writers, developers, etc. to unlock the unique possibilities NFTs present.

#CatalystLagos

We produced a successful Genesis event, Catalyst 1.0, a Web3 onboarding event in Lagos, Nigeria sponsored by Jet Protocol. The event had key proponents of the space and domain experts as contributors, sharing insights and ideas on how to effectively build for Africans and the rest of the world.

Catalyst lives under the experience pillar of COLDS and will accommodate a range of experiences including conferences, hackathons, festivals, creator getaways, and more. Our first event achieved proof-of-concept of African innovation hubs across the globe for technology, art, and culture. Our goal is to make Catalyst experiences one of the most impactful congregations of technologists, artists, builders and enthusiasts in the world.

Web3 for Africans in Ukraine

We supported the #Web3forAfricansinUkraine international mutual aid initiative, a coalition of African Web3 organisations that mobilised to raise relief funds for Africans and other Black foreigners stranded in the Ukraine crisis. Within 24 hours we raised 20ETH (approx $50k) to provide critical aid through verified organisations directly interfacing with people on the ground. The efforts to provide mid-long term care and preserve the dignity of Black refugees fleeing this crisis are still ongoing. More information can be found here.

This experience highlighted the power of crypto as a coordination tool for grassroots movements and mutual aid and its viability for vulnerable populations. Using crypto-native tools that provide tamper-proof, permanent action accountability and security from the beginning and also work to relieve common frictions in the fiat realm like key-person dependency risk, we saw in practice the potential of crypto to defend democracy and preserve agency in open societies. This experience provided revolutionary praxis on things we frequently theorise on. It further helped us to imagine new ways to architect publicly logged systems of restitution and repatriation.

Ecosystem Partnerships

We have fostered strategic partnerships and collaborative relationships with ecosystem projects for mutual enrichment. Our partnership with Holaplex, the largest, truly decentralised, NFT auction provider on Solana, aims to onboard more African creators to the platform. This will be achieved through a series activations including workshops, a prized themed art contest, and community programming to disseminate educational resources. Holaplex’s latest product release, an open source NFT marketplace standard, is a major step towards cementing the values proposed by blockchain technology: provenance, sovereignty and true ownership.

COLDS Cumulus

We bootstrapped our community treasury “COLDS Cumulus” by investing in high-value assets for communal benefit: Metaverse land, Gaming assets, cryptocurrency, blue-chip NFTs etc. We like to think of the metaverse simply as a bridge between physical and digital life, instilling a sense of place that facilitates deeper and more flexible human connection.

Developer Relations

We have participated in ecosystem events, cultivating relationships and building social nodes with some of the brightest minds in the game. People creating products, tools and frameworks to realise the futures we’re dreaming up. Some of these events include Solana Breakpoint Lisbon, Solana Hacker Houses, Miami NFT week & more.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay

Web3 Talent Onboarding

We have helped to onboard technical talent to Web3 by sharing educational resources and stringing together pathways for people looking to explore and learn. From this experience, we found that there’s a large gap to fill with onboarding technical talent to Web3 in a frictionless way. We plan to collaborate with L1 foundations, groups and organisations like Solana Foundation, NEAR Foundation, DeveloperDAO, Buildspace, AWET, Blockchain Engineering Lagos, Blockchain Acceleration Foundation, Rust Lagos, who are creating funnels for Web2 to Web3 talent onboarding, general technical education on blockchain development and other budding technologies

In that same vein, it is especially important to bring underrepresented groups into the fold from inception by devoting resources to upskill people who have systematically been excluded from leading development. For nascent technologies to be truly resonant with the masses, we must be seen to be deeply embedded in the solution.

The past few months have been about laying the foundation, proving our concepts and nurturing organic growth. We have cultivated a space where bright, bold ideas turn to impactful solutions. We remain nimble to adapt to the contours of imagination and flexible enough for the dynamic nature of the space. Over the next few months, we will work to further establish our position within the Web3 landscape as a community-oriented, culturally-forward institution and incubator of paradigm-shifting ideas which reflect our mission of making knowledge, resources and products pertaining to Web3, crypto and blockchain technology accessible to and effective for Africans.

What is our story? How are we telling it?

It is one thing to realise the existence of something, and another to design systems that effectively harness its power. Storytelling and world-building are values highly pertinent to the overarching mission of COLDS. Lorecrafting sits at the crux of these two values.

We believe that new paradigms yielding new fruit must be navigated with intention, so every chapter of our story is being written with care. Lorecrafting, and establishing a coherent organisational story are crucial to ensuring that all members of our community are well-aligned in context, expectations and priorities. The narratives and belief systems that emerge from this period of deep exploration will work to sustain a common thread of vision and work across the spread. We are deeply researching and reviewing our organisational practices against existing critical theories like The 8 Metaphors of Organization and using these frameworks to conjure up our true North Star.

From Rafa’s Community Operational Framework

So what’s next for COLDS?

We have a ton planned for the next quarters to keep creating value for our community members, expanding our offerings and writing our story. To name a few;

💸 Fundraising: We are scaling up in every way, and that requires funding. More to come on COLDS fundraising efforts.

📌 Hiring: Digital Artisans, Lorecrafters, Developers, Metaverse Architects, Community Cultivators etc. We are looking to connect with individuals to explore this landscape with in a meaningful way

📚Research: Deep inquisition and deep learning spanning across disciplines and sharing what we find from this.

🛠 Development kickoff: We aim to build and incubate a suite of products capable of operating agnostically and nested in a symbiotic ecosystem where one can contribute to the other’s success. A swiss-knife of sorts.

👩🏾‍🎤 COLDS Cohort #2: We will be expanding the Cohort Program and onboarding another creator to support.

🎉 More super fun community programming: Twitter Spaces, Workshops, Metaverse meetups, Curated community exhibits, investment clubs, IRL events (Catalsyt 2.0 😉)

✍🏿 Documentation and Preservation: COLDS Community Zine

🔓 More open source contributions: Open source everything! This is how we grow and promote digital public goods. By making resources accessible to all and learning/building in public.

🤝 More partnerships and collaborations

🎖 Contributor bounty structures

💌 Mutual aid

We are all constituents of the free and open network-states and societies. We consider this tribe of soul-led, mission-driven futurists one of the founding networks of the new human age. With this knowledge, and with the tools at our disposal we will work to subvert archaic systems and enable a more inclusive, free, playful, collaborative future. We are reclaiming our agency and power, and redefining our relationships with ourselves and the world around us.