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For Episode 229, I’m thrilled to welcome Mark Pascall, Co-Founder of The Wellbeing Protocol and the newly launched hum.community a participatory funding platform that transforms how local communities allocate funds.

A lot of what we explore on this podcast is the future of impact. But today’s topic is actually ancient. It’s rooted in practices many communities have carried for generations: shared stewardship, collective decision-making, and local agency.

What’s new is the technology that can finally help these principles operate at scale.

Mark has spent years working at the intersection of technology, governance, and systems change, and his work asks a powerful question: What if our economic systems were designed to improve wellbeing, not just wealth?

In today’s episode, we explore this question and the origins of The Wellbeing Protocol, the lessons learned from 15 pilot projects across New Zealand, Australia, and the UK, and why hum.community is such a meaningful milestone for the future of community-led impact.

You’ll learn:

• 🌱 What a wellbeing economy really looks like, and how communities can design systems that prioritize connection, belonging, and collective thriving over traditional economic metrics.
• 🤲 Why community-controlled funding matters, and how participatory micro-granting can unlock faster, fairer, and more culturally aligned decision-making.
• 🤝 How Web3 and Indigenous governance principles come together to create tools that strengthen local resilience and shift real power back to communities.
• 🌐 And the story behind hum.community, a new platform enabling communities to collaborate transparently and allocate resources with unprecedented efficiency and trust.

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Key Takeaways

🔗 Ancient Principles, Modern Systems: hum.community is built on Indigenous Māori principles like mana motuhake and whanaungatanga; showing that the future of funding isn’t about starting from scratch, but rediscovering timeless models of collective care and community-led governance.

✨ From Passive to Empowered Participants: Instead of communities waiting on top-down decisions, hum transforms them into active stewards of resources, allowing them to propose ideas, vote, and co-design the impact they want to see. It’s funding powered by agency, not gatekeeping.

🔗 Web3 Behind the Scenes, Accessible by Design: To ensure accessibility, early pilots ran off-chain to validate the model. Blockchain was introduced later as invisible infrastructure, abstracting away complexity while delivering trust, transparency, and accountable funding flows for all.

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Follow Marc, hum.community, & Wellbeing Protocol

LinkedIn - Mark

X -Wellbeing Protocol

LinkedIn - Wellbeing Protocol

Website - hum.community

Website - Wellbeing Protocol

Crypto Altruists Episode 268 - The Wellbeing Protocol - Scaling Localism with Web3 and Hyper Local DAOs

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Thank you to PIPE gDAO for sponsoring the Crypto Altruists podcast! 🙏

PIPE gDAO is leveraging blockchain for their University Real World Asset IP Launchpad that helps bring groundbreaking ideas from lab to market. By joining the Pipe Associate Network (aka PAN), associates can create a profile highlighting their skills, be notified of opportunities, and then contribute fractional work to pre-IPO companies in return for equity and tokens.

Check out their Linktree for links to all of their socials so you can get involved and join this growing community!

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Episode Time Stamps:

02:20 - Let’s start with your journey. You’ve been building at the intersection of technology, communities, and systems change for years. What first drew you into Web3, and how did that path lead to co-founding The Wellbeing Protocol?

04:40 - For listeners who may be new to your work, can you give us a high-level introduction to The Wellbeing Protocol? What problem are you fundamentally trying to solve, and what vision of a “wellbeing economy” drives your mission?

08:40 - Your work is deeply rooted in Aotearoa New Zealand and Māori principles like mana motuhake and whanaungatanga. How have Indigenous values shaped the way you think about governance, collective decision-making, and the role of technology in empowering communities?

12:50 - You recently announced the launch of hum.community, the first application of Wellbeing Protocol. At a high level, what is hum.community, and why is this such a meaningful milestone?

14:50 - One of the core ideas behind hum.community is “community-controlled funds.” Can you walk us through how participatory micro-granting works in practice, from proposing ideas, to voting, to tracking impact?

20:15 - A lot led up to the launch of hum.community, including 15 pilot projects around the world. Could you please highlight a couple of the projects?

23:45 - How did you abstract away the complexity of blockchain to make sure that it’s user friendly and accessible to all?

27:45 - You've said this shift is about moving from “charity to shared agency.” What does shared agency look like in the communities you've worked with, and how can a platform like hum help build long-term community power rather than one-off projects?

29:40 - Reflecting on the pilots, can you share some of the key lessons you learned about why community-led funding is better than top-down grantmaking?

32:55 - How have you incorporated blockchain behind the scenes to power the platform?

36:05 - For listeners who are funders, community organizations, or grassroots groups, what’s the best way to get involved with hum.community, or explore whether this model is right for them?

38:25 - When you imagine a world where wellbeing economies are the norm, and where communities control resources and decision-making, what does it look like?

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