Indigenous DAO Toolkit: Proposal

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This is the reader-friendly version of our proposal. You can also view the submitted proposal here: https://gov.tools/budget_discussion/95
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Want to support this project or see our endorsers? View Endorsements

Problem Statement

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What problem does this proposal seek to address?* This section focuses on understanding the drivers behind the proposed project. E.g., Why should this project be undertaken?

DAOs hold the promise of collective power—but the communities most ready to use them are the ones they’re currently failing.

Designed around hyper-individualism, most DAO infrastructure ignores—or outright crushes—the collective realities of Indigenous groups (or any collective organisations). These groups, which already coordinate billions in ecological and economic value, are decentralised by design and by tradition. They don’t need to be taught how to self-organise. What they need are digital tools that align with how they already operate.

Digital tools built on Westphalian patterns of thinking, born of nation-states — systems emphasising individual ownership, authorship, and top-down control — are fundamentally misaligned with Indigenous ways of organising. They fragment collective identity, embed extractive dynamics, and exclude communities who already steward land, knowledge, and resources through deep relational value systems, decentralised, and intergenerational models. Until DAO tooling respects these principles, it will remain unfit for Indigenous peoples—and for any community that seeks to govern together. In summary, DAO tools are not (yet) fit for purpose.

The missing piece in Cardano’s DAO infrastructure isn’t only more code—it’s a shift in mindset. We need a collective-first architecture built on the principles that Indigenous communities have validated and honed for centuries. A mindset where the group—not the individual—is the fundamental unit of coordination, identity, and governance.

Currently there is no infrastructure within Cardano that truly supports modular, collective-first, and polycentric governance. Existing tools prioritise static, centralised structures over adaptable, community-defined coordination. This absence leaves Indigenous, cooperative, and civic groups without the building blocks they need to steward shared identity, manage intergenerational resources, or scale their governance models from a single hapū (a tribal collective, each with the authority of a sovereign nation) to a wider network of nations.

Without the work proposed here, Cardano risks missing a historic opportunity: to become the first blockchain ecosystem to genuinely support sovereign, place-based, community-led governance—digital infrastructure that reflects the realities of the world we live in, and the world we want to build for Indigenous people. Ultimately, for all people.

Metaphorical Narrative

The Logic of the Flock: A Visual for Collective Governance

At dusk, a flock of birds becomes a single, moving organism—shifting, flowing, responding. No one bird stays at the front for long. There is no fixed leader, no command structure—only participation. Each bird follows simple, shared principles: stay close, don’t collide, respond to those nearby. Direction emerges through connection, not control. The flock moves as one because all are present, attuned, and engaged.

Flocks, like tribes, merge and diverge. Leadership is not static but shared, arising and dissolving as needed. This is polycentric coordination: instinctive, adaptive, and relational. You don’t engage an individual—you engage the flock, the tribe, the collective. It’s not about hierarchy, but harmony. Not about command, but coordination.

This is the governance logic Mātou seeks to enable. Our proposal is not about imposing new ways of organising—but about offering tools that reflect and respect the ways Indigenous communities already govern: with many centres, many voices, and movement shaped by shared purpose and the moment in time.

Quick Reality Check: DAO’s – what the data and discourse suggest

1. DAOs have not achieved mainstream adoption

  • Most DAOs remain small, experimental, or speculative (primarily focused on crypto-native governance and treasury management).
  • There are over 12,000 DAOs, yet only a handful have meaningful real-world impact or large, active communities (e.g. Cardano, MakerDAO, Gitcoin, Optimism Collective).
  • Many DAOs remain stagnant or dormant after launch, with governance fatigue, low voter participation, and tooling complexity cited as barriers.

2. DAOs are struggling with core functionality – common issues include:

  • Poor onboarding and accessibility for non-technical users
  • Low engagement (voter turnout often below 10%)
  • Capture by early contributors, resulting in power centralisation not representative of the group
  • Fragmentation of tools and no canonical “stack”
  • Inflexible governance mechanisms that don’t reflect community / group dynamics

3. Scholars and practitioners are publicly questioning the DAO model – There’s a growing body of critical writing:

4. In the Cardano ecosystem specifically…**The DAO ecosystem is still nascent:

  • There are only a few publicly operating DAOs (e.g., Summon Platform, Gimbalabs, some stake pool collectives, a recent DRep collective is also experimenting)
  • Tooling is emerging but fragmented (Aiken, Plutus, identity integrations are maturing but not yet widely adopted)
  • Most projects are still in exploratory or MVP phases, and there’s no go-to Cardano-native DAO stack yet.
  • The Constitutional Committee itself is experimenting with DAO-like structures, but still relies heavily on social scaffolding and manual governance at this point in time.

Proposal Benefit

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If implemented, what would be the benefit and to which parts of the community? Please include the demonstrated value or return on investment to the Cardano Community.*

Historic & Unique—Indigenous DAO tools to onboard 100s of groups stewarding billions of economic & ecological value.

This proposal directly supports the development of essential collective-first infrastructure. It delivers a fully data-sovereign, local-first identity system—standards-aligned to meet the unique needs of Indigenous peoples, cooperatives, and civic groups, and their deeply relational, communitarian values and operating systems. It is designed so that it will always be owned by the people, rent-free—ensuring true autonomy over identity, governance, and infrastructure.

By lowering barriers to entry with the Mātou Protocol (a collective identity pattern), and the accompanying community and developer kits (CDK & SDK), Mātou Collective can welcome hundreds of tribal nations—thousands of humans—to the ecosystem. These tools are designed to support both custom technical development that fits community needs, and community development that helps leaders weave people and technology together.

For the Cardano community, this proposal offers both strategic and tangible benefits:

  • DAO Tooling: Matou Protocol (the core collective identity pattern), MatouSDK (software development kit), MatouCDK (community development kit) are designed to drastically lower barriers to technical development (supporting custom tech that fits communities) and community development (supporting leaders weaving people and tech together)
  • Adoption: This project aims to on-board Indigenous nations — populations with active economies already coordinating billions in value (see examples and sources of indigenous economic activity, specific examples Ngāi Tahu, Cherokee Nation, Barngarla).
  • Innovation: Cardano will be the first major blockchain to offer a pathway to decentralized, culturally rooted, real-world data sovereignty for Indigenous peoples.
  • Research Impact: This project will generate unique field data and unique design insights on how decentralized systems can serve complex governance, identity, and economic needs.
  • Transactions: Increased transaction volume through real-world governance applications, credential verification services, cross-group economic activities, and token investments and exchanges—all mediated through Cardano's infrastructure. These tokenized interactions drive sustainable growth while providing tangible utility for indigenous communities.

We are building tools for an existing, rich, reciprocal, multi-stakeholder ecosystem with clear requirements and validated needs—an ecosystem we are part of and uniquely positioned to serve.

Supplementary Endorsement

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If possible provide evidence of wider community endorsement for this proposal?

We are actively gathering endorsements from the wider community. You can find the latest endorsements on our website at https://www.matou.nz/indigenous-dao-toolkit-endorsement/. This page will be continuously updated as more endorsements come in.

Proposal Name

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What is your proposed name to be used to reference this proposal publicly?*

Indigenous DAO Toolkit

Proposal Description

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Please provide a high-level description / abstract of the proposal.

Indigenous DAO Toolkit consists of four distinct layers:

  1. Foundation layer: Matou Protocol – collective identities, members + permissions that following layers will be built upon
  2. Middle layer: service modules which add additional primitives on top of identity (file storage, tokens, voting, etc)
  3. Application layer: DApps – uses service modules to easily build applications (wallets, dashboards, messaging, treasury management, rules creation, etc)
  4. Implementation layer: Launch, Training, Support, including CDK (community development kit)

The Mātou Protocol is a polycentric identity coordination layer that enables indigenous and place-based communities to define, express, and govern their collectives. It establishes shared language, governance primitives, and contextual logic on which everything else is built. Instead of embedding DIDs or VCs, it allows them to be layered on top of community-defined systems for specific purposes, preserving sovereignty and adaptability.

The MatouSDK is the technical resource for developers, providing an implementation of the Protocol, along with tools for developing custom service modules.

The MatouCDK is a collection of guides and templates for co-designing, cultural integration frameworks, and implementation playbooks for launching and growing your community system.

Building this layered architecture the Indigenous DAO Tookit project team will:

  1. At the Foundation Layer:
    • Research and prototype Collective identity primitives, permission system, and develop transport agnostic specification for interoperable coordination.
    • Promote the use of local relay nodes hosted by Indigenous communities to strengthen network resilience
  2. At the Middle Layer:
    • Design service modules architecture which provide community-aligned functions used by applications
    • Prototype service modules which leverage distributed peer-to-peer systems (e.g. IPFS, Scuttlebutt, Hypercore, Keyhive, P2Panda, Earthstar) for decentralized data storage
    • Co-design several service modules as both exemplars and building blocks necessary for our Application level DAO tools
  3. At the Application Layer:
    • Explore architectural patterns with indigenous communities for culturally aligned governance DApps
    • Design and implement DAO-focused DApps
  4. At the Implementation Layer:
    • Co-design, test and document culturally-aligned onboarding pathways for Indigenous communities – interactive learning modules and peer-led training materials to support toolkit adoption
    • Support first deployments of tribal governance pilots using the Indigenous DAO Toolkit
    • Facilitate open-source contribution pathways and mentorship for Indigenous developers and technologists
    • Host collaborative development sprints and wānanga (tribal development conversations) with partner communities and developers
    • Translate key toolkit components and documentation into local languages to ensure accessibility and refine community governance templates reflecting diverse Indigenous governance models
    • Capture and publish case studies and stories of implementation for learning and wider impact

This work will involve direct collaboration with indigenous knowledge keepers, leaders and organisers, alongside technical experts to ensure all solutions are both robust and culturally appropriate.

In doing so, this initiative supports Cardano's goals of advancing governance tooling, building SDK’s and increasing adoption, positioning the platform as the leader in decentralised infrastructure fit for purpose for Indigenous and other diverse and unserved communities.

Our goal is a sustainable ecosystem of sovereign, self-governing indigenous groups with vibrant, resilient interconnected economies. Our foundation will be free, and local-first — enabling groups to maintain autonomy over identity, economy, governance, and infrastructure.

Dependencies

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Please list any key dependencies (if any) for this proposal? These can be internal or external to the proposal.*

What else needs to be done for this proposal to begin or be completed.

None.

Maintenance

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How will this proposal be maintained and supported after initial development?*

While this proposal focuses on the research and development phase of a beta release of the Indigenous DAO Toolkit, it will also lay the foundation for long-term sustainability and community-led stewardship of the tools via our Indigenous Digital Infrastructure DAO called Mātou Collective.

Mātou Collective DAO will govern continued development, deployment, and support of the Indigenous DAO toolkit. It will operate a token-based governance model and manage a treasury that will fund future development, maintenance, and community initiatives. The work to instantiate the Mātou Collective DAO has already begun using Web2 tools. A current project TribalDAOs is co-creating the community processes for this technology-centred DAO with support from Kaumatua (Elders), Cultural Advisors and community.

The treasury will be sustained through a multi-source funding strategy, including:

  • Grants from technology development foundations and research and innovation funds, particularly those aligned with digital sovereignty, open-source development, and Indigenous infrastructure.
  • Investment from individuals and groups who recognise the generational significance of this project and are committed to realising the opportunities of empowering the Indigenous economy through fit-for-purpose infrastructure.
  • Revenue generated through the use of the toolkit, including application and transaction fees, hosted DAO services, identity verification, smart contract deployments, education programs, and consulting.
  • Partnerships with ethical blockchain networks, institutions, and governments that support Indigenous digital rights and self-determination.

Through this structure, the Indigenous DAO Toolkit will not only be designed with sustainability in mind—it will be embedded in a living, evolving ecosystem governed by the very communities it aims to serve.

Key Proposal Deliverable(s) and Definition of Done

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What tangible milestones or outcomes are to be delivered and what will the community ultimately receive?**

Keeping in mind sometimes proposals are multi-phased, what would be the target state of this tranche of the proposal or body of work.

This proposal represents Phase 1 of a comprehensive 3-year project. Beginning with laying the technical foundations alongside our Māori and Pacific communities, we'll establish the groundwork for expanding to additional indigenous First Nations partners in subsequent phases.

The Indigenous DAO Toolkit will deliver a Cardano-native, open-source framework enabling truly sovereign digital communities. Building on two decades of experience creating community coordination tools (Loomio, Ahau, Dark Crystal) and drawing from both indigenous governance traditions and proven technologies (Govstack, Decidem, Aragon, DAOstack), and the last 3 years of work contributing to and deploying AtalaPRISM/Identus functionality, we will deliver:

  • IdentityCore: An implementation of the Matou Protocol, a peer-to-peer identity and relationship system that enables groups to define, manage, and coordinate without reliance on centralised infrastructure.
  • Service Modules: Building blocks which empower higher level Dapps, which allow communities to choose how and where their coordination takes place.
  • DAO Apps: Applications for the establishment and management of governance, participation, tokenomics, treasury management, and group coordination—flexible enough to reflect diverse use cases, cultures and economic practices.
  • Developer SDKs: Tools and documentation to reduce the complexity of building on Cardano, particularly for culturally aligned and localised applications.
  • CDK – Community design toolkit: Tools, guides and templates to support community design, deployment and onboarding.

The project will be completed across six structured milestones over approximately 12 months:

  1. Project Kickoff & Setup: Establishing partnerships with indigenous communities, finalising stakeholder roles, and creating project infrastructure
  2. Research & Design Phase: Conducting co-design sessions with community partners to produce a comprehensive requirements library and technical architecture
  3. Matou Protocol & Developer SDK MVP: Developing v0.1 of our core identity system with initial SDK and documentation
  4. DAO Core Modules MVP: Building governance, membership and treasury management functionality integrated with the identity system
  5. Community Toolkit MVP: Initial resources to support tokenomics design, governance implementation, and community engagement and onboarding strategy
  6. Full MVP Toolkit Integration: Combining all components into a cohesive product with user testing and refinement
  7. Launch of Testnet & Final Deliverables: Public GitHub release, comprehensive documentation, and demonstration webinar

Each milestone payment would be triggered upon verification of the associated deliverables, providing funders with clear visibility into project progress while ensuring your team has the resources needed at each stage of development. Front-loaded funding for the critical research and co-design phase with Māori communities is a pre-requisite.

By the conclusion of Phase 1, we will deliver a fully functional MVP deployed on testnet with user guides and technical documentation, enabling communities to evaluate, test, and provide critical feedback before mainnet implementation in subsequent phases. The final deliverables will include a public GitHub release, detailed implementation report, product website, and an investment invitation for future phases of the project.

Phase 1: Foundation Building (Year 1) << This Proposal

  • IdentityCore Development
    • Develop core identity infrastructure with data sovereignty principles
    • Integrate with existing Ahau tribal registry framework
    • Establish foundational APIs and connection points for future modules
  • DAO App Implementation
    • Design governance structures based on lessons from Loomio and Cardano Constitution work
    • Implement decision-making frameworks that respect cultural contexts
    • Create transparent tokenomics model building on TribalDAO research
  • Testnet Deployment
    • Launch test environment for core functionality
    • Gather feedback and implement improvements
    • Prepare for mainnet release

Phase 2: Mainnet Launch & Ecosystem Growth (Year 2)

  • Mainnet Deployment
    • Launch production network based on testnet learnings
    • Implement security audits and stress testing
    • Establish network monitoring and maintenance protocols
  • Module Ecosystem Growth
    • Begin development of Archiving Module for cultural preservation
    • Start work on Mapping Module for spatial relationships
    • Initiate Family Tree Module enhancement
  • Cross-Platform Integration
    • Extend functionality to connect with other sovereign data systems
    • Implement advanced privacy features building on ssb-tribes work
    • Develop bridges to mainstream platforms without compromising sovereignty
  • Voting Module Implementation
    • Create culturally appropriate collective decision mechanisms
    • Integrate with DAO governance structures
    • Implement transparent audit and verification systems
  • Community Adoption Program
    • Leverage existing relationships with Māori and Pacific communities
    • Create training materials drawing from Digital Marae Connectivity experience
    • Establish ambassador program with early adopters

Phase 3: Economic Infrastructure & Expansion (Year 3)

  • Economic Infrastructure
    • Launch integrated economic tools for community wealth building
    • Implement trade protocols drawing from Tauhokohoko partnership
    • Create sustainable value flows that respect indigenous values
  • Thriving Ecosystem Development
    • Scale network to support broader community adoption
    • Implement cross-chain interoperability solutions
    • Develop advanced identity verification mechanisms

Resourcing & Duration Estimates:

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Please provide estimates of team size and duration to achieve the Key Proposal Deliverables outlined above.*

If not known estimates can be provided.

To successfully deliver the research, design, and MVP development of the Indigenous DAO Toolkit within 12 months, we've structured our team and timeline to align with our milestone-based funding approach:

Core Team (6 - 7 people):

Technical Lead / Architect - 0.8 FTE

  • Oversees technical architecture design and development, ensuring cohesion across technical layers
  • Involved in Milestones 1-6

Smart Contract Developer (Plutus / Aiken) - 1.0 FTE

  • Designs smart contract logic, and ensures Cardano-native compatibility and test-net integration
  • Primary focus during Milestones 3-6

Backend / SDK Developer - 1.6 FTE

  • Builds Core MVP and SDK core interfaces, rules implementation, recovery logic, local-first infrastructure
  • Concentrated involvement during Milestones 3-6

Frontend / DApp Developer - 1.0 FTE

  • Develops developer SDK core interfaces for community setup, memberships, governance and tokenomics
  • Key contributor during Milestones 4-6

Community Researcher / Facilitator - 2 FTE

  • Leads co-design workshops with Māori communities, synthesizes community input into feature requirements
  • Intensive work during Milestones 1-2 and 5

Project Manager / Delivery Lead - 0.8 FTE

  • Coordinates workstreams, tracks milestones, manages documentation and reporting
  • Consistent involvement across Milestones 1-6

Additional Specialists:

  • UX/UI Designer (0.25 FTE) – Interface design during M2-M3 and refinement during M5
  • Systems Designer (0.25 FTE) - Architecture planning during M2 and technical review during M5
  • Legal/Governance Advisor (consultancy) – DAO design validation during M2 and M4
  • Community advisors & cultural consultants – Intensive engagement during M1-M2, feedback during M5

Community Engagement & Travel: A portion of our budget supports travel to rural Māori communities and professional cultural consultation, concentrated during M1-M2 for co-design and M5 for user testing and feedback.

Resource Flexibility: This staffing plan allows for team members to contribute across multiple areas as needed. The milestone-based funding structure enables us to adjust resourcing between phases, with heavier investment in community engagement early (M1-M2) and technical development during middle phases (M3-M4).

Project Duration & Milestone Alignment:

  • Total duration: 12 months structured across 6 milestone-based funding phases
  • M1: Project Kickoff & Setup - Month 1
  • M2: Research & Design Phase - Months 1-3
  • M3: IdentityCore & Developer SDK MVP - Months 3-6
  • M4: Service Modules + DAO Apps MVP - Months 6-9
  • M5: Full MVP Toolkit Integration & Testing - Months 9-11
  • M6: Launch of Testnet & Final Deliverables - Months 11-12

Experience

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Please provide previous experience relevant to complete this project.*

This project is part of a much greater arc. Our team have been growing sovereign, community-centred projects for 12+ years. Our end-game is reliable infrastructure that is accessible, resilient, streamlines coordination, is sustainable, and enables vibrant new economies which grow wealth and wellbeing. Each of the projects below was a stepping stone towards this end-goal. This project is the next step.

Completed Projects

Collective Governance

  • Loomio: open source, value aligned collective decision-making software
  • Scuttle-poll: aA fully p2p implementation of Loomio's core data model in Scuttlebutt
  • Scuttlebutt: decentralized strategy setting process
  • Cardano Constitution: llleading regional Constitution workshop, Chairing the Cardano Constitution Delegate Committee, Contributing as member of Interim Constitutional Committee
  • Digital Marae Connectivity: development and training across 11 different regions of Aotearoa, New Zealand. Training Marae Trustees (those who hold authority over the Tribes central and sacred meeting place) how to utilise digital tools (and other technologies) to support the maintenance and development of rural communities.

Data Sovereignty

  • Scuttlebutt: radically distributed, offline-first, p2p social infrastructure
  • Āhau: tribal registries, family trees, cultural archives. (This was our first pass at building foundational collective identity tools in a radically local-first, data-sovereign way.)

Privacy

  • ssb-tribes: large scale private group encryption, and PO-BOX (communication in to a group without revealing that group's ID, membership, content)
  • ssb-tribes2: distributed key revocation, improved partial replication

Digital Sovereignty Infrastructure

  • Pataka: Community data relays that are trust-less, fully disposable, a desktop app any user can install. Resilience + accessibility layer for Ahau.
  • Dark Crystal: Lowering barriers to entry by transforming secret-key backup into a social-recovery paradigm (see Shamir's Secret Sharing crossed self-sovereign p2p community)
  • ssb-atala-prism: a plugin which added Cardano Verifiable Credentials (Identus) to Āhau, allowing groups to authenticate partner-group members trivially
  • Web Forms: self-hosted custom forms which can be submitted from a web portal, and are transformed into private encrypted messages in a data-sovereign p2p database

Indigenous Identity

  • TribalDIDs, AtalaSDK, Holder Connection requests: Explorations of Cardano’s technology and ecosystem (AtalaPRISM and Identus specifically) to understand and assess the fit for Indigenous Digital Infrastructure
  • Looking Forward: research to identify best organisational structure to support Identity and Indigenous Digital Infrastructure more broadly, settling us on the path to using DAO tools for governance of Mātou Collective itself and the development of the Indigenous DAO Toolkit

Current Projects

Indigenous Institutions

  • TribalDAO: Research and Design for executing the instantiation of Mātou Collective DAO, tokenomics, etc

Indigenous Tribal Development Projects

  • [Pasific Islands] K'aute Pasifika: A partnership with a Pacific Healthcare provider focused on putting health data (see identity) in the hands of community first.
  • [Maori] Tauhokohoko: A partnership with Te Kotahi centre of Māori Research Excellence at Waikato University led by the ex Foreign Minister and Minster for Trade Nanaia Mahuta, to enhance Indigenous trade using culturally aligned digital identity and data sovereignty tools.
  • [Cook Islands] Tairea Enua Trust: Supporting the establishment of a collective land trust in the Cook Islands including supporting, governance, communications, and administration systems.
  • [Maori] Whangaroa Papa Hapū: A community partner facilitating reparations with the British Crown through the New Zealand government for 28 hapū (tribal groups) of their region.
  • [Maori] Hui mo Te Maata Puna Working Group: Formation of a tribal mandated group for the many tribes of Tautoro (a region in the Far North of Aotearoa, New Zealand) tasked with protecting the wai (water resource) of the Te Maata spring. Challenge is to reorient control back to manawhenua with structure and tools (rather than farmers, orchardists and municipal councils).
  • [Maori] Te Riingi Marae: Based in Tautoro in the Far North of Aotearoa, is the collective home to the hapū of Ngāti Moerewa, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Whakahotu, Ngāti Kiriahi, and Te Ngare Hauata—a traditional and trusted space for nurturing spiritual, physical, cultural, and social wellbeing. Mātou Collective will support Marae Trustees with DAO expertise, enabling them to use Indigenous DAO Toolbox to safely and securely organise their hapū’s economic and cultural affairs.

Cost breakdown

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Based on your preferred contract type and cost estimate, please provide a cost breakdown in ada and in USD.*

Based on a fixed-price contract model, we estimate the total project cost at ₳2,291,088 ADA (approximately $1,145,544 USD) to deliver the complete IDI Toolkit MVP over 12 months. This budget includes encompasses all personnel, operational expenses, and required overhead as follows:

1. Personnel Costs: ₳1,724,400 ADA ($862,200 USD) - 75.3%

2. Operational Expenses: ₳217,200 ADA ($108,600 USD) - 9.5%

  • Infrastructure: ₳10,200 ADA ($5,100 USD)
    • System hosting, data storage, transaction costs
  • Digital Presence: ₳4,800 ADA ($2,400 USD)
    • Website hosting, domain names, content platforms
  • Community Engagement: ₳58,000 ADA ($29,000 USD) - 2.5%
    • Community workshops in rural locations
    • Cultural consultation with tribes
    • Translation services
    • Analytics and survey tools
    • Event management platforms
    • Social media and community outreach
  • Travel & Accommodation: ₳90,000 ADA ($45,000 USD) - 3.9%
    • Extensive travel to rural Māori communities
    • Transportation and logistics for remote areas
  • Development Tools: ₳17,200 ADA ($8,600 USD)
    • Video editing, design subscriptions, AI tools, project management
  • Additional Administrative: ₳37,000 ADA ($18,500 USD)
    • Fiscal host fees, insurance, legal expenses

3. Overhead: ₳349,488 ADA ($174,744 USD) - 15.3%

  • Administrative overhead, contingency funding, and risk management

Further Information

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Please link to any supplementary information on this proposal to help aid knowledge sharing. E.g., Specifications, Videos, Initiation, or Proposal Documents.

Mātou Protocol - Collective Identity in the Digital Realm

In the tapestry of human existence, our identities have traditionally been woven from threads of place, time, and relationships—a harmonious interplay that defines our sense of self as part of a community.

This interconnectedness is intrinsic to indigenous wisdom, emphasising that our being is not isolated but deeply entwined with the land we inhabit, the eras we traverse, and the people we share our journeys with. Such a perspective fosters a holistic understanding of identity, rooted in collective experiences and mutual stewardship.

Mātou Collective has been on a journey to deeply understand how this natural way of moving through the physical realm can manifest in the digital one.

The urgency of reclaiming our collective digital identities and re-establishing the communal bonds that technology has inadvertently weakened is high.

Our current digital era has caused our organic fabric to fray. The digital systems we use, once burgeoning with promise, were constructed upon frameworks that overlooked these fundamental human connections. Instead of nurturing our inherent relational nature, it compartmentalised our identities, scattering fragments across various platforms and services. Single Sign-On (SSO) systems emerged as both a convenience and a conduit for this fragmentation, allowing users to access multiple services seamlessly while simultaneously dispersing their digital selves across disparate corporate domains.

In this paradigm, our personal data is a commodity, housed by someone else, within the silos of tech conglomerates. The once unified self, understood through the lens of community, environment and context, is now parsed into data points—each interaction, preference, and behaviour meticulously logged and owned by entities far removed us. Diluting our personal agency and eroding the collective, relational essence that defines us and all that we want to achieve.

Enabling groups to access digital spaces through a collective identity challenges the prevailing individual-centric digital paradigm. This approach not only redefines conventional norms but also aligns with our inherent human tendency to operate collectively. It’s an intiative to restore our natural communal engagement within the digital realm.

Building upon a decade of dedicated data sovereignty research, work in and as part of community-led digital product development, Mātou Collective is advancing towards the creation of the Mātou Protocol—a revolutionary identity primitive rooted in indigenous wisdom to facilitate collective action in digital spaces. Our previous endeavor, Āhau, focused on individual identity within groups, emphasizing whakapapa—the intricate web of genealogical, memetic lineage and environmental connections encompassing family, history, and place.

Mātou Protocol is designed to enable collectives to access digital spaces through a unified group identity, while allowing manuhiri (guests) to maintain their distinct collective identities, eliminating the need for individual sign-ins. Mātou Protocol fosters environments where collective agency and shared stewardship are fundamental, restoring natural communal engagement within the digital realm and reflecting the interconnectedness intrinsic to indigenous wisdom. For example;

Use Case Scenarios:1. Wairoa River Hapū Collaboration: Unified Environmental Stewardship Through Collective Identity

Background: The Wairoa River holds deep cultural, spiritual, and ecological significance for several hapū in the Bay of Plenty region of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Its health and vitality are intimately tied to the identity and wellbeing of the communities who have long served as its kaitiaki (guardians). Upholding this responsibility requires authentic collaboration, grounded in tikanga and mutual respect.

Scenario: Multiple hapū come together to protect and manage the Wairoa River through a grassroots, bottom-up coordination effort. Each hapū maintains full authority over its own membership and internal decision-making, issuing collective credentials that reflect their unique identity and tikanga.

Using Mātou Protocol, these hapū establish a shared digital workspace that honours their relational ties — a co-held space that reflects their shared kaupapa, while respecting the mana motuhake (self-determination) of each group. Access to this environment is granted through collective identity credentials issued by each hapū, allowing members to participate without needing individual logins or centralised accounts.

The platform supports coordinated action across hapū lines — from sharing traditional ecological knowledge and monitoring water quality, to collaboratively deciding on conservation strategies — all in a way that is secure, traceable, and grounded in indigenous models of governance. Guests (manuhiri) can also be granted access through distinct credentials, preserving both openness and protection of cultural boundaries.

By reasserting control over their digital presence and relationships, hapū are not only enhancing their capacity to act collectively but are also restoring tikanga-aligned models of stewardship in the digital realm.

2. Cardano Constitutional Delegate Collective – Group-as-IDP in Governance Coordination

Background: As Cardano transitions into a new era of on-chain governance under the Voltaire framework, contributors across the globe begin co-creating the second version (V2) of the Cardano Constitution. Rooted in the regional deliberations — including workshops held in Aotearoa and around the world — this process exemplifies the need for trust, provenance, and contextual identity. There is no one leader, anymore.

Scenario: To enable seamless collaboration across regions and contributors, the Consitutional Delegates establish a digital workspace powered by Mātou Protocol, which functions similarly to a SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) setup — but with one key difference: instead of a corporate identity provider (IDP), the group itself serves as the IDP.

Each collective — whether it’s the V2 Contributor Collective, the Delegate Collective, or the contributors from a country workshop — has a group identity. These grant access to shared resources based on relational provenance — i.e., where a group of people have contributed. So, for example:

  • Rochelle’s participation as part of Aotearoa’s workshop group automatically qualifies her to enter the drafting space. With her Aotearoa workshop group identity her role is authenticated and she is granted the appropriate permissions without requiring a new login or centralised account.
  • Engie, a Constitutional Delegate was elected from the same region, she is part Aotearoa’s workshop group, and the Constitutional Delegates group, she is also one of the progenitors of the V2 Contributor Collective so can invite all the workshop groups from around the world. Mātou Protocol recognises these multiple affiliation, enabling her as a contributor, finalising amendments as a Delegate and communicating the V2 nuances to the ecosystem as a part of the V2 Contributor Collective.

New collectives can emerge fluidly as work evolves. A group of editors refining the constitutional language may form a new Editor Collective defining their scope of authority and integrating with the broader process — all without needing new usernames, passwords, or top-down permissioning.

In the Mātou Protocol paradigm, individual identity is not static — it is relational, contextual, and constantly evolving. You are recognised not just as a person, but as a living node in a web of collectives, places you belong to and kaupapa (stories, or in other words, projects with a purpose).

As you move between different roles, projects, or decision-making bodies, your identity adapts — gaining new dimensions, responsibilities, and visibility — without compromising your privacy or autonomy.

Example: You, Across Collectives

  • In one context, you are a delegate in a constitutional working group — you were elected to represent a regional workshop.
  • In another, you are a founding editor of the Voltaire Papers — a new collective formed from shared authorship responsibilities.
  • Later, you are invited into a pan-Pacific governance network stewarding ongoing constitutional interpretation — not as a delegate, but as a recognised kaitiaki of process and precedent.

Each time, your core identity remains intact — you don’t need to re-prove who you are. But your relationship to the kaupapa — the project, the people, the purpose.

Mātou Protocol ensures that:

  • You are seen as you are, within the unique whakapapa of each group.
  • You don’t have to log in again or start from scratch — access is granted by the groups you are already part of.
  • You carry your mana with you, and it is enhanced through every group you help form, lead, or support.
  • Your movements are recorded with dignity — and held by you — as a ledger of contribution and belonging.

Why This Matters

In indigenous and relational governance models, a person’s role emerges from their relationships — not from fixed hierarchies or static credentials. Mātou Protocol encodes this worldview into digital infrastructure, enabling identity to be fluid yet verifiable, private yet trusted, and always grounded in collective meaning.

This is identity as whakapapa in motion — evolving, nested, and nourished by every collective you are part of.

Technical Glossary: Treasury Proposal

Sovereign Digital Community

A sovereign digital community is a group of people who use digital tools and infrastructure to self-govern, coordinate, and manage their own shared resources, without relying on centralized platforms or external authorities. It’s about enabling communities to maintain autonomy, cultural integrity, and operational control in digital spaces—just as they would in the physical world.

Key Characteristics of a Sovereign Digital Community:

  • Self-Governance: The community sets its own rules, decision-making processes, and values—often through decentralized governance (e.g., DAOs).
  • Digital Identity Ownership: Members control their own identities, credentials, and reputation without being tied to corporate platforms (e.g., Google, Meta).
  • Cultural and Structural Alignment: The digital systems reflect the community’s own ways of organising—such as consensus, kinship structures, or shared stewardship—rather than imposing outside models.
  • Decentralized Infrastructure: Communities can host and maintain their own tools, data, and services without dependency on centralized servers or third parties.
  • Collective Control of Resources: Treasury systems, tokens, or smart contracts enable communities to manage their own economies, assets, and incentives.
  • Interoperability & Autonomy: While connected to wider networks (like Cardano), the community retains full autonomy over its internal operations and data.

CDK - (Community Development Kit)

A Community Development Kit (CDK) is a modular, open-source suite of tools, frameworks, and resources designed to support the creation and governance of sovereign digital communities and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). It extends the functionality of a traditional Software Development Kit (SDK) by incorporating not only technical components (e.g., smart contracts, APIs, and developer libraries) but also non-technical resources such as governance templates, co-design guides, cultural integration frameworks, and implementation playbooks.

The CDK provides both developers and community organizers with a comprehensive foundation for building, customizing, and sustaining decentralized infrastructures aligned with their specific social, economic, and cultural contexts. It is designed to be interoperable with Cardano-native protocols and identity systems and prioritizes accessibility, modularity, and self-hosting capabilities. The CDK is particularly focused on lowering barriers to entry for underrepresented and non-technical communities by enabling participatory governance, token-based coordination, and relationship-centric identity systems.