Starproject Missive 4 — Protocolized

This is the fourth missive from the Summer of Protocols initiative, a collaborative project examining protocols through fiction, theory, and community engagement. The document serves as a retrospective newsletter documenting contributions and developments within the Summer of Protocols community during 2024.

Related resources

Paper

Composable Life: Our Island and Us

This paper explores the intersection of protocol design, community formation, and digital culture through the framework of onchain artificial life (OALife), examining how composable systems create new forms of existence and social organization. The authors investigate what it means when autonomous agents designed to be eternal on the blockchain disappear, challenging assumptions about permanence and presence in decentralized systems.

community culture design

Dec 2023

Fangting, Botao Amber Hu

Paper

Dispatches from Cascadia

This paper uses Cascadia as a speculative case study to explore how bioregional governance frameworks might organize communities around ecological rather than political boundaries, with bears and watershed patterns replacing state/provincial lines. Rajamohan examines how protocol-based systems could coordinate resource management and social infrastructure across overlapping ecoregions facing polycrisis challenges like climate instability and housing crises.

community fiction governance

Dec 2023

Rithikha Rajamohan

Paper

Ghosts in Machines

Ghosts in Machines is a Protocolized anthology woven from stories of science fiction and science fact. Writers explore strange rules and familiar haunts through the lens of protocols.

protocols fiction culture

Jan 2025

Protocolized