This white paper explains how the Cooperacy platform works in detail.

The platform is intended to develop the comembers ideas. Cooperacy is the platform largest project, a real ecosystem. Any internal activity of Cooperacy is a project as well. Every project can be a part of other ones, or their home. All activities generated by the platform are coowned by Cooperacy and its comembers.

THE COLLECTION FUND: PROJECT IDEAS

Cooperacy collection fund is an amount of money generated by every member's one euro monthly subscription. The money is allocated to the different ideas coming from the participants through their voting. Every second microeuros are pre-allocated proportionally to the project ideas: the more the votes, the more the proportional amount of money. The collected funds are pre-allocated until the ideas budget is reached. When it happens, the idea turns into an "approval project" starting the budget release phase. After the approval phase is completed, the idea becomes an "active project", and its profits go back to the collection fund.

FREE PROJECTS

Ideas may need no budget. For example, they can be a tool for a decision making supported by voting. Some of them, instead, like courses, concerts, dinners, parties.. may not require a budget but a minimum number of participants that commit themselves to the payment of a ticket or a fee, without which the ideas are not sustainable. All these ideas do not participate to the collection fund distribution, but their possible profit goes to the collection fund anyways, as all activities are co-owned by Cooperacy.

AFTF MULTIDIMENSIONAL VOTING

In Cooperacy we don't vote for people, but for ideas. Both ideas and voting are anonymous until the ideas become projects. After that, all the information will be transparent for checking purposes. This is called AFTF, Anonymous First, Transparent Forever-after: the beginning anonymity allows to boost collective intelligence and transparency enhances cooperation afterwards.
Anybody can vote for as many ideas they want. In order to leverage more collective intelligence, there are different kinds of votes:

Equivalence

It determines the proportional allocation of funds from the money pool. Technical: the proportions are calculated with the number of the equivalence votes the idea has (Ei), divided by the total (Et) of all the equivalence votes all the ideas have (Ei / Et ). If funds for a budget project idea get to more than 50%, the project gets to a boost bonus and its funding allocation will be as quick as if it had 80% of the votes. Equivalence votes in a "free project" indicate participation as a client, that is, affiliate, pre-buy, subscription to a course or pre-purchase to a concert. This vinculates the trustee to the payment of the relative pre-purchase or fee when the project becomes active.

Trust

Trust votes make the project skip the human resources budget step. Technical: if the project trust votes (Ti) are more than 75% of the project equivalence votes (Ti > 75% Ei) the human resources budget step is automatically approved.

Care

When care-voted, the project gains more visibility. Technical: Ideas visibility is enhanced by ordering them by Care. This emotional response in the future could also be generated thanks to biofeedback sensors.

Transparency

This is a downvote to declare hidden information, corruption, cheating or spamming. Technical: Transparency-voting triggers a message in which you communicate what others do not see. If a Transparency vote is "unvoted", the project may go into a "pairing" state where the participants discuss. After 90 days of pairing, if nothing happens the idea may be split or removed and in case the budget is turned back to the money pool. During this period the participants can better explain to unvoters the project idea development in order to restore transparency. If the idea is unblocked, the count of 90 days is canceled. Transparency voters are never anonymous. Highest transparency-unvoted projects may win the joke/trolling prize of the year.

Freedom

Freedom-voting means you would like to work for the idea or participate into the decision making. Every project can instead be discussed and observed in full transparency anyways. Technical: if a hudget is requested, freedom-votes count for the requested hudget. Moreover, freedom-voters will be chosen automatically unless their number is higher than the requested hudget, in which case a selection will occur. If a hudget is not requested, the idea participants will first review the freedom-voters list for the budget "hudget" step. Freedom-voters automatically become participants when the project becomes active.

Understanding

This vote refers to the idea comprehension or nerditude and automatically approves the Setup phase. Technical: if the understanding-votes are above the 75th percentile (Ui > Ût + Ût/2) the Setup budget release step is automatically approved.

Diversity

When a project has a strong “bizardry” (diversity-votes), it has more opportunities to be randomly approved. Technical: ideas has a diversity percentage ( Di / Dt ). Every idea, the first day of a season (equinoxes and solstices), is given a random percentage value between 0% and 10%, to which the diversity percentage is added and then randomly multiplied by -1. The idea that has the highest “Bizardry” has a virtual added equivalence-votes percentage of +50% [( Ei + 50% Et ) / Et ]. Warning: 10 diversity votes lower the equivalence ones by 1.

Any direct donation to an idea counts as dedicated donated budget. Donated budget and pre-allocated budget count for the idea budget to be turned into an approval project, but donated budget cannot be returned to the collection fund unless the idea is rescinded or abandoned.
Once the idea has reached the budget and/or hudget, the participants of the idea are kept frozen during the approval project phase until it is turned into an active project. The budget release milestones deadlines are chosen according to the Cooperacy governance scheme.
Eventual contrasts not resolved in the 7 budget milestones are solved with a transparent voting kept live for three days, in which the participants can change their votes. The coordinators have three more days to try to creatively integrate the contrasting positions according to the seven solutions. At the end of a week time, the milestone should be decided.
All the contrasting votes not integrated reduce the budget, which goes back to the collection fund. In that case, the project turns back to the idea state, keeping the milestones approved, and waits again for the fulfilment of the missing budget cut due to contrasting positions.
Highlighting colors can indicate different ideas types, like cyan for “educational”, violet for “scientific”, and green for “environmental” ones. You are free to use these labels, but if they are misleading they can make people downvote them. Some projects are geographic units, like cities or specific locations and are highlighted in blue.
When an idea becomes an approval project, the idea is “born”, and has a birthdate. When the approval becomes an active project it can receive a three level feedback by the comembers (+,=,-).
In case of “death” of an active project, for example when a course ends, or a backery is sold, its final step is to be archived. This turns the active project into an archived one and the AI analyzes it while the participants may still give some feedback.
Participants Gender (M / F / Other) will be aggregated in order to inidicate in the future the project gender composition.
Projects may have internal project ideas, for example a language institute that wants to add a new language course. Budget ideas that want to be funded by the Cooperacy collection fund must be in the Cooperacy base project to receive any budget pre-allocation. Only afterwards they can be inserted as subprojects of any main project.

BUDGET RELEASE STEPS

The budget release process is divided into 7 steps which have a three days approval voting time in which the process could be halted and the people in charge can be changed for corruption or security reasons. Only people who equivalence-voted, participated or are relative to the module will be notified of the phases. Participants are therefore allowed to vote even if they are external to the module but only if they really care, as they won’t be notified otherwise. Every step is also voted for its transparency and sustainability.

THE COOPERACY PROJECTS AS MODULES

As you see, there is a modular design in the projects. The modularity helps to create open source blueprints for the whole platform community.

It is advised that the active participants should be maximum 150. The module is continuously subject of feedback by the participants and the voters. Even after years any participant can decide if something was good or bad, influencing the memory of the system. A simple feedback history is available: after 1 month (M), 1 season (S), 1 year (Y) and after 7 years (7).
Feedback can be added once the project is archived.

THE COOPERACY PROJECTS LIFECICLE

The projects represent the voting unit of Cooperacy. They have this main lifecycle:
• Project Idea: the project is proposed – it is usually anonymous and it could be also voted anonymously
• Approval Stage: the idea reaches its budget or hudget, becomes a project, anonymity ends, budget phase starts;
• Active Project: the project becomes an active one, its profits go back to the collection fund;
• Archived Project: when the mission is accomplished or terminated the project “dies”. This is not a bitter end, it means the project goes in the archive in order to influence future modules and for future reference;