The journey
Nine years of SEEDS, told without the gaps
SEEDS grew fast, broke, and did not disappear. For a long time the public timeline stopped in 2021, which left the hardest and most instructive part of the story untold. This page carries it forward to today.
Four seasons: the launch years, the break, the long hibernation a small group of contributors held open, and the new era now unfolding.
How to read this page.
Entries marked Happened are things the ecosystem did and recorded. Entries marked Proposed come from planning documents circulated for discussion — intent rather than outcome. Where a figure appears, the date it was measured appears next to it.
Season one · August 2017 – July 2021
Sowing and launch
An idea — that you could change the system by changing the money — became a live blockchain, a mobile Passport, a currency people actually spent, and a global network of members and partner organisations. Almost all of it was built in the open.
-
August 2017 Happened
Seeds is born
The journey begins. Idea seeds are planted and full-time research and development starts.
-
July 2019 Happened
Telos mainnet — the core goes live
Two years of building later, the core blockchain functionality is running on the Telos network. It is still running today.
-
September 2019 Happened
The Passport, pre-released
The mobile app — the "Passport" — goes out for testing.
-
November 2019 Happened
Passport alpha
The foundations for what SEEDS called its "Minimum Viable Society" are released to the world.
-
December 2019 – January 2020 Happened
The Seeds token goes live
Seeds becomes a currency people can hold, send and receive through the Passport, and it is listed on decentralised exchanges so it can be bought and sold.
-
February 2020 Happened
Campaigns begin
Citizens start voting on a wide diversity of campaigns to finance regenerative projects — the first time the community directed shared funds itself.
-
February 2020 Happened
Alliances begin
Citizens begin voting on Alliances: organisations gifted Seeds in recognition of their contribution to a regenerative civilisation. The voting ran on the Hypha DAO platform.
-
April 2020 – 2021 Happened
The community writes its own constitution
Five open Constitutional Assemblies, the first on Earth Day 2020, are held and recorded. Members draft, argue over and revise the founding agreement in public.
-
May 2021 Happened
The new Global Passport
A major release: a new look and a far easier interface for the tools members use to transact, propose and vote.
-
10 July 2021 Happened
SEEDS Constitution V 1.0 is published
The first official constitution is finalised. It remains readable in the archive.
-
Peak, mid-2021 Historical figures
How big it got
These are the numbers SEEDS published at its high point. They describe 2021, not today — see where SEEDS stands now for the current picture.
- 11,000+wallet holdersreported 2021
- 88countries reachedas published on joinseeds.earth
- 450+partner organisationsalliance members, 2021
- 500+alliance applications26 grant proposals accepted, May 2021
Season two · July – December 2021
The break
Growth outran the design. Within about six months the currency lost its everyday value, the disagreements about how SEEDS was built went unresolved, and the paid contributions that held the ecosystem together stopped. This is the part the old timeline left out.
-
July 2021 Happened
Growing unrest
Long-standing contradictions in how SEEDS had been built were raised more insistently. Little collaboration was found to resolve them.
-
August 2021 Happened
The currency loses its value
Seeds had been given away easily, and the arrival of liquidity-backed selling options led to a sell-off. Over a few months the value benchmark fell from around $0.10 to effectively nothing.
The underlying cause, as those closest to it later described it: early success outran the plan. A liquidity pool large enough for the speed of adoption had not been prepared, and demand from members in places like Brazil and parts of Africa — some of whom had begun using Seeds as everyday money — met a market that could not absorb it.
-
September 2021 Happened
A fork that never happened
A proposal to fork SEEDS was approved, in connection with Local Scale, but was never carried out. The uncertainty around it deepened the disorder and ended the growth the community had been riding.
-
21 September 2021 Happened
The record date
On paper the token had risen from $0.01 to $0.0962. In practice, in a market with almost no liquidity, it was trading at or below where it started. This date was later fixed as the reference point for any effort to make the outcome fairer between members.
-
December 2021 Happened
Development falls silent
With contributors no longer able to be rewarded in Seeds, the ecosystem and the systems running it shrank. SEEDS lost the ability to host a community of thousands of people.
The lessons that came out of it.
Set up funding in ordinary money as well as the token. Design liquidity for the speed of growth, not the plan. Build a consumer offering people want before asking for scale. Fund a paid team to hold infrastructure and governance. Report progress publicly and continuously. Every one of these is shaping what is being built now.
Season three · 2022 – 2025
Hibernation — and the people who kept the lights on
SEEDS went into hibernation. It did not go away. A small group of contributors stayed with it and made sure the core of the ecosystem kept running, on the belief that a time would come when a balanced ecosystem design was rediscovered — one capable of re-establishing SEEDS as a flourishing ecosystem.
Almost nothing in this season was glamorous. Most of it was maintenance, bookkeeping, and showing up.
-
During the hibernation Happened
Governance moves to the SEEDS Collaboratory DAO
Stewardship of the ecosystem transitions from the SEEDS Commons into the SEEDS Collaboratory DAO, which has coordinated it ever since.
-
During the hibernation Happened
Three websites saved
joinseeds.earth, explore.joinseeds.earth and seedslibrary.earth were rescued rather than allowed to lapse, and a webmaster was retained to keep them standing. Everything you can still read about SEEDS online survives because of this decision.
-
During the hibernation Happened
SEEDS Constitution 2.0 completed and ratified
The founding agreement was carried forward rather than abandoned, and ratified in its second version by the Collaboratory DAO. Its text is not published on this site; Version 1.0 remains the fullest published statement, and a third version is currently in draft.
-
During the hibernation Happened
A way to be funded in ordinary money
Fiscal sponsorship was set up so the ecosystem could receive tax-deductible donations in fiat currency, and a commercial account was opened. One of the plainest lessons of 2021 was that you cannot run a movement on its own token alone.
-
2022, 2023, 2024 Happened
State of SEEDS reports
An annual report was produced for each of these three years — a public account of where things actually stood during the quiet period.
-
2022, 2023, 2024 Happened
Winter solstice celebrations
The community kept its seasonal rhythm through the whole hibernation, gathering each winter solstice.
-
2024 Happened
The history gets recorded
A film on the history and accomplishments of SEEDS was commissioned from Basil Childers, so the record would not depend on memory alone.
-
2024 – 2025 Happened
Bioregional and inter-currency building
Support for the Cascadia bioregion in the Pacific Northwest, an oSwaps demonstration for exchanging between community currencies, and continued discussions with Local Scale, whose wallet shares lineage with the SEEDS wallet.
-
November 2025 Reported
The quiet numbers
A snapshot of the ecosystem at the end of the hibernation, as recorded in the relaunch roadmap. Small, but not nothing — and considerably more than most projects have four years after a collapse.
- ~4,000people still reading the newsletteras reported November 2025
- ~100attending quarterly community callsas reported November 2025
- ~20actively building the next chapteras reported November 2025
Season four · 2025 onwards
Regenesis — a new era, thriving
What began as relaunch planning in 2025 became something people can take part in. SEEDS and Semo are in public together, Seeds are spendable again, and a travelling series of gatherings is weaving the community back into one web.
The entries below are drawn from planning documents circulated inside the ecosystem — chiefly a relaunch roadmap dated 26 November 2025, marked by its authors as a draft. Badges show which are recorded and which are still being shaped.
-
August 2025 Happened
Relaunch planning starts
Conversations begin on what a genuine relaunch would require, starting from a SEEDS reboot whitepaper drafted by Will Blakey. The paper is explicit that the original design failed on liquidity, real-world spendability and asset backing.
-
October – November 2025 Happened
Conversations with Semo
The SEEDS Collaboratory DAO opens discussions with Semo — semo is Esperanto for seed — about a close collaboration.
-
24 November 2025 Happened
Prophetic DAO Gathering, Guatemala
SEEDS contributors meet at Starseed Village to talk through what a relaunch could look like.
-
26 November 2025 Happened
A relaunch roadmap is circulated — as a draft
A "SEEDS 3.0" roadmap is written up for discussion. It sets out three phases, a set of lessons learned from 2021, and a proposed collaboration with Semo. It is a discussion document, not adopted policy.
-
21 December 2025 Happened
Winter solstice gathering
The community’s regular solstice gathering — the fourth since hibernation began — this time with the relaunch question on the table.
-
1 July 2026 Happened
A new era opens
A global SEEDS × Semo community call brought the SEEDS story and the Semo vision together in public for the first time, and launched the Regenerative Renaissance Gatherings from the same room. The recording is open to anyone.
Semo takes on the SEEDS values and legacy: Semo builds the everyday infrastructure of the transition, SEEDS holds the compass and stewards the movement. Both join the Gatherings as hosts alongside everyone else.
-
2026 Happened
Seeds become spendable again
Hemptex and BetterFlags take Seeds for their flags, and the Gatherings take them for tickets and contributions — paid straight from the Light Wallet, which is free on iOS and Android.
Small, and the thing that matters most: a currency is only a currency where it is accepted. See where you can spend Seeds.
-
2026 In motion
SEEDS as the regenerative layer of a larger system
Semo provides infrastructure for transparency, valuation and exchange at scale. SEEDS provides the direction: the curated, high-trust environment where new economic, governance and ecological mechanisms are developed and matured before anything is scaled.
The pacing is deliberate — Semo scales first, so SEEDS grows back gradually, each step real before the next is announced.
-
August – September 2026 Ahead
The gatherings travel
An Evening of Bhakti at Ocean’s Garden in Colares on 2 August, then the equinox edition in the Columbia River Gorge from 19 to 22 September, with the global community call broadcast live from the gathering on the 21st so the room and the web meet in one circle.
Editions in Amsterdam, on the Costa Brava and on the Atlantic coast of Portugal follow, each co-hosted by the community that holds it.
-
Ahead Proposed
What is being built next
Reinstating the SEEDS Passport as the governance app; updating and refactoring the wallet; oSwaps for exchange between community currencies; a decision on what happens to legacy Seeds holdings; and a professional, paid team to keep infrastructure and governance running instead of relying on unpaid goodwill.
-
Ahead Open questions
What has not been settled
How legacy Seeds are treated. Where the funding comes from and on what terms. Which technical platform the governance layer runs on. Who is accountable for what during the transition. And whether the community wants the relaunch on the terms being proposed.
These are live decisions for members, not settled facts. If you want a say in them, the place to start is taking part.
A note on completeness
This timeline is assembled from the ecosystem's own records: the roadmap published on joinseeds.earth, the SEEDS 3.0 relaunch draft of November 2025, the token reallocation proposal, the reboot whitepaper, and the constitutional and alliance documents in the archive.
It grows as the ecosystem does. Two things still to add: the State of SEEDS reports for 2022, 2023 and 2024, which exist and should be linked here directly, and the ratified text of Constitution 2.0. If you were part of any of it and something here is wrong or missing, that is worth correcting — the point of the page is accuracy, not tidiness.