Hack Humanity Introduction & Progress Report
Table of Contents
About Hack Humanity
Introduction
This is long overdue, but I wanted to properly introduce myself and Hack Humanity to you all.
I also want to outline what we have been engaged by NEAR Foundation to deliver: the transition of House of Stake from an NF-incubated idea to a decentralised, open, trustable, fully autonomous and self-governing system, as best as I can given this is an evolving governance transition.
Finally, to start stepping up our transparency—which I admit has been far below the bar I aspire towards—I am going to share:
- Who we are and how we are working (our Principles of Operation)
- What we have been working on so far
- What’s coming next (our near-term Roadmap)
I hope this beginning of a new level of transparency is welcomed. I hope it helps illuminate for you why progress to date has not been as visible to you as it will be going forwards.
Everyone I witness in this community is working incredibly hard and operating with the highest duty of care in recognition we need to do the ground work to provide a legitimate transition process for the decentralisation of governance from NF to House of Stake DAO.
I hope this introduction and first transparency report reassures you that progress is being made, and at an accelerating rate.
And most importantly of all, we welcome you to positively engage with us on this journey, as has always been intended and you are absolutely and necessarily invited into.
Here we go…
Introduction: Klaus from Hack Humanity
I’m Klaus Brave, founder of Hack Humanity — a governance facilitation, design and engineering studio focused on building 21st-century institutions that are trusted, adaptive, and leverage the best of Human+AI collective intelligence.
Over the past decade, I’ve supported organizations like the United Nations, Vodafone, HSBC, IBM, and Arbitrum DAO to reimagine how they make decisions, coordinate at scale, and grow cultures of trust.
My background includes:
- Strategic facilitation – guiding alignment across diverse stakeholders
- Software Developer & Product thinking – 7 years in software engineering, 5 years in product management
- Proposal acceleration – from ideation to DAO ratification
- DAO innovation – creator of GovHack run twice for the Arbitrum DAO, ETHDenver, ETHcc impact reports
I’ve seen that coordination is the deepest technology, and that governance is our highest leverage point to affect change. When designed well, it scales integrity, aligns collective action, and makes complexity navigable. When neglected, it breeds gatekeeping, stagnation, and burnout.
I founded Hack Humanity to stand in that gap - supporting ecosystems like NEAR to transition from centralized stewardship to decentralized, composable systems that evolve with integrity.
I’m currently engaged by the NEAR Foundation to support the setup and activation of House of Stake. Our role is to help put in place the scaffolding and organisational infrastructure to facilitate the DAO’s emergence, codify its patterns, and help build the organisational memory, mechanisms, and momentum that allow others to co-govern and co-operate House of Stake DAO well.
I welcome open questions: just comment on the thread if you want to know more about my background or engage in constructive dialog about the role Hack Humanity is playing for House of Stake and the specifics of what we’re working on.
— Klaus
Role of Hack Humanity
This marks an important turning point in the journey to establish House of Stake as a legitimate, community-led governance system for the NEAR ecosystem. Past efforts at community governance have struggled with issues of capture, consistency, and loss of trust. Those experiences left both the Foundation and the NEAR community skeptical and disengaged, and progress since has often felt slower and less transparent than expected.
With this post, we are resetting the relationship. Hack Humanity has been brought in to support the governance transition with a professional, transparent, and structured approach. From this point forward, you will see a consistent rhythm of open reporting, public sprints on GitHub, and clear roadmaps that allow the community and stakeholders alike to follow and assess progress. This is the baseline for accountability that has been missing — a foundation on which future trust and legitimacy can grow.
We are also committed to leading by example. Our role is not to dictate decisions, but to model the standards of transparency, structure, and integrity we believe all service providers should uphold. By showing our work in public and making our processes visible, we aim to set a precedent for how this ecosystem can govern itself with credibility and confidence.
Hack Humanity has been engaged as a facilitator and strategic design partner, helping transition House of Stake from NF-led incubation to an open, permissionless, trustable, self-governing system.
Our key strengths are:
- Governance transition policy & process: Putting in place and co-creating with you the organisational architecture for effective decentralised governance
- Multi-stakeholder facilitation: Workshops, IRL activations, roadmap alignment, conflict mediation
- Rapid prototyping of GovTech, GovOps and interactive decision support canvases and tools
- Technical architecture: Advising on what’s needed to successfully embed a new governance system (e.g. policies, procedures, software, technical architecture, standards and specifications, Evaluation frameworks and due diligence processes)
Governance Transition Facilitation
Our goal is to guide the Governance Transition from foundation-led decision making to a politically decentralized, autonomous organization. Success is not just deploying smart-contract voting, but becoming an aligned, accountable, and legitimate DAO that creates sustainable value.
Projects like Mission, Vision, and Values or Code of Conduct must move beyond drafting to true operationalization. For Hack Humanity, the target outcome is that NEAR House of Stake is hailed as successful model of a Governance Transition.
That transition has three phases with the following critical milestone outcomes:
- Aligned, accountable, and legitimate funding programs begin.
- Systematic & legitimate collective decisions select programs to grow or cut.
- Service providers transition from funding from the Foundation to the DAO is complete.
House of Stake aims to accelerate phase one so community-led programs can be proposed and funded sooner. We are introducing new sprint cadences and methods to make the journey more transparent as we expidite the process.
Currently, decision authority and funding still sit with NEAR Foundation which aims to minimize their decision making and funding prior to House of Stake being independently capable to make good collective decisions. If the community began allocating funds without meta-governance, the DAO could fall into the familiar “Chaos to Centralization” trap.
Meta-governance is the governance of governance itself. It refers to the systems, frameworks, and rules that shape how lower-level governance processes are designed, changed, and coordinated.
In the context of House of Stake, meta-governance includes:
- Foundational agreements like the Constitution and Mission, Vision, Values.
- Structures for accountability, legitimacy, and conflict resolution (e.g., Code of Conduct, reporting requirements).
- Processes for upgrading, revising, or replacing governance mechanisms in a way that maintains trust and political decentralization.
Think of it as the operating system for governance: instead of deciding “what programs to fund,” meta-governance decides how decisions are made, how rules evolve, and how the community prevents capture while enabling experimentation. Our thinking on this subject is heavily influenced by Beer’s Viable Systems Model.
This is why our role is critical: to facilitate (not dictate) the design and implementation of a meta-governance system resilient to capture and legitimately upgradable, while empowering the community to experiment with lower level governance for decision-making and funding.
Our path with House of Stake is gated by milestones to keep incentives aligned. These milestones or: Success Gates are criteria to be defined and achieved that signals House of Stake is maturing as a DAO, that is progressively more trusted, has the capability and capacity to co-govern and co-operate achieving House of Stake’s Mission.
To be transparent, details are still in progress with NEAR Foundation as to these exact milestones, and we are moving one step at a time at this point, with a planning horizon of 2–3 months into the future.
Principles of Operation
Hack Humanity exists to scaffold sovereignty. Here’s what we value to build systems that distribute power:
Signal Over Noise
We design systems and practices to amplify high-agency contributors while dampening low-signal noise. We value contributions and ideas above titles or loud voices. What matters is what someone brings to the system, not the status they hold.
Systems Thinking
We treat the DAO as a system that can be updated like versioned software. Roles and processes are modules that evolve and improve over time when they’re reviewed and adjusted.
Neutral Integrity
We’re not here to accumulate power or chase influence. We are credibly neutral facilitators, designing for the system’s integrity. We will not be accumulating voting power or become a delegate (unless asked).
Transparency With Dignity
We share what matters for trust and collaboration, while respecting personal boundaries. Transparency is about accountability, not surveillance for its own sake.
Leaders Who Create Leaders
Good leadership means helping others grow and take responsibility. When more people feel confident to step up, the whole system becomes stronger and more resilient. We build the structures to unlock empowered participation from all perspectives, designing ourselves out of the loop to leave autonomous, well-equipped leaders in our place.
Culture Is the Code
Every interaction, post, or comment shapes the operating system. We treat culture as programmable reinforced through rituals, norms, and encoded agreements.
AI-Augmented, Human-Led
We prototype tools where agents augment human ability, not replace them. The DAO’s memory, workflows, and moderation can be intelligently automated but it’s essential that values, ethics, and mission always remain in human hands.
Engagement Structure
| Area | Description |
|---|---|
| Client | NEAR Foundation |
| Service Provider | Hack Humanity |
| Scope | Strategic governance design and development, facilitation of co-creation cycles, DAO activation online and with GovHack event IRL |
| Compensation Structure | 12-month contract (covered by NF, not by HoS DAO at this stage) |
| Reporting Line | Primary point of contact: Lane Rettig (NF/HoS) |
| Status | Active since June 2025 |
Clarification: This may change once we’re further along in the transition, but right now, Hack Humanity is contracted by NEAR Foundation, not from any DAO treasury. Compensation terms are contractual, not publicly negotiated, and includes scope beyond House of Stake.
Frameworks and Standards We’re Building
| Theme | Description |
|---|---|
| Governance as Code | Build policy as code, structured artefacts that are fit for humans use and AI ready. Change tracked rules/roles/protocols w/ changelogs and peer review. |
| AI-Assisted Governance | Prototype AI-augmented systems for CoC, decision-support systems (DSS) for rich data-informed interactive proposals |
| Composable DAO Modules | i.e. Proposal lifecycle, Code of Conduct - built to be used by Humans+AI |
| Governance UX | Onboarding flows, RACI tables, kanban boards, decision templates to make governance legible |
Progress Report
June–July: Mapping, Discovery and Team Formation
“Good design depends on a free and harmonious relationship between nature and people, in which careful observation and thoughtful interaction provide the design inspiration.”—David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture
We are operating here in the space of complex systems. In the case of House of Stake, it’s a complex and emerging social, economic and technological system. The principle of observing before acting is crucial to effective governance design for such a system.
So I started as I always do by fully immersing myself in this ecosystem and community: meeting, learning, asking questions, understanding context, history, diverse perspectives, opportunities, challenges, hopes and fears.
Work done
Team size: 1–1.5 FTEs (Klaus solo at first, with team members joining from late July)
| Workstream | Status |
|---|---|
| Stakeholder Mapping & 1:1s | 40+ calls |
| Mission/Vision/Values Workshops | Two sessions with Delegates (synthesis on Miro) full detail to be shared in dedicated MVV post |
| Cannes Workshop Co-facilitation | Delivered |
| Establish HoS core-team agile workflow | Delivered with Lane. Piloting open HoS GitHub Kanban for ecosystem wide coordination |
| Scope HoS Analytics Dashboard | Sync’d Ecosystem Growth WG & NF Intelligence team, reviewed NFi baseline and gaps. Acknowledgement to @jlwaugh for significant resources & orientation to NEAR on this. |
With this grounding, sensing what is needed, I got to work in building out the right team for the challenge.
The team
This is a squad of trusted builders, facilitators and innovation pioneers: experienced, talented individuals I have worked with before, each bringing a unique and valuable skillset to complement one another:
- Disruption Joe: DAO Governance & Growth Strategist, FT in Crypto since 2017. Past Arbitrum DAO, Gitcoin & Gitcoin DAO, Consensys.
- Dan: Product Lead & Co-facilitator with deep expertise in agile software development, co-creation, design and system thinking methods
- Humberto: Governance Facilitator, specialising in consent-based decision-making, self-management, and commons-oriented governance
- Andrei: Full-stack Engineer with 8+ years of experience spanning embedded systems to decentralized governance platforms
- Lillian: Product Designer with seven years of experience designing Web3 products
- Evgeny Haenko: Documentation, agile project management, and community coordination.
We have come together with the mission to facilitate this important journey for you, to invent something new and incredible together.
August–September: HoS Launch, Capacity-building, Co-creation kick-offs
As teams ramped up, we focused on delivering what was most important to launch House of Stake, while also investing in the less-visible but absolutely critical capacity-building work. To develop this capacity requires:
- Shared context building, externalising knowledge, implicit understanding and making it explicit and documenting
- Putting in place tools, structures and practices to unconstrain the team from me as the bottleneck (hub-and-spoke model).
In team management and deputy leadership of House of Stake core team, I was coordinating and contributing to: review of draft policy documents, veNEAR contract audits, security and deployment playbooks, locking incentives and ecosystem engagement around the AI Governance Roadmap.
Work done and in progress
Team size: Scaling from 2 to 3 FTEs (Klaus full-time + 6 part-time)
| Workstream | Status |
|---|---|
| House of Stake Website design & build | Launched (GitHub, houseofstake.org) |
| HoS and HH team development | 5 HH team members onboarded into HoS project Onboarded Jack into NEAR Ecosystem |
| Community engagement | Running Open Office Hours every two weeks |
| Co-Creation Cycle Design | Done, kicking off with CoC |
| Code of Conduct (CoC) | Co-creation Cycle 0 Complete (GitHub) Co-Creation Cycle 1 commencing (GitHub) |
| Code of Conduct App | Co-creation Cycle 0 Complete (GitHub) Co-creation Cycle 1 commencing (GitHub) |
| Mission, Vision Values (MVV) | Co-creation Cycle 0 Complete (GitHub) Co-creation Cycle 1 commencing (GitHub) |
| NEAR Story |  In progress… (GitHub) |
| House of Stake GovHack - first IRL event |  Checking desirability, viability and feasibility for date and location (GitHub) |
What is a “Cocreation Cycle”
A cocreation cycle refers to a stage of work that utilizes expanding circles of feedback with a goal of minimizing requests for time and attention while balancing this need with inclusivity and legitimacy.
(more detail on this methodology to come in subsequent posts)
We are making great progress on all fronts and in all teams and I’m happy with where House of Stake team of teams is trending in terms of productivity.
I acknowledge that up until this point I’ve underinvested in writing, reporting, community and stakeholder engagement.
That is shifting now with this post. Consider this an inflection point.
Roadmap Overview (Sep–Dec 2025)
The roadmap guiding Hack Humanity’s support for House of Stake in this governance transition has been developed iteratively rather than defined from the outset. As needs emerge, we adapt accordingly.
| Initiative | TimelineSep·Oct·Nov·Dec |
Desired Outcome |
|---|---|---|
 Policy |
||
| Code of Conduct (CoC) | ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ⋅⋅⋅ |
A shared standard for a respectful culture that builds trust and accountability. Co-created, tested, ratified and operational. |
| Constitution | ⋅⋅⋅ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ |
Ratified foundational governance framework defining principles, rights, roles, and legitimate pathways to change the system. |
| Process |
||
| Mission, Vision, Values | ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ⋅⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅ |
A North Star for alignment, guiding all decisions and priorities. Co-creation completed and ratified. |
| Outcome Goal Setting | ⋅⋅⋅ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ⋅⋅⋅ |
Clearly agreed goals & outcomes that articulate how we create value and measure success, in use for funding program selection. |
| veNEAR Staking Strategy | ⋅⋅⋅ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ⋅⋅⋅ |
Support HoS team to develop targeted adoption and transition plan for veNEAR into House of Stake for community-led funding. |
 Technology |
||
| Code of Conduct App | ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ⋅⋅⋅ |
Tool that operationalizes the Code of Conduct. Launched, tested and fully integrated into community workflows. |
| Data Commons Hub | ⋅⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ |
A transparent repository of governance data to inform decisions. Product Requirements documented with decision on how to proceed |
| AI Governance Tools | ⋅⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ |
TBD: Discovery, mapping and planning |
 Activation |
||
| HoS Sprint Facilitation | ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ◼︎◼︎◼︎ |
Ongoing two-week sprint cadence. Structured, transparent delivery in every sprint. |
| Lisbon Offsite workshop | ◼︎◼︎◼︎ ⋅⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅ |
Facilitate offsite conversation, laying the groundwork for HoS team to effectively facilitate this transition plan. |
| GovHack | ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ TBD ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ |
IRL Governance hackathon incorporating on-ramp and aftercare accelerating ideas into successful proposals that create impact. |
Final Word
You are all invited to join us in the co-creation of this governance transition.
We are not just launching a DAO - we’re prototyping a trustable governance system for a user-owned, AI-augmented future.
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”
— Edward O. Wilson
As the Edward O. Wilson quote reminds us, our systems are behind our technologies. We must evolve faster.
This work matters.
— Klaus
Founder @HackHumanity