Wish for Change: Establish Birdbrain as Kusama’s on-chain innovation agency

TL;DR

Following the passing of Kusama’s brand evolution (ref 492) and the Web3 Foundation’s commitment to an independent Kusama (ref 498), this proposal seeks a mandate to establish Birdbrain, a leaderless Krievo-based collective, as Kusama’s on-chain innovation agency.

Birdbrain aims to coordinate some of the 10M DOT pledged by the W3F to drive tangible progress, uniting KSM holders, ecosystem stakeholders and new talent under a banner of bold innovation underpinned by real commercial impact.

Why Birdbrain?

Kusama was born with an experimental, chaotic ethos that first attracted artists, hackers and builders - but it has been hampered by fragmented efforts, unclear coordination and erratic funding.

Birdbrain addresses this by:

• Uniting talent: Bringing together a fluid collective of existing and emerging Kusama contributors to structure development and communications through the full innovation cycle, from curiosity-driven experiments, through directed and applied research, into product development and commercialisation.

• Coordinating chaos: Unlike Polkadot’s domain specific bounties, Birdbrain offers Kusama a simple, adaptable and always open on-chain agency that nudges diverse talent towards a coherent direction.

Flipping the Bird

Polkadot targets enterprises with its Cloud and Hub narratives.

Kusama, through Birdbrain, takes a different approach:

• A cultural symbol: Just as Nike’s Swoosh became a universal mark of athletic performance through a decades long relationship with agency Wieden+Kennedy, Birdbrain will reforge the Kusama bird into an emblem of hacker ingenuity, attitude and resourcefulness.
• A creative hub: With people desperate for alternatives to broken systems, Birdbrain will turn Kusama’s cutting-edge tech into resonant ideas, experiments, and initiatives—bridging crypto and the wider world.

Birdbrain’s coordinating idea

We’re evolving the passive “expect chaos” into an active call to arms: create chaOS.

Kusama isn’t just a network, it’s an operating system for challenging the status quo.

With the bird as our badge, Birdbrain will empower creators, hackers and visionaries to challenge conventions through bold, disruptive experiments.

What Birdbrain can become

Birdbrain will be an emergent experiment that can evolve into a multi-faceted face of the network:

• Collective: A Krievo-organised entity driving Kusama adoption.

• Brand: A unifying voice for Kusama’s diverse ecosystem.

• Bounty: Seeded with Kusama's native stablecoin dUSD from W3F and/or other sources.

• Agency: Setting and executing a clear network strategy.

• Bridge: Making Kusama stand apart in crypto and stand out in the real world.

• Product: Simplifying onboarding for contributors and users.

• Template: A replicable model for others to adopt.

• Platform: An open-source destination for developers to create experimental decentralised applications, with an emphasis on privacy, freedom and programmable cryptography.

Principles of Birdbrain

Birdbrain is driven by the following principles and aims. It is…

• Sustainable: Generating real income from its endeavours.

• Regenerative: It requests funding from the W3F or Kusama treasury not as a grant but as an advance that is repaid to the treasury with yield generated by dUSD (ref 471), incentivising the collective to drive native stablecoin adoption.

• Optimistic: Using lean governance, proposals pass unless opposed, fostering shared responsibility.

• Leaderless: Whoever knows the next step leads, relying on collective intelligence over fixed roles.

• Equitable: Sharing value transparently among members.

• Diverse: Supporting talent and projects across the stack and through the innovation process.

• Supportive: Prioritising consistent collaboration over short term projects.

• Scalable: When needed Birdbrain will spin out subsidiary organisations that can also do the same in a waterfalling structure, whilst maintaining coherence between entities.

• Experimental: Embracing risk by testing novel ideas, talent and mechanisms on-chain.

Membership and onboarding

Birdbrain is developing an experimental initiative based governance structure, with membership contingent not on reputation or on votes from token holders, but on the submission of original ideas, visuals, concepts or artifacts as tribute to the network.

This cultural collateral is minted as 1 of 1 NFTs and held in a network reserve by the organisation on behalf of Kusama and represents the emerging creative soul of the collective and its contributing members.

The first artifact will be the iconic canary, with the broad church of Kusama token holders taking the first seat in the Krievo collective and receiving 1 vote.

The second artifact will be the create chaOS idea, which will be submitted by Decent Partners.

If this artifact is accepted by KSM holders, Decent Partners will be added as the second member of the collective, giving the initiative its founding impetus.

Objectives

1. Activate Funds: Receive some of 10M DOT from the W3F commitment.
2. Redefine Kusama: Shift communications from a canary network to a peer network.
3. Remind the bird how to fly: (Re)ignite Kusama’s potential as a cultural force.

Next Steps

If approved, Birdbrain will work with the Web3 Foundation and Kusama community to structure the deployment of some of the 10M DOT, ensuring alignment with the network’s new independent positioning.