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Funding the Commons Builder Residencies: Chiang Mai Teaser (David Dao)

Name: Funding the Commons Builder Residencies: Chiang Mai Teaser (David Dao)
Uploaded: 2025-10-09T00:00:00.000Z
Duration: 1 min 3 s

Funding the CommonsThu, Oct 9, 2025, 12:00 AM

Speaker

David Dao

The problems we face won’t be solved with business-as-usual thinking. We need spaces where experimentation is possible—and where people can step into a whole creative zone together. At the Funding the Commons Builder Residency in Chiang Mai, David Dao, founder of GainForest, found the space to step away from everyday routines and think differently about what change requires. For David, the residency offered something many working in this space struggle to find: focused time, peer exchange, and a shared context. It created an environment where ideas could be tested more openly, and where long-term work didn’t have to compete with daily urgency. Produced by Funding the Commons in Bangkok, November 2024. Relevant Projects: GainForest: https://gainforest.earth/ Funding the Commons: https://www.fundingthecommons.io/ Thank You to Our Sponsors: Octant: https://octant.app/ Protocol Labs: https://protocol.ai/ Filecoin Foundation: https://fil.org/ Stellar: https://stellar.org/ NEAR: https://near.org/ Holonym: https://holonym.io/ Drips: https://drips.network/ Gitcoin: https://gitcoin.co/ Breadchain: https://breadchain.xyz/ LAYER: https://layer.xyz/ KXVC: https://www.kxvc.tech/ Blockchain for Good Alliance: https://www.blockchainforgood.xyz/

Transcript

Building a new economic system is something that is urgently needed because market failures have been such a big part of the reason why the nature is getting destroyed and thinking about building something alternative like a whole new kind of economic thinking that wouldn't be able to come from any other space in our space. The residency itself is I think a wonderful example of showing what happens if you bring the right people into the right space in the right time. I often joke with my team that we have never been more productive than during these residencies right like we get stuff done that took us a long long period of time six seven months where we talking about this but we never get it done and then in the residency we meet the right people we have the right ideas we have the right concentration with the right space and this is something deeply needed in our community to really drive forward their thinking of regenerative ideas regenerative finance and also public goods funding that otherwise I think wouldn't have the It's space to be discussed at except for funding the comments.

Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.