Democratized Autonomous Buildings
The Block Foundation develops the infrastructure and instruments for the implementation of smart contracts in collective project development.
Project development as design
We believe project development must become a design exercise if we want to constitute a housing market that is more accessible, transparent, democratic and fair, both for its residents and its creators.
Our blockchain-based standard specifications have two main objectives:
- Create a sustainable incentive for architects and other founding stakeholders throughout the lifetime of a building.
- Better the dynamics of the housing market by improving transparency, access and democratic participation.
Research Domains
Our research relies on a wide range of emerging technologies and their application in the built environment.
Cooperative Ownership
A research topic examining how unrelated parties can share responsibility for a building, in the long tradition of housing cooperatives.
Quadratic Voting
A flexible design for funding public goods. Allows community members to express the intensity of their preferences democratically.
Phased Commitment
A research model for organising community support in stages, aligned with project milestones.
Web3 Infrastructure
A stateful web, in which places become digitally addressable. Buildings gain digital identities on the blockchain.
Mechanism Design
A branch of microeconomics that explores how businesses and institutions can achieve desirable social or economic outcomes through incentive structures.
Smart Contracts
Self-executing contracts with the terms directly written into code. Studied as a way to make agreements around buildings transparent and verifiable.
Blockchain Oracles
Trust-minimised data feeds that bridge on-chain contracts with real-world signals — energy use, sensor readings, valuations and regulatory data — so that buildings can react to physical reality.
Decentralised Identity
Self-sovereign identity and reputation primitives that let residents, architects and partners prove credentials without surrendering control of their personal data.
Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Privacy-preserving cryptography that lets stakeholders verify ownership, voting weight or compliance without exposing the underlying records.
Research output
The Block Foundation publishes research findings, whitepapers, and technical documentation to advance the field of blockchain-based housing.
Founders Statement
The vision and mission of the Block Foundation. View on GitHub →
Explore our code
All Block Foundation research and development is open source. Browse our repositories on GitHub.
DAB: Democratized Autonomous Building
The goal is to create the fundamentals for what we envision as a Democratized Autonomous Building (DAB), based on the principles of a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO). These blockchain-based standard specifications have two main objectives: create a sustainable role for architects throughout a building’s lifetime, and widen access to housing through cooperative, community-led models.
Multi-chain approach
Our system is designed to be blockchain-agnostic, allowing us to leverage the strengths of different networks. We use Ethereum for governance, IPFS for storage, and layer-2 solutions for cost-effective transactions.
This modular architecture ensures scalability, security, and interoperability as the blockchain ecosystem evolves.
Built in the open
All our code is open source and available on GitHub. We believe that transparency in technology is essential for building trust and enabling collaboration.
Contributions from the community are welcome. Whether you’re a blockchain developer, architect, or designer, you can help shape our technology stack.
Research Partnerships
Interested in collaborating on research? We work with academic institutions, industry partners, and research groups worldwide.