MycoStack
Rebooting the Commons Stack.
Growing from beneath.
Born from the P2P Foundation. Rooted in the legacy of Michel Bauwens. Powered by mycelial principles.
The Roots
Every network grows from somewhere. Ours grows from the Commons Stack and the life’s work of Michel Bauwens.
The Librarian of the Commons
For over two decades, Michel Bauwens (1958–2024) dedicated himself to a monumental task: documenting the emerging paradigm of peer-to-peer collaboration and commons-based alternatives. The P2P Foundation Wiki he created contains over 25,000 pages of carefully curated knowledge — case studies, theoretical frameworks, policy proposals, and practical guides that have informed countless projects worldwide.
Michel wasn’t just a theorist. He was a librarian in the deepest sense — someone who believed that knowledge, freely shared and carefully tended, could transform society. His frameworks for commons-based peer production, the partner state, and cosmo-localism (“design global, manufacture local”) gave the commons movement its intellectual foundations.
Michel’s Three Modes of Production
MycoStack lives in the third mode — and builds the tools to make it thrive.
The Commons Stack
The Commons Stack was born from this intellectual tradition. Its mission: fund and govern the commons. Through pioneering work in token engineering, augmented bonding curves, and conviction voting, the Commons Stack and its Trusted Seed community developed regenerative funding mechanisms for exactly the kind of commons infrastructure Michel championed.
But tools alone aren’t enough. The Commons Stack taught us that technology must be wrapped in culture — in shared values, governance practices, and communities of care. The Trusted Seed wasn’t just a token-holder registry; it was an experiment in building trust at the speed of consensus.
Peer-for-Peer
MycoStack carries this legacy forward with a new framework: Peer-for-Peer (P4P) — an evolution of P2P thinking that emphasizes peers acting for peers, not just exchanging with them. Mutual care and regeneration as core protocols. Active stewardship rather than passive participation. Solidarity economics in practice.
Where the original Commons Stack built tools, MycoStack grows ecosystems. Where P2P described a relational dynamic, P4P demands a commitment. The mycelium doesn’t just connect — it nourishes.
Preserve
Archive and steward Michel's knowledge commons. The P2P Foundation Wiki, oral histories, theoretical frameworks — ensuring decades of accumulated wisdom remain living resources, not static monuments.
Sustain
Build regenerative funding loops for commons infrastructure. Quadratic funding, mutual credit, contributor support systems — economics that feed the network instead of extracting from it.
Evolve
Update the theoretical frameworks for current conditions. Bridge Web3 and traditional commons movements. Experiment with emerging technologies in service of collective flourishing.
Propagate
Spread the spores. Educational resources, onboarding pathways, translation and localization. Grow the network of people who understand and practice commons governance.
“The more we share, the more we have.”
— Michel Bauwens
The Compost Layer
Decomposing extractive systems into nutrients for regeneration
Break Down
Old systems don't disappear — they decompose. Capitalism's waste becomes the substrate for what grows next. Every collapsing institution releases nutrients back into the commons.
Transform
Mycelium turns death into life. We turn extractive protocols into regenerative ones. The same energy that powered exploitation can power mutual aid — if we know how to compost it.
Nourish
What's composted feeds what's growing. Every broken system contains the nutrients for its successor. The question isn't whether the old world will decompose — it's what we grow in its place.
This is compost capitalism — the art of breaking down what no longer serves, so that what comes next can thrive.
The Mycelial Network
Three principles from the forest floor, applied to human systems
Nutrient Cycling
Resources flow where they're needed, not where they're hoarded. The Commons Stack pioneered augmented bonding curves and quadratic funding for the commons. MycoFi extends this into mycelial currencies that route value like fungi route nutrients — sensing scarcity, bridging gaps, feeding the weak to strengthen the whole.
Mutual Aid
Every node strengthens the network. Every network strengthens each node. Michel Bauwens called this commons-based peer production — contributory, needs-based collaboration as the third mode of production beyond state and market. In a mycelial system, there are no extractors — only participants in a web of reciprocal support.
Distributed Intelligence
No central brain. No single point of failure. The Trusted Seed proved that conviction voting and consent-based governance could coordinate without hierarchy. Intelligence emerges from connection, from the ten thousand chemical conversations happening simultaneously across the network. Design global, manufacture local — cosmo-localism in practice.
These are the protocols of mycofi.earth. The economics of interconnection, first practiced by fungi four hundred million years before capitalism. Read more about the philosophy at mycopunk.xyz.
The Undernet
Community-Owned Infrastructure
Beneath the extractive platforms, a different kind of infrastructure is growing. Self-provisioned. Privacy-first. Data sovereign. Locally resilient.
Community servers. Encrypted mesh networks. Open protocols that no corporation can shut down. Hardware owned by the people who depend on it. Software that serves its users instead of surveilling them.
This is the undernet.earth — the network beneath the network. Where the psilo-cyber.network grows, encrypted and entangled, through the substrate of the old world.
// every node is sovereign
// every connection is encrypted
// the network has no center
Anastomosis
/uh-nas-tuh-MOH-sis/
When separate mycelial networks discover each other and merge, forming new connections. The moment distinct systems recognize their shared purpose and become one.
We are the connections between movements. Commons Stack, MycoFi, the Undernet — separate networks finding each other, merging, growing stronger together. The boundaries between projects dissolve. What remains is the shared mycelium.
A space that belongs to its communities, not its platforms. Find (you)rSpace.online and start anastomosing.
Emergence
What grows underground eventually breaks the surface.
“The post-capitalist future is not a utopian fantasy. It is already growing, underground, in the networks we are building today.”
Regenerative Economics
The Commons Stack proved that augmented bonding curves and conviction voting could fund the commons without extraction. Now we go further: mutual credit that flows like nutrients through soil. Quadratic funding that amplifies the grassroots. Generative ownership that creates benefits for all stakeholders.
Sovereign Technology
Community-owned servers. Open protocols. Software that serves its users. Hardware you can repair. Networks no corporation can capture. The tools of liberation, maintained by the communities that depend on them.
Living Commons
Michel Bauwens built the P2P Foundation Wiki — 25,000 pages of commons knowledge. That's the seed. Now we grow the forest: knowledge, tools, and infrastructure that belong to everyone. Not static archives but living, growing resources — tended by communities, freely shared across the mycelial web.
Building the post-appitalist.application layer for a regenerative economy. Tools that serve communities, not shareholders.
Sometimes the best way to see the future is to change your perspective. Stop trippinballs.lol and start building.
The Network of Networks
Every node strengthens the whole. Every connection multiplies possibility.