Funding the Commons Builder Residency: Chiang Mai Recap

Mon, Feb 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

What happens when you take builders out of short conferences and put them in the same place—long enough for ideas to collide, evolve, and turn into something real? This video recaps the Funding the Commons Builder Residency in Chiang Mai, where participants from over 20 countries lived and worked together to explore public goods funding, privacy, environmental impact, and real-world applications of decentralized technology. The residency was intentionally curated for builders—people experimenting with systems that resist capture, distribute responsibility, and translate emerging Web3 ideas into real-world contexts. From informal breakfasts to late-night debates, new teams formed, projects took shape, and shared language emerged. Rather than focusing only on what gets built, the residency created space for the harder work: figuring out how we should build, what doesn’t work, and which mechanisms don’t exist yet, but need to. Produced by Funding the Commons in Chiang Mai, Thailand, November 2024. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io