The Capacity Exchange DAO is Kambria's model DAO — and the one DAO in Cohort 3 that is not time-bound to the cohort. It is a living platform that keeps growing, cohort after cohort.

A Model DAO, Grown Across Cohorts

CED is one of Kambria's model DAOs — a real, operating DAO that shows what the model looks like in practice, rather than a time-boxed experiment. It runs on a live platform where people around the world exchange skills, knowledge, and experience through 1–1 sessions.

Each DEP cohort grows CED further. It took part in earlier cohorts, and it continues in Cohort 3 — the members' work each cohort strengthens a platform that keeps running between and beyond them. This is why CED is built to last: it is not created for the cohort and wound down at the end; the cohort is one season in its ongoing life.

The CED Platform

CED is a global two-way platform: any user can be a Guide (Service Provider) in one session and an Explorer (Service User) in another. Most members take part as both, depending on what they want to learn or share.

Exchanges span a wide range of categories — from personal development, education, and professional connections to creative collaboration, cultural exchange, wellbeing, technology, crafts, and more. Every session is a live, one-on-one online conversation focused on practical questions and real experience, rather than a pre-recorded course.

For how the platform works in practice — registering, booking and running sessions, roles, and safety — see the CED User Guide.

How CED Members Work

An important distinction: CED members — the DAO's participants in DEP 3 — are the operators behind the platform, not the people giving the sessions. The Guides and Explorers exchanging skills are the platform's users. The DAO's work is to make that exchange thrive: bringing new users in, helping sessions actually happen, keeping quality and safety high, growing the community, and pursuing partnerships and sponsorships.

Like every DEP 3 DAO, CED organises this work using the Owned Lanes model — pairs owning lanes, grouped under a few broad scopes. For an operator DAO like CED, scopes might include bringing new users in, activating them into real sessions, keeping the community healthy, and pursuing partnerships. CED defines its own scopes and lanes in its master plan.

How Sessions and Guides Work

CED runs on a transparent model that the DAO's members help operate and grow. In brief:

•   Expertise levels and session length. A Guide's verified expertise level (from short-term certificate up to doctorate) sets a typical session duration — 50, 40, 30, or 20 minutes. More expertise, shorter typical session: an experienced Guide often needs less time to help effectively.
•   Becoming a Guide. A new Guide completes verification and two volunteer sessions before becoming a paid Service Provider.
•   Pilot participation and payment. Selected Explorers can take part for free through CED's themed programs, funded by Theme Sponsors, and eligible Guides receive a set payment per completed session, paid monthly in cryptocurrency.

These figures and policies reflect CED's current pilot and are summarised here for context. For complete, up-to-date details — participation, the current CED Call, payment, safety, and the full user guide — see the CED Docs.

The CED Call

The CED Call is CED's open, ongoing invitation for people to join as a Guide, an Explorer, or both — the way the platform welcomes each new wave of members and pioneers. Growing and running the current CED Call is part of what the DAO does: turning an invitation into an active, engaged community of Guides and Explorers.

For the current invitation and how to take part, see the Current CED Call.

Alongside this call for participants, CED also runs a Call for Theme Sponsors to fund its themed programs — see Call for Theme Sponsors (CED).

Call for Theme Sponsors

To fund its themed programs — and keep sessions free for the people who need them most — CED invites Theme Sponsors: organizations that fund a themed program so learners take part for free. In Cohort 3, CED opens two themes — Community Self-Governance Skills, and Recycled Crafts (if funded). For who CED is looking for, what sponsors receive, and how to join, see Call for Theme Sponsors (CED).

CED in Cohort 3 — two themed programs

For Cohort 3, CED runs two named, themed programs side by side. Each is a themed series of 1–1 sessions on CED, run by its own DAO team and funded through CED's Call for Theme Sponsors (above):

• Theme A — Community Self-Governance Skills Program. It equips community leads of local communities with the skills to run self-governing communities: facilitation, decision-making, conflict handling, resource coordination, and onboarding new members. Theme A runs in Cohort 3.
• Theme B — Recycled Crafts Program. It equips makers (artisans, community and women's groups, youth, and small makers) to turn discarded materials into products they can sell: sourcing safely, mastering a technique, designing, pricing, and selling with a circular story. Theme B runs if sponsor pledges reach at least $1,500 by 31 December 2026.

These are CED's first two themed programs, so Kambria and CED run them together, as a model and an experiment. The two themes are deliberately different: one teaches a coordination skill, the other a hands-on livelihood skill. That lets the cohort compare what works, learn from both, and let the two DAO teams push each other in a healthy way. The aim is to improve and standardise a repeatable Call that other DAOs can reuse.

Who takes part. The learners are community leads (Theme A) and makers (Theme B), joining as Explorers for sponsored sessions. Guides are experienced practitioners in each theme: facilitators and community organisers for Theme A; upcycle designers, craft mentors, and circular-economy practitioners for Theme B. Each program's DAO team refers and recruits both, and Kambria qualifies them, verifying Guides for quality and confirming Explorers are the right audience.

How the sessions are structured (hybrid). Both programs share the same shape. Rather than a fixed course or scattered one-offs, each curriculum has two parts:

• a core track of six sessions covering what every learner needs. For Theme A, that is running a full coordination cycle; for Theme B, taking a discarded material to a finished, priced product. Completing the core is what "completing the program" means; and
• elective topics each learner chooses by relevance. When a learner doesn't need an elective, that session slot goes to another learner.

This keeps depth where it matters (the core) while widening reach (electives, and reused slots). At full funding, each program delivers about 200 one-to-one sessions to around 30 learners going deep enough to carry the skills home. If Theme B runs below full funding, it is sized to what is raised. Kambria and CED build each base curriculum, and it is finalised with that program's Theme Sponsors.

How CED Measures Impact

Like every Cohort 3 DAO, CED sets its goals against the three impact axes, made concrete for an exchange platform:

•   Reach — how many new users and communities the platform reaches — including the number of meaningful sessions run.
•   Depth — how many users return and keep exchanging, rather than trying it once.
•   Self-propagation — whether users bring others in and become Guides themselves, so the exchange grows through its own community.

For the Community Self-Governance Skills Program specifically, the axes look like:

• Reach — ~200 sessions delivered, across the community leads reached.
• Depth — leads who complete the core track; a before/after self-assessment on the skills; session feedback.
• Self-propagation — leads who go on to run their own community's coordination cycle, and Explorers who become Guides.

CED sets its own specific goals against these axes in its master plan, and each lane sets the key results that express its part. The Measuring What Matters page explains the framework in full.

Partnerships & Business Development

As a DAO channel for growing the platform, CED pursues the partnerships that serve it — with learning communities, universities, youth organisations, NGOs, and sponsors — as part of developing CED as a sustainable, self-growing exchange. These partnerships are the DAO's own to pursue, shaped around what CED needs to grow. They take several forms: community partners who help reach and welcome new members, and — as CED expands the ways others can collaborate — Theme Sponsors who fund its themed programs or contribute Guides in kind.

For the current ways to partner with CED and how to get involved, see Partner With Us in the CED Docs.