Our Berlin aftermovie is live! Thank you to all who made the trip! You can watch the video on YouTube by clicking on the embed below.

If you missed the full write-up, we published a retrospective covering everything: the Bread Cooperative Zone at the Neocypherpunk Summit, Bread Stacks at DappCon, Josh's interview with Yanis Varoufakis at the Web3 Summit, and the community hangout at Tempelhofer Feld.

Bread Summer 2026 in Berlin

Bread Cooperative

Jul 14, 2026

Our week at Berlin Blockchain Week: interviewing Yanis Varoufakis, curating the Bread Cooperative Zone, and meeting the community in person.

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Thank you to everyone who came out. Seeing you in person is the best part of the whole thing.

Solidarity forever 🍞

Yes, Berlin Blockchain Week is a massive draw for us. But Berlin itself is a special place for all things that align with our values: a freer, open internet that is run and operated by regular people like us.

Here's how our week went.

Neocypherpunk Summit

We ran the Bread Cooperative Zone at Funkhaus, an iconic Berlin building that's an essential stop on your next visit to the city. It was built in the early 1950s as the headquarters for East Germany's state radio, designed by Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich.

Our curation was well attended, and for the second year running people came up to tell us our space was one of their favourites of the whole summit. We know that our narratives are atypical of the crypto space, and we embraced it since this is where people's sentiments currently are. One of these hot-button topics was a talk on the Pope's encyclical on AI, which was very well attended.

We used the occasion to share more about what we're building, and raised over 200 euros for a fundraiser supporting a family in Gaza.

DappCon

DappCon was a polished and well-organised event hosted by Gnosis, the chain on which we build our solidarity tools. Our booth was in a great part of the venue, giving us a great flow of visitors. Folks could just walk up and we'd tell them about Bread. Watching people's eyes light up when we explain how the Solidarity Fund works makes every foray out into the event circuit memorable, and this was no different.

In addition to learning about Bread, visitors to our setup got to enjoy a mini game. Inspired by bread-related German late-night TV, the game had participants guess the weight of a pretzel in order to win a prize.

Josh also ran a workshop on Bread Stacks, our savings circle tool, and showing it to people got a real conversation going. We received plenty of interest and some sharp questions about who it's for and how it holds up in practice. That's exactly the kind of feedback we came for, and and have already started implementing into the product. If you're interested in reading more, we've got a detailed at the embed below.

The Oldest Financial Tool You've Never Heard Of

Bread Cooperative

Mar 12, 2026

Savings circles have outlasted every banking institution. Here's why — and how Bread Cooperative is bringing them onchain with Bread Stacks.

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Web3 Summit

We returned to Funkhaus for round 2! Josh interviewed renowned Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis on stage and it was undoubtedly the highlight of the trip. And for Josh, a moment he'll remember forever. If you've heard of ideas such as technofeudalism, that's all thanks to Yanis Varoufakis.

Varoufakis gave the crypto space its due critiques but remains open-minded about its potential to empower. The conversation was mentioned on Euronews, which you can read right here.

The Bread Hangout

For some of us, it was the first time actually meeting our colleagues in person. Having jumped straight into the action with planned scheduling, we found the open final session a welcome break.

So we wound down activities on a warm day at Tempelhofer Feld, an old airport park with a community garden. We got drinks, food, music and enjoyed a great time with faces new and familiar well into the evening.

Reflections from the Bread Team

Touching grass with the people we talk to on Discord every day was surreal. The Bread team reflects the Breadfam in that we are based all over the world, united by the belief that technology can reflect our values.

Bringing together the people who make our community possible has been energising. As we march towards our landmark 24th $BREAD distribution, the chance to physically meet those who have supported us on every step of the journey clarified our sense of purpose. We got to discuss the upcoming public release of Bread Stacks, reflect on what makes the Solidarity Fund galvanise our community, and feel the human connection that we want tech to facilitate & amplify. Tech is often guilty of prioritising mechanisms before the outcomes, and Berlin enabled us to speak directly to the people for whom we are building.

It was an incredible week together that really flew by. Thank you again to everyone who spent part of their week with us. We'll see you in Berlin next year.

Solidarity forever 🍞

Our team spent an incredible few days together at Berlin Blockchain Week and the events around it. We've got a retrospective for you coming real soon, including thoughts from the team and insight from Josh's time on stage with the one & only Yanis Varoufakis.

In the meantime we've still got plenty to celebrate - another successful $BREAD distribution! Let's get right into cycle 23.

Distribution

Cycle #23 has wrapped, and the 1,640.64 $BREAD in yield that has accumulated over the last month has been distributed across the 8 member projects.

Half the yield is split equally between all participating members, and the other half gets voted on by $BREAD holders. Our full list of members can be found below.

For those who haven't checked out our newsletter in a while you might notice a newer name! TDF, or Traditional Dream Factory, is the newest member of the Bread Solidarity Fund. You can click the embed below to read the announcement, we have a deeper dive of their activities coming soon.

Traditional Dream Factory joins the Bread Solidarity Fund

Bread Cooperative

May 22, 2026

Traditional Dream Factory joins the Bread Solidarity Fund as our 8th member, a regenerative land project in Portugal reconnecting people with nature.

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And here's a final breakdown of the solidarity & democratic distributions for July!

And, as always, we've already kicked off the next cycle, onward to distribution #24! Head to fund.bread.coop to bake and vote.

If you're not already on the Bread Cooperative Discord, it's the best place to stay up to date with the community. Crypto can very much be a tool to improve society, and we've got a server full of folks working towards this goal.

Click here to join!

Neocypherpunk Summit, June 14, Funkhaus

The Neocypherpunk Summit gathers hacktivists, researchers, lawyers, whistleblowers and organisers around one idea: privacy and autonomy are stronger when they're practiced collectively, not alone. That's the same principle behind everything we build, so we're glad to be a partner this year.

We've got our own room at the summit, and we're curating content there and on the main stage. Privacy and autonomy hold up better when they're collective. The same goes for finance. Come find us and talk it through.

Entry is free. Details and registration here.

DappCon, June 16 to 17, Radialsystem

DappCon is hosted by Gnosis, the network on which we build. This is our home turf: an event for builders, focusing on real engineering.

It's also where we're making the first public announcement of Bread Stacks.

A Stack is a savings circle a group runs together. Everyone chips in the same amount each round, and members take turns claiming the pot. It's a model communities have used for generations (think susus, tandas, broodfonds, chit funds) now running transparently onchain with $BREAD. No loans, no credit, no bank taking a cut. The group sets the rules and votes on the decisions together.

Why would you need something like this? We've all got big expenses, and this is a time-tested method of community financing to meet these needs. Local savings circles are still used today to cover down payments, tuition, fund medical procedures, and help each other out during rainy days. Whatever your group is saving for, you do it together.

Have a look before the announcement at bread.coop/stacks. Tickets to DappCon are $250 or 10,000 Circles, available here.

We recorded a session explaining the concept, click the embed below to check it out.

Web3Summit, June 18 to 19, Funkhaus

Breadfam Josh is giving a talk at Web3Summit, on a lineup that includes Yanis Varoufakis. It's a festival for digital freedom from the people behind Polkadot, and a good place to hear where Bread fits into the bigger picture.

Tickets are 75 euros. More info here.

Bread Hangout, June 19, Tempelhof

We're closing the week out in the park. Food, drinks, light sports and music with the Breadfam and friends, from 4pm at Tempelhof. Bring any instrument you have with you. Everyone is welcome.

RSVP here.

See you in Berlin 🇩🇪

Solidarity forever 🍞

Another fantastic month of solidarity is behind us and we've got your roundup ready. Let's go!

A total of 1,843 $BREAD went to participating organisations in the Solidarity Fund. Every BREAD baked generates yield, and the more BREAD we have in circulation, the more yield there is to go around.

In case you missed our last announcement, you might notice something a little different in this next image.

A new name? Total number of organisations in the Solidarity Fund up to 8? Your eyes do not deceive you, please welcome our newest member, Traditional Dream Factory! We'll be publishing a spotlight on their activities soon, in the meantime you can check out our announcement article by clicking the preview below.

Traditional Dream Factory joins the Bread Solidarity Fund

Bread Cooperative

May 22, 2026

Traditional Dream Factory joins the Bread Solidarity Fund as our 8th member, a regenerative land project in Portugal reconnecting people with nature.

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And finally, we have the breakdown of the distribution. 50% of the yield every month gets split equally as part of our Solidarity share. The remaining 50% gets voted on as per the wishes of BREAD holders everywhere. You can participate too by heading over to https://fund.bread.coop/.

Meet Bread Cooperative Members In-Person this Summer

We've had a busy month with AFK meetings in May, with Breadfam showing up in Montenegro for the Shared Visions conference, and an intimate gathering in the Basque region of Spain.

And casting our attention towards mid-June, Berlin will be the place to visit! On the 14th of June we have the Neocypherpunk Summit, a celebration of open protocols, privacy tools and an accountable internet. You can get your ticket here.

Don't burn the midnight oil too hard though because we've got 2 days of talks and hangouts at Dappcon right after. You can purchase your tickets with xDAI, the stablecoin used in the Solidarity Fund to bake BREAD. These events will be our first truly public announcements of our upcoming product, Bread Stacks. You can see a demo that we previously created below.

And that's all for this edition of BREAD Updates. Let us know when you pick up your tickets for any of these events, and make sure to tell your friends!

See you in Berlin! 🇩🇪

Solidarity forever 🍞

Please welcome Traditional Dream Factory!

Traditional Dream Factory (TDF) is a regenerative project in the Alentejo region of Portugal. They're one part nature conservation and rewilding, one part regenerative agriculture and ecotourism, and one part rethinking our entire relationship with land and ownership. Founded by Samuel Delesque nearly 6 years ago, what started out as an abandoned chicken farm has turned into a way to reconnect with the natural world, away from the mayhem of city life.

They embrace an active approach to land regeneration, aiming for measurable improvements to soil and water quality alongside the biodiversity on their premises. TDF is the first of our member organisations to have their own token, aptly named $TDF. Like BREAD, it's a governance token. Holding it gives you a vote in how TDF is run, the same way baking BREAD gives you a say in the Solidarity Fund.

The token also reflects a stake in a real, physical place, with each $TDF granting you a night per year at the TDF premises in Portugal. There's a lot more to say about their organisation and token, and we'll get into it in a future article. If you don't want to wait, their docs lay it all out.

TDF's arrival brings the number of members in the Solidarity Fund to 8. And just like the organisations who have been with us on the journey so far, their presence pushes the ceiling of possibilities for what we can achieve.

For now, there are a few ways to show up:

• Head over to TDF to get to know them and what they are building. Don't forget to sign up to their newsletter, and follow them on Instagram, Twitter, and their blog to show your support.

• Visit the Bread Solidarity Fund to bake some BREAD and generate yield that supports TDF and every other member project.

• Share this update in your own network. It helps reach the people who need to hear it.

Solidarity forever 🍞

It's been another great month of spreading solidarity. Here are the updates from the most recent distribution cycle and some news from the Breadverse we think you should know about.

BREAD Distribution Cycle #21

1,594 $BREAD was distributed this cycle to our seven member projects. Whether this is your first cycle or your twenty-first, it's always worth going over how this works.

Baking $BREAD generates yield, and that yield is the engine behind our onchain solidarity.

Every cycle, we share it. Half is split equally among all seven member projects, so every project gets the same base amount regardless of the vote. The other half is voted on by $BREAD holders. Here are are member organisations, are there any you would like to learn more about? We've done features on Gardens and Crypto Commons Association, let us know who you would like an update on next.

The more $BREAD you bake, the more voting power you generate, and the bigger your say. Here's how the final numbers look.

If you're already baking, you're already generating voting power. Head to the governance page and make it count.

For the final up-to-date figures, check: https://fund.bread.coop/governance

Bread Cooperative Contributes to Privacy on Ethereum

Earlier this month we announced our contribution to Kohaku, the Ethereum Foundation's privacy wallet SDK led by Vitalik Buterin. Every standard Ethereum transaction is public by default. Kohaku is built to change that, and Bread contributed frontend development to make it happen.

Bread Cooperative Is Helping Build Privacy Into Ethereum's Foundation

Bread Cooperative

Apr 6, 2026

How Bread Cooperative contributed to Kohaku, the Ethereum Foundation's privacy-by-default open source wallet SDK led by Vitalik Buterin and Nicolas Consigny

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The Bread Cooperative team is made of seasoned developers and operators who thrive on open systems. We believe that solidarity has a natural place within tech systems, and would love to contribute to whatever your team might be building. Do send us a message at contact@bread.coop if you've got any ideas.

Bread Stacks Presentation by Josh at DappCon 2026 in Berlin

Breadfam Josh will be on stage at Dappcon in Berlin this June (16-17). His talk is centred on our newest product, Bread Stacks, our upcoming Savings Circles product.

Saving circles were developed independently across many cultures, using established community relationships to financial needs.

Josh's talk "Save Money like your Ancestors: Stacks and other Solidarity Tools" shows how we are embracing technology to adapt this tech principle to the rigours of modern life.

We presented Bread Stacks in a community call earlier this year, and you can see the video here.

There will be plenty of Breadfam in attendance, come say hi.

You can get your Dappcon tickets here.

Support Etherform on Giveth, Round Closes May 12

We built Etherform, an open-source set of GitHub Actions workflows for Foundry smart contract development. This saves teams from rebuilding the same security and testing pipelines from scratch on every project.

You can donate to support Etherform's development in our ongoing Giveth Quadratic Funding Round, live until May 12.

Quadratic Funding is a community-centric mechanism of supporting ideas. The number of supporters matters much more than the amount each supporter donates. You can read more about Etherform and the mechanism by clicking the embed below.

Open-source only works if we fund it. Here's your chance

Bread Cooperative

Apr 27, 2026

The Bread team built Etherform, an open-source CI/CD toolkit for Foundry. It's live in a QF round on Giveth until May 12. Here's why every donor counts.

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That's all for this set up of updates. Let us know if there's anything that you would like to see in future updates.

Till next time,

Solidarity forever 🍞

We're rallying the community to donate and support the building of these open tools.

Details For Developers

Github: https://github.com/BreadchainCoop/etherform

Etherform is an open-source security and DevSecOps toolkit of reusable GitHub Actions workflows for Foundry smart contract CI/CD. It's designed to help smart contract teams standardize and automate core development and deployment tasks through reusable workflows, so you're not rebuilding the same CI/CD setup in every repository.

It includes workflows for build and test pipelines, formatting checks, coverage, Halmos symbolic testing, testnet deployment, Blockscout verification, and upgrade safety validation.

A core part of Etherform is upgrade safety for proxy-based contracts using the OpenZeppelin upgrades-core CLI. This validates storage layout compatibility, initializer safety, and proxy semantics. The upgrade safety workflow compares contracts against the base branch or against an explicitly defined reference contract, catching breaking changes before they ship.

Alongside the individual workflows, Etherform includes an all-in-one pipeline that combines CI, upgrade validation, and testnet deployment into a single orchestrated workflow.

The goal throughout is to make Foundry-based smart contract CI/CD more reusable, configurable, and safety-oriented across teams and repositories.

If you like what you see here, please spread the word!

Round closes May 12. If you know anyone building on Ethereum or working with Foundry, send them the link: https://qf.giveth.io/project/etherform

How Open-Source Technology Gets Funded & Maintained

The Ethereum ecosystem runs on open-source tooling. The entire decentralized economy you use every day is freely available because people build it in the open and share it. That only keeps working if it's funded, and this mostly happens through donations.

Etherform is available to any team building on Ethereum, including the mission-aligned ones we want to see thrive. When tools like this go unfunded, they go unmaintained, and the whole ecosystem is worse off for it.

New Ways of Meeting Funding Requirements

This is where Quadratic Funding comes in. Etherform is currently live in the Ethereum Security QF Round on Giveth, which runs until May 12. You know how QF works. Breadth beats depth. The matching pool rewards projects by the number of unique donors, not total dollars raised, which means a wide base of small donors compounds into serious matching.

A $5 donation from you has more leverage here than a $500 donation from one person.

The whole point of the mechanism is to reward popular, community support. That's why we are asking you to get involved, because a little really does go a long way.

Round closes May 12. If you know anyone building on Ethereum or working with Foundry, send them the link: https://qf.giveth.io/project/etherform

Video: Bread Coop Community Call with Updraft

Our most recent community call featured Updraft and founder Adam Stallard, where he presented a way we can fund democratic ideas without grant committees. The Bread Coop Cafe Discord channel is home to many insightful presentations, and this one got into many aspects of how a lot of our frustrations in crypto can be improved. Community Calls happen almost every week on Wednesdays, keep an eye out for the next one.

Podcast: Is This The New Internet Podcast

You're Upset at Capitalism, Not Technology

Joshua Davila, The Blockchain Socialist, joins me on the newest episode of Is This The New Internet?

https://hellofrommarv.substack.com

Breadfam Josh & Marv chatted on Is This The New Internet podcast about a range of topics close to cryptoleftist passions. Contents include debanking, a history of democratic economies, in-depth explainers of Bread and how our frustration with AI is actually frustration with capitalism.

Full episode available wherever you get your podcasts, shorts are on YouTube.

Article: Why The Cooperative Movement Should Care About Crypto Still

Why the Cooperative Movement Should Care About Crypto Still | Platform Cooperativism Consortium

In August 2023, my book Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It came out through Repeater Books. The past couple of years have...

https://platform.coop

Josh wrote an article for Platform Cooperativism Consortium about the advantages of crypto that are often thrown out by the left because of how the tech/industry is perceived. It's a shared frustration for many in our space, and this is a helpful article to share with leftist friends who have dismissed crypto because of only having seen our worst actors.

Article: Socialist Co-Ops Against Silicon Valley Empires

Socialist Co-Ops Against Silicon Valley Empires

Co-ops are often dismissed as attempts to create islands of socialism. But building democratically controlled tech infrastructure can be part of a wider movement for working-class power.

https://jacobin.com

Stefano Tortorici and R. Trebor Scholz make a compelling case in Jacobin for why cooperatives need to stop pretending they're apolitical. The piece argues that without co-ops actively aligning with unions and social movements, Big Tech wins by default. It asks hard questions about what it actually takes to build counterpower in the AI era, and doesn't let the cooperative movement off the hook.

And so ends our first-ever Bread Co-op Media Update! This is an open space where we'll continue to share updates, drop any articles you would like to be considered for inclusion on the Discord.

Till next time,

Solidarity forever 🍞

Solidarity economics are core to our values at Bread, and this includes the ability to freely participate without the fear of having your identity revealed. Debanking and exclusion from traditional finance is a very real threat to many who operate online, especially in leftist spaces.

We are incredibly proud with the work done to contribute to onchain privacy, and grateful to be trusted by the Ethereum Foundation in building such an important tenet for the network going forward.

Josh | ⬛🟥⬛

@TBSocialist

Stoked to see our work on the Kohaku wallet being shown on the big stage at EthCC! It was a pleasure to work with the @ethereumfndn

If you're interested in working with us (@breadcoop), please reach out to contact@bread.coop

youtube.com/watch?v=yp2oW6…

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9:55 • 6 Apr 2026

The Problem: Every Move You Make Is Public

When you use a standard Ethereum wallet, everything you do is visible to anyone who looks. Every token you send, every payment you receive, every wallet balance. Transparency was necessary by design , and is central to how blockchains prove wallet balances. But it is also a serious problem for anyone who does not want their financial life on display.

Thanks to the way standard crypto wallets work, the privacy leaks go deeper than the ledger. Connecting and transacting exposes your IP address and network activity to centralised service providers sitting between you and the blockchain.

Previous attempts to fix this required users to jump through technical hoops just to achieve basic transaction privacy, and most people never bothered. The honest conclusion from years of trying is that privacy cannot be bolted onto a wallet as an afterthought. It requires a ground-up rebuild.

The Vision: Privacy That Just Works

Kohaku is the Ethereum Foundation's answer to this problem. Led by Vitalik Buterin and Foundation protocol coordinator Nicolas Consigny, it is an open-source SDK and reference wallet designed to make private-by-default transactions normal and accessible across the Ethereum ecosystem. You can check out the video below from November 2025 where Vitalik presented the idea.

The goal is that any wallet team can build on Kohaku's toolkit and ship privacy features without reinventing the wheel. Kohaku handles the hard parts: private sends and receives, per-app account isolation so one application cannot track your activity in another, P2P transaction broadcasting that bypasses centralized nodes, and network-level traffic masking to prevent IP leaks. It is designed to be integrated by all wallet players with minimal fuss.

The project sits inside a larger Ethereum Foundation initiative called the Privacy Cluster, a team of 47 engineers, researchers, and cryptographers dedicated to making privacy a built-in property of the network, not a feature you have to opt into.

Where Bread Comes In

The Kohaku team needed a React specialist. Someone who could get inside an unfamiliar codebase, understand what it was doing, and improve it without breaking what was already working. Our frontend developer has been doing exactly that.

In close to two months, here is what has been contributed:

• A new dashboard UI. The old wallet showed you one account at a time. You had to switch between accounts to see what was happening across your wallet. We built a consolidated view that shows your total balance and all account activity at once, public and private accounts together, on a single screen.

• Significant performance improvements. The privacy stack (the part of the wallet that shields transactions and manages the link between your public and private accounts) used to take around a minute to load. By splitting a large, tangled codebase into smaller, cleaner files and optimising how the code runs, we cut that to 20 to 30 seconds.

• A better dApp connection flow. When you connect a wallet to an application, the old Kohaku forced you to use an existing account, which defeats the purpose of having privacy tools. We changed this so that connecting to a dApp prompts you to create a fresh account on the spot, fund it immediately, and go. A clean address with no history attached, every time.

The Kohaku team reviewed the work and responded well. The partnership is continuing, with a new dashboard design in progress and conversations about expanding our scope on the project.

How the Privacy Actually Works

When you open a Kohaku wallet, you get two accounts automatically. One public account, visible to anyone, which works like any standard Ethereum wallet. The other is a private account, shielded from public view, is where the privacy lives.

The flow works in 2 parts.

1 - You start by sending funds from your public account into your private account. That move is the last traceable step.

2 - an create a brand new public account with no transaction history attached to it. When you send funds from the private account to that new address, there is no link anyone can follow back to you. The chain is broken.

This is built on two established privacy protocols:

• Railgun, which is already production-ready in the Kohaku toolkit

• Privacy Pools, which adds a compliance-friendly layer letting users prove their funds are legitimate without revealing their identity.

Our developer Blessing put it plainly: "I've always preferred it when nobody can trace a particular wallet to me. If I send funds to my private account, there is no way anybody can link that to my original address. Then if I send from the private account to a new public account, I've already broken that link for anybody to trace me." That is the design goal, and it is becoming real.

Financial privacy is not a niche technical concern. Nobody should have to expose their financial life just to participate in a new financial system. Kohaku is trying to change that for Ethereum, and we are glad to be part of it.

This is exactly the sort of work that Bread Cooperative specialises in. If your organisation is looking to build specialised blockchain tooling, we are on call to help. Email us at contact@bread.coop with any requests.

You can watch the full presentation by Nicolas Consigny at ETHCC below. Vitalik also called in, sit back and enjoy.

Welcome to all the new subscribers, especially those who attended our Beyond The Bank webinar where we got to showcase our new product Bread Stacks! If you would like to download the free guide that we shared after the event, head over to our Linktree.

Another month of onchain solidarity has been completed, and we've got all the details for you below. This edition also includes a brand-new video walkthrough, and a chance to share your own ideas through our community. Up first, Distribution Cycle #20 🍞

BREAD Distribution Cycle #20

Just over 2000 $BREAD going out to our member organisations, a resounding W for onchain solidarity. Prices might be down but the Bread community has continued to show up & support causes. Here are the member projects eligible for distribution.

Whether this is your first or 20th cycle with us, it always helps to go over how all of this works. Baking $BREAD generates yield, and this yield is the engine behind our onchain solidarity. Every month, we share the yield.

50% is split equally among all 7 members. The remaining 50% is voted on by $BREAD holders. The more BREAD you hold, the more yield you generate, and the larger say you have in where it goes. Here's how the distribution panned out.

And now a final look at the numbers. Thanks so much for voting, participating and baking. It really means a lot that you continue to show up 🧡

If you'd like to bake $BREAD and contribute to onchain solidarity, we've got a step-by step walkthrough here.

How To Participate in the Bread Solidarity Fund

Bread Cooperative

Jan 20, 2026

A beginner-friendly guide to Bread Cooperative's Solidarity Fund. Learn how to bridge, bake, and burn $BREAD to support onchain solidarity.

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And if you'd like to have Bread Co-founder Josh walk you through the process himself, you're in for a treat!

New Video: Walkthrough of the $BREAD Solidarity Fund on YouTube

This video is a great one to share with friends and naysayers who think that crypto is only good for speculation.

Call For Essays

We know that the cryptoleft sits at a tricky crossroads that requires nuance to communicate, and we want to hear from you. What are your experiences in the cryptoleft like? What was the journey that got you here, and where do you believe we can go, together?

In this spirit, we are opening up space for thinkers, builders, and activists to contribute to Bread's research agenda. It can be academic, it can be personal, but what we are looking for is a clear communication style.

The ideal essays will be between 500 and 800 words, and we will share the ones we really like within our community. Just like you're reading this section in our newsletter, it could be your own thoughts that are shared across the Breadverse. If your ideas open up some great thought trains, we would love to collaborate further.

Send your finished pieces to contact@bread.coop with the subject line "Essay Submission." We'll accept rolling submissions, but keep an eye out on the Discord announcements for any approaching newsletter deadlines.

And that's a wrap!

Cycle #21 has already begun, you know the drill, head on over to the Solidarity Fund to get baking and voting. The community on Discord is thriving, so head on over and connect with like-minded folks from all over the world.

Until next time!

Solidarity forever 🍞

What are Savings Circles, and how do they work?

A group of people pool a fixed amount regularly, and each member takes turns receiving the full pot. This entire system works through interpersonal connections and social trust. Variations on this practice can be found all over the world: Tandas (Mexico), Hui (China), Esusu (Nigeria), Chit fund (India) and Gameya (Egypt) to name a few.

These practices are widely known as ROSCAs, or Rotating Savings and Credit Accounts, and for the sake of clarity we will use this term and savings circles interchangeably throughout the article.

ROSCAs are by no means an extinct ancient practice, nor are they niche. This largely invisible layer of the global economy handles over $500 billion annually. Participation rates in regions of West Africa include up to 95% of adults. CARE International's savings program has over 30 million members across 67 countries.

The research shows widespread benefits to engaging in community savings practices, with strength lying in the collective. A 2025 study in Vietnam showed ROSCA participants consistently outperformed solo savers. CARE data shows members are up to 85% more likely to have emergency savings compared to non-members.

Bread Stacks is how we take this resilient, time-tested practice online, international and onchain. Our FREE guide covers the basics of ROSCAs in much more detail, and you can download it on our Linktree. You can see an early version of Bread Stacks in action by clicking on the embed below. We frequently hold educational webinars, and they are always free to attend. Make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter to be notified of the next one.

Crypto Commons Association is a community, a research group, and an events organiser. Just like Bread Cooperative, they're built on the idea that crypto tools can and should serve the common good.

What Does Crypto Commons Association Do?

CCA organises events around regenerative and collaborative finance. These concepts contain a lot of big ideas, and CCA makes them tangible to wider audiences through games, fiction, and performance arts. There is plenty of experimentation and applied research that provides a lot of room for community participation, with the annual Crypto Commons Gathering serving as the flagship gathering.

Taking place in the Austrian Alps for its sixth year, the Commons Hub is run by CCA co-founder Felix Fritsch and his brother Emil. Sharing a space helps centre the human factor in visions for a newer, fairer economy. It's an incredible setting that provides ample opportunities to connect with like-minded people and enjoy nature. Activities outside discussions, crypto and beyond, include mountain treks and mushroom foraging.

Unlike a traditional conference where sessions and speakers are booked months in advance, an "unconference" hands the schedule to the people in the room. Each morning, participants collectively map what they want to explore that day. Sessions emerge from those conversations, themes develop, gaps get identified and addressed in the next round. Around 20% of activities might involve invited speakers. The rest is self-organised, which means what gets discussed is always a direct reflection of what the community actually cares about right now.

The Community at Crypto Commons Association

Rok describes the community as a blend of all types. People define themselves as "weird economists, commons, degrowth, feminist, queer, decolonial, multispecies, artivists, hackers and utopian dreamers." Initiatives started all around the world find a place here to hold discourse, critique, dream, eat, and play in the same space.

It is also deliberately multi-generational. The Collaborative Finance Gathering, a related event at the Hub, brings in decades of combined experience in mutual credit, local currencies, and UBI models.

Blockchain is often, as Rok puts it, "the default thing quietly running in the background" while conversations sprawl across climate activism, regenerative farming, local currencies, and post-capitalist transition. The name invites a particular audience in, but the tent is wider than it looks.

The Research Side of Crypto Commons Association

Co-founder Felix Fritsch recently completed his PhD on "The Emergence of the Crypto Commons." This is a body of work that Rok describes as "quite a monument to the movement."

The last gathering led to the revival of the Crypto Commons Research Lab. The idea, which was previously discussed, now enables publishing under a CCA-affiliate banner to draw on community members for discussions, feedback, and case studies.

The Commons Economy Roadmap, developed by co-founder Giulio Quarta, maps the most interesting projects in the blockchain-for-good space, particularly those combining economic soundness with a post-capitalist orientation.

How Bread and CCA Found Each Other

The connection is longstanding. Josh, Bread co-founder and the Blockchain Socialist, has brought Bread to nearly every major CCA event at the Commons Hub. The CCA community makes up the earliest collaborators who helped get all this rolling. Rok has watched it develop from early Breadchain into what Bread Cooperative is today.

"We are both finding intriguing solutions to and pathways for going beyond capitalist realism," he says. "It starts with imagination, but at some point it needs infrastructure."

Bread, the Solidarity Fund and upcoming Bread Stacks all provide this infrastructure. Showing the world what's possible through blockchains adds credibility to the theory.

What Does Your Vote Support?

The BREAD distribution cycle is a direct line of support for what CCA is building. The funds every month contribute to organising teams, subsidies for participants who could not otherwise attend, and room to experiment with residencies, research, and new project formats. The goal is to maximize what Rok calls "peer production value," making each event build on the last rather than exist in isolation.

"We keep space for member initiatives that may grow into research or hands-on projects, innovative funding streams, residency programmes, economic sci-fi writing clubs," he says. "You name it."

What's Coming in 2026?

There are 3 flagship events to look forward to this year.

• The sixth annual Crypto Commons Gathering this August. No predefined theme, as always, built as a live overview of the past year and a look at where things are heading.

• Worldplay is a new series combining radical games, economic science fiction, and guerrilla futuring with the practical work of imagining alternative economies.

• The fourth Collaborative Finance Gathering brings together the longer lineage of mutual credit, accounting systems, local currencies, and UBI. Less crypto-heavy, but very much at a point where crypto can create an impact.

Get Involved

The easiest entry point is the Crypto Commons Telegram group, with around 400 members. If the Austrian Alps is a manageable journey away, you are encouraged to show up to one of the events. If you attend anything in the broader ecosystem, you will likely run into someone from the CCA community before long.

Governance voting for the current distribution cycle is open now. Visit the Bread Solidarity Fund to cast your vote.

Bonus Reading

We ended our chat with Rok talking about some of the fiction and storytelling that helps us see this proposed, better future clearer. And Rok enthusiastically recommended a reading list for just that. Enjoy!

Walk Away by Cory Doctorow
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
Multi-Species Cities: Solar Punk Urban Futures (short story collection)
An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052–2072

Just a reminder that the webinar is tomorrow.

Beyond the Bank: Practical Savings Tools for Underserved Communities

Thursday, February 26 | 10:00 AM PST / 1:00 PM EST / 7:00 PM CET

Communities around the world already pool and manage money together through savings circles. Bread Stacks brings that tradition online for groups who need it most.

It's a live walkthrough, so you'll be able to ask questions in real time.

No crypto experience needed, just show up and say hi.

If you haven't registered yet, you still can: https://dandelion.events/e/v5cp2

See you tomorrow.

The Bread Cooperative team

Just a quick heads up that our webinar is coming up this Thursday.

Beyond the Bank: Practical Savings Tools for Underserved Communities

Thursday, February 26 | 10:00 AM PST / 1:00 PM EST / 7:00 PM CET

Communities around the world already pool and manage money together through savings circles. Bread Stacks brings that tradition online for groups who need it most.

It's a live walkthrough, so you'll be able to ask questions in real time.

No crypto experience needed, just show up and say hi.

Register here: https://dandelion.events/e/v5cp2

See you Thursday.

The Bread Cooperative team

• Tandas in Mexico.

• Susus in West Africa.

• Chit funds in South Asia.

• Tontines across francophone Africa.

A $500 billion informal marker running almost entirely on trust.

We've been building a digital tool that brings this model online. It's called Bread Stacks, and we're giving you an early look before it's publicly available.

Beyond the Bank: Practical Savings Tools for Underserved Communities

📅 Thursday 26th February, view your local times at the registration link.
Register here: https://dandelion.events/e/v5cp2/

We'll cover the history of ROSCAs, why they've worked where formal banking hasn't, and how Bread Stacks can help your collective save in a new way. No technical experience needed.

Another productive month is behind us. We've got the stats behind Bread distribution cycle #19 and some exciting updates.

BREAD Distribution Cycle #19

Cycle #19 was a success! Let's start with the grant total.

A reminder of the 7 parties that are eligible for distribution.

As always, 50% of the yield gets equally shared between all members, while the remaining 50% is split by vote. Baking & holding $BREAD grants you voting power, which can be used to choose which organisation you would like to support for the cycle. Can't decide and wish to support everyone? That's absolutely fine, we've made it possible to equally split your voting power in a single click.

We were glad to see Gardens get a little more of their democratic share than usual, hot on the heels of being featured in our first-ever Bread Members Spotlight. Which other of our member projects would you like to hear from next? Let us know on Twitter/X or Farcaster!

And here's the final breakdown. Cycle #20 is already ongoing, head over to the Solidarity Fund to participate.

Webinar: An intro to Rotating Savings & a first look at Bread Stacks

We're hosting a webinar on rotating savings circles, and using it to give attendees an exclusive first look at Bread Stacks, our upcoming product. It's a continuation of our "Beyond The Bank" series, and showcases how communities collectively met needs before banking & loans were widespread.

Stacks is a modern reimagining of rotating savings circles, sometimes called ROSCAs. A group pools money together, and each member takes a turn receiving the full pot. Members each access lump sums without the need for loans or lines of credit. Bread Stacks brings that principle onchain.

Webinar is on Thursday the 26th of February, click here to sign-up.

$10 goes further than you think on Artizen

And speaking of Bread Stacks, we have a fund live on Artizen right now. You can check out Bread Stacks on Artizen, Season 6 by following the link.

Artizen is running a funding round, offering to match contributions up to $20,000. Every $10 you put in is matched with another $10 from Artizen, plus $1 in prizes. In practice, your $10 becomes $21 in real support for Bread Stacks.

If you've been looking for a low-effort way to support what we're building, this is it.

Josh and Kin are ICDE Fellows

Breadfam Josh and Kin have been selected for the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy fellowship programme, which brings together practitioners working on cooperative technology and governance.

This is larger stage for Bread Cooperative to apply what we've been building. And it's amazing to do so alongside people doing serious work in this space. We're proud of them both.

That's all for this round of Bread Updates. Stay tuned for the webinar link, coming shortly.

Solidarity forever 🍞

Bread Co-op members Sara Bajor and Ron Turetzky are hosting Touch Grass, a four-day retreat at Elkenmist Farm, a 120-acre property in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The idea is simple: gather people who care about regenerative community, live together, and explore what it actually takes to build spaces that last.

What you'll explore

Communal Living: Past and Present How have people organized collective living throughout history, and what can we learn from them? We'll examine what's worked, what hasn't, and why.
Where Can We Actually Do This? A practical look at jurisdictions, land considerations, and what it takes to make intentional communities viable. Less theory, more actionable insight.
Bridging Tech and Reality Most of the work in building community spaces isn't technological, it's human and cultural. We'll unpack our assumptions about collectivism, community-building, and how groups actually function.

Hands-on learning

Site Walks Guided walks to understand natural systems: water, building materials, land features, and how the farm operates as a living system.
Food Sovereignty Workshops Gardening, animal processing, mushroom inoculation. Get your hands in the soil and learn where food actually comes from.
Farm and Land-Based Learning Time on a working farm, learning the rhythms and labor that sustain a community.

The details

When: March 26-29, 2026
Where: Elkenmist Farm & Retreat Center, Skamokawa, WA
What's included: Accommodations in a group house, three farm-fresh meals daily, and all programming.

Getting there: Nearest airport is Portland International (1.5 hour drive). Nearest train is Amtrak Kelso (45 min drive). No Uber or Lyft out here, so you'll coordinate transport with organizers or carpool with other attendees.

Visit touchgrass.how to get more details including pricing and how to apply.

Gardens specializes in conviction voting, a governance mechanism that smooths out noise in decision-making by weighing support over time. The platform is also actively integrated with Superfluid for reward streaming. You can read more about how conviction voting works and how Superfluid rewards work in our embedded guides.

Gardens Joins Bread Cooperative!

Bread Cooperative

Oct 22, 2025

Gardens and Bread Cooperative partner to advance democratic governance for working people. Learn about conviction voting and better collective decisions.

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$BREAD Holders: Your Solidarity Contributions Might Be Earning Rewards

Bread Cooperative

Jan 13, 2026

Gardens and Superfluid have partnered. If you hold $BREAD and support Gardens pools, you might be earning $SUP rewards. Here's how it works.

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Gardens currently serves over 150 communities globally with over $300,000 in funding decisions.

Why Vote for Gardens This Cycle?

All BREAD holders have a say in where funding goes each cycle. With the upcoming distribution around the corner, here's why you might want to consider Gardens.

Full Transparency on Fund Usage
Every BREAD token allocated to Gardens goes into a dedicated growth fund in the Gardens app. You can literally watch where the money goes. "All of the funding that we get from these votes is added here in the pool funds," Paul explains. "This is basically targeted towards our work on Gardens. It's a growth fund that's broadly scoped, looking for any type of creative campaign that helps get the word out or makes the platform better."

Every funding decision links to a proposal. You see who created it, what's supposed to be delivered, and exactly how resources are being used. "It gives you confidence that it's a good investment of money," Paul noted.

You Get to Vote on How It's Spent
As a BREAD token holder, you gain voting power in the Gardens growth fund. Want to see specific features built? Create a proposal. Think the Gardens team should tackle a particular marketing campaign? Vote on it when they submit the proposal.

"BREAD token holders are the ones who are responsible for deciding on which projects get funded for the gardens team," Paul explained. "Or if you want to create a separate proposal for other work that's helping the gardens platform somehow, then you could create a proposal and vote on those proposals as well."

Unlock Superfluid Rewards for Stakers
Once BREAD allocations start streaming into the Gardens pool, every community member who stakes their BREAD in the Gardens community becomes eligible for Superfluid rewards. This creates a direct material benefit for participating in the governance process.

Support Gnosis Chain Ecosystem Growth
Both Bread and Gardens are Gnosis chain originals. Gardens recently submitted a proposal to the Gnosis community that achieved 99% of the GNO needed for quorum. The Gnosis team has expressed interest in seeing this proposal return, and working together to create governance infrastructure for the broader Gnosis ecosystem could benefit everyone.

What's Next?

The Gardens integration with Bread Cooperative represents a rare collaboration brought together by genuine alignment.

Voting ahead of cycle #19 is already open, visit the Bread Solidarity Fund to make sure your voice is heard. If you would like to bake BREAD but don't know how to get started, click the embed below to read more.

Solidarity forever 🍞

How To Participate in the Bread Solidarity Fund

Bread Cooperative

Jan 20, 2026

A beginner-friendly guide to Bread Cooperative's Solidarity Fund. Learn how to bridge, bake, and burn $BREAD to support onchain solidarity.

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Want to contribute to the Bread Solidarity Fund, but the only digital money you own sits in a bank account? Getting started meant you had to jump through many hoops. But from today, this process becomes absolutely effortless.

We are thrilled to announce Peer integration right in the Bread Solidarity Fund.

Cryptocurrency was designed to be used as a peer-to-peer cash, being borderless was a vital feature. But centralized exchanges have long served as gatekeepers to the onchain world. The big reason is that every country has its own monetary rules that need to be followed, with these 'on-ramps' linking crypto to the world of traditional finance. Exchanges have been key to maintaining user safety, but many people with a genuine need often find themselves excluded from these services.

Peer addresses this gap. Read the Peer documentation, and we have a summary for you below.

• Peer connects your payment app (Venmo, Cashapp, Revolut, Wise, Zelle, PayPal and many others) directly to your crypto.

• You no longer need to trust that a centralized exchange can securely store your funds.

• There are lower fees than what many centralized exchanges can offer.

• Zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs verify that transfers actually happen.

• Sensitive data is hidden from the public.

• Transfers settle in under 60 seconds, directly between the buyer & the seller.

With the new Solidarity Fund integration, you can directly purchase xDAI with your existing payment apps. Then it's a single step to bake BREAD.

Before you get started, you will need to install the Peer Auth browser extension to complete purchases. This generates the cryptographic proofs that make the system work.

Solidarity means everyone can participate. At Bread Cooperative, we are focused on ensuring all can benefit from the advantages technology can provide.

Want to learn more? You can ask the founder of Peer your questions directly on tomorrow's community call. Wednesday, 28th January at 3pm EST on Discord.

Click here to attend the community call. Add it to your calendar to make sure you don't miss out.

New to the Bread Solidarity Fund? Check out our detailed guide that shows you every step, in plain language. Perfect for beginners and seasoned crypto operators alike.

How To Participate in the Bread Solidarity Fund

Bread Cooperative

Jan 20, 2026

A beginner-friendly guide to Bread Cooperative's Solidarity Fund. Learn how to bridge, bake, and burn $BREAD to support onchain solidarity.

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