The mechanisms, and where they've been tried.

Tools developed by our community to counter polarisation, add nuance to debate, reshape asset stewardship, give people leverage over their data, and set priorities across policy, budgets and resources. Each one has been run with real partners; each link below goes to the evidence.

Builders: the voting tool is open source at quadraticvote.radicalxchange.org, and the Library holds the underlying research.

Plural voting

Also known as quadratic voting

Plural voting lets people express not just their choices but how strongly they feel. Each participant has the same budget of voice credits to spend across issues; concentrating votes on one issue costs quadratically more, so people balance intensity against breadth. The result is a ranking that reflects what a group cares about most, without letting a loud minority dominate.

Where it has been triedColorado legislature, Nashville Metro Council, NYC participatory budgeting, Sydney density deliberations, Geneva Reflection PrinciplesRead moreHow plural voting works, Wiki: quadratic voting, Run a vote with our open-source tool

Plural assemblies

Structured deliberation, usually with Pol.is

Participants write statements and vote on each other's. Pol.is clusters people by how they voted, then surfaces the statements that cross the divide it finds. Popularity and bridging are different measures, and it reports the second one. We pair the map with small-group deliberation and a plural vote to turn signals into specifics.

Where it has been triedSydney, Canberra, Geneva, New York, Colorado citizens' assemblyRead morePol.is, Stanford Online Deliberation Platform

Plural funding

Also known as quadratic funding

A matching-fund mechanism for public goods. Instead of rewarding a few big donors, plural funding weighs the number of distinct contributors more than the amount they give. The more unique people who chip in, the bigger the match a project earns, so goods that many people care about get funded first.

Where it has been triedGitcoin Grants, more than $60M distributed to open-source and public goodsRead moreHow plural funding works, Wiki: plural funding

Plural ownership

Also called partial common ownership

A practical way to grant exclusive use of shared assets while keeping ongoing accountability to the public. Stewards hold an asset for as long as they value it most, pay a recurring fee to the community based on a self-assessed value, and pass it on when someone values it more.

Where it has been triedPartial Common Ownership of Art with SerpentineRead moreHow plural ownership works, Wiki: partial common ownership

Collective data bargaining

Data dignity in practice

Journalism and other public-interest data enters AI systems at the retrieval and mid-training stages, where markets already exist but individual publishers have no leverage. Open-source infrastructure lets outlets serve their content to AI systems from servers they control, on their own terms and for payment, without handing over a copy, and lets them form consortia behind common endpoints so they bargain as one. Pre-training is the other half of the problem, where a fair market still has to be built.

Where it has been triedAMSI, Indonesia's largest association of independent media, more than 500 outlets, Uruguay, DenmarkRead moreThe Data Freedom Act, Wiki: sectoral data bargaining, Wiki: data dignity, Two radical ways to share AI ownership, How AI companies can pay fair rates for content

Plural money

Community currencies

A design for community currencies that keeps value circulating where it is created: a community treasury, exit controls, and a trust pool that backs the currency. Residents get direct control over their local economy.

Where it has been triedEdge Esmeralda and Edge City LannaRead moreHow plural money works, Wiki: plural money

We also support and deploy ecosystem tools including Pol.is, Talk to the City, Context Engine, Agora, Tapir, Voqua and Gitcoin. Talk to us about which fits your context.