Decentralized Futures Protocol v0.1
A cultural protocol for prototyping the future of creative infrastructure.
01. What Is Decentralized Futures?
Decentralized Futures is a protocol — an open, living framework for artists, engineers, storytellers, technologists, and cultural builders to co-create new systems for making and sharing culture.
This work is informed by the research and methods of the Columbia DSL — where prototyping is not just a tool for testing, but a way of thinking, making, and imagining.
This is version 0.1.
A seed. A structure. A starting point.
You are invited to perform it, adapt it, fork it, and shape what comes next.
02. Why Now?
Our current cultural infrastructure is broken — optimized for speed, scale, and sameness.
Platforms extract value.
Algorithms flatten expression.
Institutions can’t keep pace with creative possibility.
This protocol is a refusal of those constraints, and an invitation to imagine otherwise.
It’s not a startup. Not a pitch.
It’s a performative act of worldbuilding, done in public, with others.
03. What Is a Prototype (Here)?
In Decentralized Futures, a prototype is not a pre-product.
It’s a performance. A signal. A way of asking: What if...?
Prototypes are:
Imaginative and participatory
Built to spark dialogue, not dominance
Designed to be remixed, not perfected
Meant to leave a trace — not just a result
A prototype might be a tool, a ritual, a gathering, a prompt, a document, a glitch, or a score.
It doesn’t have to work. It just has to open something up.
04. What’s in v0.1
This version of the protocol includes five modular activations. Each is designed to be performed, forked, or reinterpreted in your own context.
Opening Ritual – June 23, 2025 at Lincoln Center
A live conversation among artists, technologists, curators, and educators on one core question:
What happens when creative infrastructure is no longer centralized?
This is not a panel. It’s a public prototype.
A discursive ritual to begin the protocol in motion.
Single-threaded, slow conversations hosted over a shared meal.
3 curated IRL dinners (NYC)
1 global virtual dinner
Guests: artists, engineers, curators, speculative thinkers
Central question: What could decentralized creative collaboration become?
Each dinner becomes a node in the protocol—producing prompts, provocations, and documentation for others to remix.
Two art-driven, transdisciplinary hackathons designed to spark long-term experimentation.
Hackathon 1 – Summer 2025
5 artists × 5 technologists
48-hour collaboration
Output: speculative tools, systems, and rituals
Outcome: co-authored prototypes and open documentation
Hackathon 2 – Fall 2025
Global, hybrid, open to all skill levels
Participants remix prototypes like Last Human
Emphasis on play, process, and public prototyping
No winners. No pitches. Just practice.
Prototyping is the medium.
We invite you to build in public - messily, openly, honestly.
Whether it’s a drawing, a ritual, a spreadsheet, or a shared hallucination—every experiment contributes to the living archive.
Perform the process. Share the trace.
Each prototype, or gathering generates trace — documents, sketches, insights, fragments.
The archive:
Lives on GitHub, and on-chain
Includes documentation, toolkits, templates, and a growing body of cultural experiments
Is open-source, forkable, and intended to be used and remixed
05. How to Engage
There is no gate.
You engage by doing.
1. Fork the protocol
Host a dinner. Run a hackathon. Remix a ritual. Start a node in your own city.
2. Prototype something
Create a speculative tool, process, system, or experience. Share the work and what you learned.
3. Add your trace
Submit to the archive. Make a zine. Open a pull request. Publish a guide. Add to the lore.
This is a protocol for co-authorship.
Make it yours.
06. Social Contract
By participating, you agree to:
Document and share your process so others can build on it
Credit and care for the work of others
Choose your own license (default is full rights retained)
Practice generosity and critical imagination
Participation is free.
Your work is yours.
The protocol belongs to all of us.
07. What Might This Become?
Over time, Decentralized Futures may evolve — organically, collaboratively — into:
A DAO for cultural prototyping
A decentralized educational program
A collective publishing engine
A network of distributed cultural labs
Or something we haven’t named yet
The protocol lives in public.
Its future is co-authored.
08. Resources
Coming soon
- [GitHub repo]
-
[Dinner + Ritual starter kit]
-
[Hackathon guide + templates]
-
[Zine design file]
-
[Submit your prototype]
- [Contribute to the archive]
Decentralized Futures
is a collaboration between
Columbia DSL & the Solana Foundation