Joshua Davila
Hey, my name is Joshua Dávila and I’m the writer / podcaster behind The Blockchain Socialist. Originally pseudo-anonymous, I’ve come out of the anon closet with the publishing of my book Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It published through Repeater Books in 2023. I am also a co-founder of Bread Cooperative where we build crypto applications from a post-capitalist point of view.
Session
What would it look like to build financial infrastructure for solidarity rather than speculation? While blockchain technology has largely been captured by libertarian and extractive market logic, it certainly does not need to be that way.
In this talk, we'll explore Solidarity Primitives, development and architectural design patterns designed to forge economic solidarity between individuals and collectives. Drawing from our work at Bread Cooperative and research I've documented through my podcast, The Blockchain Socialist, we'll examine concrete examples like the BREAD community token, savings circles implementation, and the Solidarity Fund mechanisms that enable participatory funding without relying on venture capital or traditional financial intermediaries.
We'll discuss how these primitives address a critical gap: the technical and coordination barriers that have historically made alternative economic models difficult to implement at scale. From worker cooperatives to mutual aid networks, the infrastructure simply hasn't existed. Peer-to-peer technologies can change that but only if designed with solidarity, not profit maximization, as the core principle.
This talk is for anyone interested in the practical dimensions of building a post-capitalist economy: what does it actually look like to write code for collective autonomy? How do we ensure decentralized systems serve communities rather than concentrating power?