Nikoline Arns On Decentralised Technology Extending The Social Impact Capabilities Of Businesses

Nikoline Arns is one of the Co-Founders of DoinGud, where she focuses on the connections amongst creators, social impact organisations and the wider community as a whole. She is part of the vision-building team set to evolve DoinGud as a platform of "Communities for Communities".

In addition to her expertise with DAOs, Nikoline also is experienced in cooperative organisation in the education sector as a co-founder, and implementing sociocratic and other models of governance in the technology universe.

Nikoline previously worked as a mentor and podcaster at Impact Boom and in general the social enterprise movement and development. She is part of the Akasha Hub Think Tank, which brings Ethereum core values to local, tangible projects like Green City Lab and Akasha Hub Barcelona. She is an ambassador of Radicalxchange and collaborates with The Commons Stack and Impactpirates among others various projects.

Nikoline discusses the growing possibilities created by Non-Fungible Tokens and how decentralised technology can facilitate social impact.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - Could you please share your background and what led to your work in social enterprise?

[Nikoline Arns] - My background is in design and the visual arts, but my passion soon became wanting to improve things that I encountered along my path. I set up social coworking as well as school for kids. Basically, everything that I saw that could be improved, I tried to improve. When I was in design, I was really interested in the 'UX' perspective (the user experience), how people interact with designs and products. I did product design, websites, apps and UX flows which all made me care about how people interact with each other and also how they interact with products.

It's led me now to really interacting with people to see how humans in general interact, connect and try to be that bridge between different communities that may talk a different language but share the same values.

I came across groups that really think that they are in a different realm, for example technology and programmers, or co-operatives and social movements. These communities are co-living, but deep inside, they share the same values and they're working in the same space. I decided to connect those groups and try to make them see that they're actually pursuing the same ideals and that if they would understand each other and connect with each other, they might be able to speed up progress and actually help each other by sharing knowledge.

Those are really interesting experiences that you've had.

How might technology best be used to accelerate progress in the social enterprise sector?

Especially for the social enterprise sector, which comes from a history where before it was really seen as social enterprise it was seen as a social cause that is dependent on donations, gifts, support or funding.

Before it became a trend and would actually be seen as a sustainable business, that stigma existed, and it is still there. I think that social impact organisations should be independent, which includes social enterprise, and I think that technology can help.

Technology is just a tool, but it helps us to create new structures and to scale up those structures so that organisations that want to create a social impact can be sustainable.

Economically, they would be creating systems of governance or independence from other systems that might control them, like traditional business models for example, that include big stakeholders or investors that they still have a hand in how things are run. Technology can help to create more decentralised and independent structures to work with for a social enterprise. That is something that I am very excited about.

You are currently working with an international team on the project DoinGud, which is seeking to become a player in the NFT space. In your words, what are NFTs and why are they so important?

NFTs is short for a Non-Fungible Token, which basically is a new medium that uses technology to give creators the power to register and prove that something is a unique item. It has existed for a while, but we have just started to scratch the surface of what it can actually include. The interesting part is that this new medium has been adopted initially by artists, visual creators, animators and everybody that is creative.

In a sense, it helps them to be able to control and prove that they're actually the creator of that piece and they are also in control of where the funds go if they want to sell it to another person.

They can completely control where the funds are going and how that gets distributed, and also, they are creating new experiences on top of this technology. The development of the technology and creating NFTs goes hand in hand with the people that are using it. In the past, if an artist wanted to paint something, they would use paint and a brush, but they were always seeing how far they could get with that. They can change how many strokes they did, do different layers, go outside of the canvas or maybe expand the canvas.

Artists are always going to push whatever tools they have at hand to see what they can create, how far they can go and how they can innovate on top of that. With NFT it is the same principle.

It's a technology, and now it's been adopted by creators from all different backgrounds and all different parts of the world. It's being pushed and re-invented every day. As we speak, I'm sure somebody already has invented a new way to interact with the person that buys their art piece, because the technology allows you to. It's an interesting part of scaling up and giving new possibilities to artists. Also, it can be anything that’s unique, it does not need to be art. It could be the left shoe from Michael Jackson, or maybe a scientific paper! It is anything that you can prove is unique.

In all of these different social impact hubs you've worked with and partnerships you've created, you would have seen amazing opportunities for social impact to occur. Where over the next five years do you believe there are opportunities for people to create a social impact globally?

I think that this trend of decentralised technology, which NFTs is a part of, is a trend that's already setting out to become massively adopted. The first expression of this decentralised technology is of course cryptocurrencies. That is where they first got more attention and utility, but that's just the beginning of everything. Cryptocurrency is not as accessible for the mass public. That's why NFTs are so ground-breaking right now, because it's connected to art, digital creation and to a world that people relate to and recognise the opportunities and needs that it solves in this space.

I think that now it extends to artists and creators, and I think that decentralised technology will definitely extend to social organisations and any organisations that want to improve their impact. I think for the next five years, it will be almost impossible as a company or as a brand not to create social impact. Just through the process of virtue signalling, it will be socially unacceptable if you are doing something that is not making any social impact. These technologies can definitely speed that up and make this movement independent of any other control and bureaucracy that might slow it down. I think that in these next five years, structures like DAO's, Decentralised Autonomous Organisations, and other decentralised structures will really speed up for social impact organisations, brands or companies.

At some point, social impact will become a natural extension of what they're doing.

I think that trend will definitely be growing in the next five years, and I want to see that happen! How that would work is already happening and is set in motion, and I just hope that that gets accelerated. Certainly, technology can help this.

It's a very wonderful viewpoint. What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently which are creating a positive social change?

I'm lucky to be in a position that I get in touch with projects, artists and collectives that want to make a social impact every day. I get to connect with social organisations to get together, make artwork and help people, so that's just a luxury position to be in. In social enterprise, it's very important as well to think about how you can measure impact, and there are a lot of people working on this.

This will be the next trend, as I think everybody wants to generate social impact, but how do you measure that in the end, how do you reward that and how do you actually value that human creativity?

One of those organisations that I really admire in the way that they measure impact is one that has also been featured on Impact Boom, B1G1. We talk with them as well to see if we can combine the platform DoinGud with other social organisations, and I really admire their point of view as it really collides with what we stand for. I love the way that they measure impacts, so for me that's a great reference. I would also say Ethereum as a technology and the values that they stand for is really creating a positive social change. They are creating ‘the world computer’, a system where everybody can create anything. This mindset is something that can really have a positive change because they are not just making a product for themselves, they are making a system where everybody can build with and build upon others, and they're aware that they will not be in control of anything that's been built. They're not going to censor the creations; it is going to be open for however people want to use it.

They are really giving something to humanity, and this is the start of the giving economy.

It's a lot of work to give something to the world that can be used because you believe that people should have the opportunity. I think the start of the giving economy is something that is being set in motion, especially by Ethereum. There's a lot more examples I can choose here, but these two aspects of measuring impact and technology that is created for bettering society are two good examples.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I can list a few here, and there is one that is actually related to the story of Ethereum for if people are curious about what started all this, their mindset and how this idea was built. There is Camila Russo, and she is very connected with everybody that was in this place in the beginning, which of course started with Bitcoin, then Ethereum and Vitalik. She writes it in a way that is super accessible, and it's a story about people with purpose, and the book that she wrote The Infinite Machine is very enjoyable. It will tell you the story about why this technology was created, and I think it's a really great book. I will also list some resources that are not books, since sometimes nobody has time to read books! This especially applies to NFT, because by the time you have finished a book, the whole system has changed already. I have a movie to watch called The Greatest NFT Film Ever Made. It's a very modest title for this video, and it was made by The Defiant! It's one of the best resources if you want to dive into what NFTs are for beginners. Also, A Beginner's Guide To DAO's is a very good read to start understanding what these organisations are in the first place. My last recommendation and summarises my personal motivation of why I'm doing what I am doing and what is the giving economy. This book is very old, it's called The Gift by Lewis Hyde. It basically talks about how the gift in itself is like a starting point in society.