Andreas Arnold
Andreas Arnold is a Berlin-based social entrepreneur, cooperative strategist, and connector working at the intersection of the cooperative economy, Web3, and community-driven innovation. Trained as an Industrial Engineer and Management expert, he has spent the past 15 years exploring the transition from the sharing economy toward platform cooperatives and decentralized economic systems.
As co-founder and board member of Platform Coops eG, Andreas supports founders and organizations in building cooperative digital business models, governance structures, and alternative financing approaches. His work spans blockchain ecosystems, DAOs, DGOV, marketplaces, and cooperative finance — with a current focus on cooperative stablecoins and community-owned financial infrastructures.
Previously, Andreas led the digitalization and marketplace development for the freelancer cooperative SMartDe eG, coordinated marketplace strategy for the blockchain-based UBI project Circles, and advised Circles Coop eG on cooperative and ecosystem development.
Session
Grounded practices, real cases, and alternative financing tools. The question is no longer whether the current model is broken; most people in the room already know it is. The real question is more demanding: what approaches already exist that allows us to fund democratic digital infrastructure differently, and what still needs to be invented? This session focuses on concrete practices from the Social and Solidarity Economy: cooperative financing, civic crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, and public-commons partnerships capable of sustaining technologies that serve collective needs rather than extractive growth.