Introduction

Welcome to the DAO Experimentation Program — Cohort 3

Welcome to the next chapter of Kambria's work in decentralized innovation.

Cohort 1 showed that people from very different backgrounds can collaborate through a DAO. Cohort 2 tested whether a DAO can regenerate its own funding rather than simply spend a grant. Cohort 3 (DEP 3) turns to the question underneath both: what makes a community strong enough to keep creating, coordinating, and sharing value — with real infrastructure under it, and less and less scaffolding from Kambria.

This cohort is for social-impact projects ready to scale what already works — and for the people who want to help scale it — building lasting impact models, not for one cycle but for many.

Overview

The DAO Experimentation Program is Kambria's open innovation initiative, exploring how decentralized communities can co-create real value through collective intelligence, transparent coordination, and co-ownership.

DEP 3 runs along two tracks, side by side:

• Operations Excellence — putting the Kambria DAOs Framework to work in a real cohort: automated revenue flows, contributor payments, and transparent records, so the operational foundation is proven, not just built.
• Impact — two lines of work: ownership development, where each person owns their work and its outcomes rather than waiting for tasks; and open innovation through participant-proposed DAOs, where social-impact projects use a DAO as a new channel to scale their impact through community.

The Concept Note explains the full thinking behind the cohort; this Introduction is the short version.

The question this cohort holds

Cohort 3 continues Kambria's mission — to explore how global citizens can co-create, govern, and execute community projects through decentralized methods — and focuses it into one question that ties its three lines of work together:

Can a community — given real infrastructure and genuine ownership — carry a solution that already works further into people's lives, and keep doing it with less and less scaffolding from Kambria?

Three narrower questions make that concrete, one for each of the cohort's focuses:

• Operations Excellence — does a proven, transparent framework make it genuinely easier for a community to create, coordinate, and share value — so trust rests on visible records rather than on any one person?
• Ownership development — when people are given a real area of work to own, rather than tasks to wait for, do they actually own it?
• Open innovation through participant-proposed DAOs — can a community-run DAO scale a solution that already works in a way paid channels cannot — until the community carries it onward on its own?

We don't claim to know the answers, and that is deliberate. DEP 3 is run as an expedition rather than a curriculum — Kambria explores these questions alongside the participants and documents honestly whatever emerges, including the parts that don't work.

What’s new in Cohort 3

1. A live framework, not a plan

DEP 3 is the first cohort to run on the Kambria DAOs Framework end to end — value received, split, and paid out on-chain, transparently and automatically, with no spreadsheet arithmetic. Because it is the first live run, Kambria operates it hands-on, with manual checks alongside the automation until it has earned trust.

2. Owning, not just doing

Earlier cohorts kept hitting the same pattern: members unsure what to do would wait, and waiting looked like low ownership. DEP 3 introduces the Owned Lanes model — each DAO's work organised into lanes, each held by a pair, each a continuing stream the pair genuinely own, with their names on the outcome. It is built to grow ownership in practice.

3. Open innovation through participant-proposed DAOs

Most of the cohort's DAOs are built around selected social-impact projects that already have a working solution, proven regeneration, and a local community. For these projects, the DAO is not governance for its own sake — it is a new channel for business development and for scaling impact: a way to take a solution that already works further into people's lives through community.

4. Sustainability, re-defined

Each DAO still receives $3,000 in seed funding, but no DAO carries a revenue target. The seed is starting capital for scaling impact, not a sum to be earned back. Success is measured by the scaling of impact — how far a solution reaches, how deeply it enters people's lives, and whether the community carries it onward on its own. Revenue is still recorded in full, but as one signal that a solution is valued, not as the goal.

5. Projects first, members second

The cohort's DAOs are decided before members are recruited, so people join a mission they chose — aligning with a project and bringing relevant experience, rather than being placed after the fact.

The Cohort 3 DAOs

Cohort 3 runs four DAOs:

• Capacity Exchange DAO (CED) — Kambria's model DAO, continuing from earlier cohorts. Members run the operations behind the CED platform, where people exchange skills, knowledge, and experience through 1–1 sessions.
• Three participant-proposed DAOs — each built around a selected social-impact project, scaled through a DAO and its community.

The DAO Projects Overview page introduces each one, and dedicated pages for the participant-proposed DAOs are added once they are selected.

Program Timeline

DEP 3 runs across five phases, from preparation in late 2026 to a closing showcase in mid-2027:

The Program Timeline page describes each phase in full.

Finding your way around

• Why and what — the Concept Note for the thinking behind the cohort.
• The DAOs — DAO Projects Overview and the Capacity Exchange DAO page.
• How a DAO runs — How It Works, the Owned Lanes Model, Member Roles & Contribution, and Measuring What Matters.
• The infrastructure — DAO Operations Excellence: the Kambria DAOs Framework and the DAO Workbook.
• Taking part as a project — the Call for Projects, with its Qualification Criteria and Terms & Conditions.

Take part

The Call for Projects is open. If you have a social-impact project that already works, with a community it serves, a DAO can become a new channel to scale it — a dedicated team, transparent infrastructure, and a way of working built around ownership.

See the Call for Projects to learn what's offered, check the criteria, and apply.

The invitation for participants to join the cohort's DAOs opens later in this phase. Returning participants from earlier cohorts, and anyone new who wants to take part, are warmly encouraged to watch for the Call for Participants.