A fairer way to own what we build — modeled, tested, and open-sourced in code.
Your friend runs a 5-star coffee shop. Spotless. Everyone's favorite. They pay $6,000/month for a rusted shipping container on a broken road. The landlord does nothing but collect checks.
"Don't like it? Someone else will pay more."
Their labor feeds speculation, not growth. The building sits there gaining value while the person actually using it goes broke.
We can design around this.
A new town gets built. Teachers, nurses, tradespeople, baristas — the people who actually make the place run — move in and do the work that turns it into somewhere people want to be.
That's the exact moment they start getting priced out.
Meanwhile, investors buy up the lots in the center of town — the best spots, the ones with the most foot traffic. They don't live there. They don't open a shop, hire anyone, or add a single thing to the local economy. They just wait. Every new resident who moves in, every teacher and nurse and barista who makes the town worth living in, makes that empty lot more valuable — value the investor did nothing to create. Eventually they sell it, or lease it back, to the very people who made it worth something in the first place.
The people who contribute — labor, service, care, craft — get squeezed out. The people who contribute nothing get paid for showing up early and waiting.
First they move to the edge of town. Then the next town over. The commute grows — 45 minutes, then 90, then 2.5 hours each way — just to do the job that keeps the place running. Six or seven days a week, because one job isn't enough anymore. No time left for family, rest, or anything that looks like a life.
This is modern day slavery. Not as a figure of speech — labor with no exit, no leverage, and none of the value it created.
It doesn't have to be this way. Capital can still flow. Markets can still be free. Land can still be priced, bought, and sold. But the people who make a place valuable shouldn't be the ones systematically pushed out of it. Mechanisms to prevent this already exist — RadicalXChange (RxC) has done serious work on self-assessed taxation and shared ownership that this project draws on directly.
Think about pricing your own car for a quick sale. You name a number. Price it too low, and someone can buy it from you on the spot — forcing you to be honest. Price it too high, and you're the one paying more, in this case in tax, to hold onto it.
Governments already lease out rights this way — mineral rights, drilling licenses, spectrum, fishing quotas. A limited-term right to use something, priced and paid for, not owned outright. Cities do the same with market stalls and parking permits: lease the spot, pay based on what you say it's worth, and when the lease is up, the community buys back the spot — not some landlord who never shows up.
This isn't a new idea. What's new is applying it somewhere it hasn't gone yet: decentralized AI training and blockchain networks.
That world has mostly secured itself through staking tokens. But tokens can be bought up, cornered, and leveraged by whoever has enough capital — a wealth contest dressed up as security, with nothing to do with who's actually doing the work. It's not ownership based on labor and effort; it's ownership based on who can accumulate the most token.
So the real question wasn't just "how do we stop speculation." It became: what replaces the token? A DAO can lease out the right to help secure a network the same way a government leases mineral rights. The validator prices that right themselves, does the work, and earns network fees for it — like rent, paid for keeping the network running.
Lease the right → Price it honestly → Do the work → Earn network fees
When the lease ends, the DAO guarantees a buyback, funded by the fees it's collected along the way. That's what makes staying and doing the work pay off — not sitting on it and hoping the price climbs, but showing up for the length of the lease and earning a fair return at the end.
Keeping this stable is the hard part: pricing has to track real network activity, and the DAO has to hold enough in reserve to honor every buyback. That's as much a math problem as an economic one — and it's exactly what this project tests in code and simulation.
We're testing this with an NFT-based validator staking system — validator NFTs work like leased market stalls. Validators — services or agents providing Sybil-resistant compute (validating AI output, evaluating clients, curating data) — stake NFTs, self-assess their value, pay tax on that value, earn fees, and risk slashing for misconduct.
| Market Stall | Digital System |
|---|---|
| A leased stall | A validator NFT |
| Vendor renting the stall | Validator leasing the NFT |
| Landlord speculation | NFT speculation |
| Rent based on self-priced value | Harberger tax |
| Market fees fund upkeep | DAO revenue |
| Market buys back the spot | Guaranteed NFT buy-back |
| Foot traffic & reputation | Validator performance |
The cycle:
- DAO leases out validator NFTs.
- Validator stakes, self-assesses value, pays tax on it.
- DAO collects that tax over the lease.
- Validator earns network fees for honest work.
- At lease end, DAO guarantees a buy-back from the tax it collected.
Result: speculation is penalized, participation is rewarded, hoarding is prevented.
| Contract | Purpose |
|---|---|
NFTMinting.sol |
ERC-721 minting of validator NFTs |
StakingAndTax.sol |
Staking, self-assessment, tax logic |
Auction.sol |
Auctions for acquiring NFTs |
ProofOfStake.sol |
Transaction validation & fee distribution |
Slashing.sol |
Penalties for malicious validators |
DAO.sol |
Governance, leasing, supply control, buy-backs |
- Optimal tax rate
T(f, s, v)— maximize DAO revenue without losing validators? - NFT valuation:
V_nft = Σ (fees_i − taxes_i) / (1 + r)^i - Value dynamics under changing network activity:
dV_nft/dt = f(v_tx(t), T(t)) - Minimum stake
s*to deter misconduct:P_slash(s, m) - Fair fee split:
F_i = F_total × g(s_i, p_i, c_i) - Tax revenue must cover buy-backs:
R_tax ≥ Σ V_buyback_i - Auction clearing price:
P_clear = f(V_self, competitor bids) - DAO solvency steady-state
S*, wheredS/dt = f(S, participation, activity)and inflows = outflows
Mapping and simulating these functions is the core research goal.
Web3 today: NFTs = speculation. Staking = yield farming. Incentives = extractive. This system: NFTs = productive leases. Staking = active work. Incentives = aligned with network health.
Validators don't flip NFTs — they lease them to work.
If it works here, it's a testbed for anything people currently rent from someone who adds no value — land, stalls, storefronts, and yes, the coffee shop on the broken road.
git clone [repo-url]
npm install
npx hardhat compile
npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.js --network goerliSolidity ^0.8.0 · OpenZeppelin (ERC721, Ownable, AccessControl) · Hardhat
MIT
The technical details are in the contracts. The heart is in this vision.