The Kindness Grocery Cooperative (May 2020 → January 2021) 

Our Journey begins in May of 2020, mid pandemic, when Asya Abdrahman made the intention of reclaiming food security for herself and her communities by creating Kindness Grocery Cooperative (KGC). Kindness Grocery Cooperative’s vision is to inspire communities to collectively, autonomously, and sustainably exist in harmony with the Earth and one another. Our mission is to provide communities with reliable food security, health support, sustainability, and connection by redistributing resources into shared abundance. From May 2020 to January 2021 the KGC team focused on team building, business development, partnership development, cooperative educational studies, community learning, academic presentations at Dartmouth College and Harvard University, and food donation. Slowly, the vision of our organization expanded past food security into the creations of decentralized, self-sustainable micro communities and economies through art, collective land stewardship, and regenerative systems creation. 

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Bath Party (March 2021→ May 2022) 

The Kindness Grocery Cooperative organized and hosted the beginnings of a series of events called Bath Party - a community gathering co-founded and co-led by previously unhoused community members that brought community care, crypto education and NFT’s for good. The origins of this project was dreamed up in part by founder, regenerative artist, and sustainable entrepreneur, Asya Abdrahman, who herself experienced being unhoused and pregnant, while raising children. During the pandemic, Asya became aware of the immediate needs of our unhoused neighbors that included showers due to a lack of hygienic basic necessities from Covid shutting down support centers. With the vision of collective liberation from these inhumane conditions and an ongoing solidarity between unhoused and house community, KGC initiated 3 Bath Party events in Oakland, Berkeley and Los Angeles (Skid Row), California. During this time the KGC team was also being introduced to the crypto world. We immediately saw the benefit of the blockchain to shift value systems, provide alternative currency systems, and uplift artists. As we watched millions be moved through NFT sales, we decided to launch an NFT project on Opensea with the intention of funding the houseless communities we were supporting. During these events we also taught about crypto, explored the possibilities of using the blockchain for social good and coined the terms #NFTsForGood, #CryptoToThePeople and #BankTheUnbanked.

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NFTea & CoFee (June 2021)

After officially entering the crypto world, we recognized the need for crypto education and onboarding support for marginalized communities that are traditionally left out of developing tech spaces. We launched NFTea & CoFee, a golden mobile coffee cart that popped up in various spaces around San Francisco to sell ethically sourced and traditionally made tea, coffee, and NFTs with the intention of onboarding communities to the blockchain while maintaining human connection. This project merged the beloved product of coffee with NFT art to bring digital awareness and education to the streets. It was the first of it’s kind, physical NFT marketplace on wheels that emphasized the importance of human to human connection, even in the digital realm. The name of our mobile marketplace is a play on words, used to explain the product offered: NFT’s, tea and coffee - all provided to fund our cooperative as our cooperative fee (CoFee). 

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The Kin DAO (September 2021) 

By Fall we had immersed ourselves enough in the web3 world to learn about DAOs. We recognized that our cooperative organization efforts since May of 2020 had essentially been operating like an off chain DAO. We decided that transforming ourselves into a DAO was the next step in our evolution as an organization. Kin stands for family or close relations and it is also the beginning of “Kindness”. The Kin DAO employs digital tools to bring equitable systems to the physical through art, collective land stewardship and regenerative system creations. We intend to fund the collective purchase of farm land where we can implement, practice and refine our For Product Model. The For Product Model is a system where communities can trade work in exchange for land ownership using NFTs and our developing token EarthChange as tools in our decentralized operation. Our long term goal is to use blockchain technology to construct real life, decentralized systems where living communities can produce self sustainable micro economies.

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Hyphae IRL & URL NFT Art Exhibition (October 2021-December 2021)

To Launch The Kin DAO, we hosted a month long, real life NFT Art Exhibition called Hyphae at the former Local Maker Mart in San Francisco, CA. The logos of all of our projects have always been mushrooms as we build in biomimicry of mycelium, prioritizing regeneration, groundedness and interdependence. Because of this we chose the title Hyphae, defined as the branching filaments that make up the mycelium of a fungus and representing the beginnings of communal art bridge building and world value shifting. Hosted in a former bank building, Hyphae touched on the extractive value structures disrupting our life systems and facilitated perspective shifts to collectively redefine worth. The exhibition emphasized the importance of creative collaboration and the adoption of blockchain technology which supports these value shifts. Hyphae offered the education needed for all to use these digital tools to actively mold our collective future into one that upholds the values of creativity, collaboration, community, regeneration and sustainability. After the IRL Hyphae Exhibition was completed, we moved our work to the digital for further viewing.

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Primordia DAO (February 2021)

As we grew in the Web3 world, we recognized the deep need to bridge the digital divide. We see the digital divide as the boundary between those who have technological access, knowledge and skills and those who do not. As the internet transitions from Web2 to Web3, the divide begins to widen and the need for onboarding education becomes more immediate. Web3 is giving us keys that open doorways into new paradigms. It gives us a chance and a responsibility to cultivate a new world. Onboarding communities that hold diverse perspectives, lived experiences and cultural knowledge is essential to creating future living systems that work for ALL of life - not just the lives with access. We hold a responsibility to include and educate those who have been left out of tech spaces as tech begins to influence all of society.

Emerging from Kindness Grocery Coop, The Kin DAO, and Hyphae, Primordia is the next stage. Primordia is a year-long project DAO serving as onboarding for communities traditionally excluded through art-based solutions. Building in biomimicry of mushrooms, Hyphae represented the beginning filaments of our mycelium network. Now that The Kin DAO had expanded to onboard over 50 individuals and 5 DAOs to NEAR, we moved into our next phase of mycelium development. A primordia, often referred to as a knot, is the first point at which the development of a fruit body is visible to the naked eye. The impact we have been able to make within our communities is immense, but at times felt invisible and underground. As we grow to uplift more communities, the fruits of our labor are beginning to show. Primordia DAO will become an impactful social experiment in Web3 onboarding, decentralization and Web3 merging with real life impactful work.