What happened
Outcome evidence uncertain. LiquidO combined open participation with contribution-weighted compensation and voting inside a privately owned company. Verzera reported close agreement between self-assessment and peer assessments, but agreement alone cannot show whether less visible work received fair credit or whether newcomers could gain influence.
- The 2013 LiquidO design combined time-boxed voting, work-in-progress limits, voluntary task uptake, and peer evaluation of completed contributions. Liquid organizations: building the next evolutionary stage of anti-fragility
- Credits determine compensation and, for decisions deemed important, differentiated voting weight. The founder reports assessment discrepancies below 10%, without publishing the underlying dataset. Liquid organizations: building the next evolutionary stage of anti-fragility
- Cocoon remained privately owned while opening parts of its governance to participants. Participation in decisions did not itself give contributors ownership rights. Positive Platforms Identity: Italian ecosystem mapping
What might explain it
Participant explanation
Visible contribution records could make informal influence discussable and reward neglected organizational work. Liquid organizations: building the next evolutionary stage of anti-fragility
Alternative explanation: A closely selected professional group and repeated relationships may explain cooperative behavior independently of the credit system.
Plausible
Accumulated credits could also reinforce incumbents’ influence rather than keep authority responsive to current expertise. Liquid organizations: building the next evolutionary stage of anti-fragility
Alternative explanation: Credit expiry or decision rules tied to relevant expertise could limit this effect. Whether those safeguards operated in LiquidO remains unclear.
Understanding the outcome
Stigmergic coordination
The shared board provides visible traces that guide subsequent work without assigning every task centrally. Liquid organizations: building the next evolutionary stage of anti-fragility
A shared task board can decentralize task choice while leaving evaluation, conflict resolution, and ownership concentrated.
Questions to take into practice
- Which decisions are open to everyone, and which give more weight to past contributors?
- How are disputed assessments, essential invisible work, and newcomers’ influence handled?
What remains uncertain
- How did voting weight change as credits accumulated, and how much influence could a newcomer acquire?
- The durability of the arrangement, the treatment of departures, and the experience of people dissatisfied with their assessments remain unclear.