About Economy3
Building the We Economy.
Started in Jaipur, 2018.
Flat pricing in Indian handwovens
Scott Frankum was in Jaipur in 2018, working with handwoven textile producers in Rajasthan. He noticed something that didn't add up: prices were flat. A Bikaner wool rug that took forty hours of skilled hand-knotting sold for the same price as a machine-made imitation that took forty minutes.
The market couldn't tell the difference. Buyers couldn't verify the claim. Artisans couldn't prove their work. And the intermediaries who knew — who held the provenance information — captured the premium themselves.
Unreliable supply chain data falls most heavily on the maker who has the least power in the chain. Brands pay in compliance risk, reputational exposure, and buyer distrust. Auditors charge to verify what should have been self-evident from the start.
The provenance thesis
A structural market analysis. Climate compliance regulations were emerging across the EU, US, and Australia. AI was becoming capable of structured product discovery. Blockchain had proven that distributed trust was possible — but had failed on gas fees, energy consumption, and Global South exclusion.
The thesis: signed JSON-LD product data at the point of value creation is the lowest-cost path to climate compliance, AI commerce readiness, and fair economics — simultaneously. The technology already existed. It just needed to be assembled correctly.
The academic backing arrives
Catalini, Cremer, and Tucker published “Some Simple Economics of AGI” — a 113-page mathematical framework that formalized what Economy3 had been building toward. The Provenance Premium (§6.1.2). The Verifiable Share sv (§2.1). The Hollow Economy (§6.2).
The paper confirmed: in infinite synthetic production, verified provenance becomes the scarcity anchor. The maker who signs their work owns their place in the market permanently.
Heritage recipes, Shopify, feeds
The Heritage recipe ships: three screens, offline-capable, signing for individuals and cooperatives. Lot-based signing for farms and mills. ESPR fields built in. A QR code as the output.
The Shopify app connects the artisan chain to commerce. Install it, and every product in your catalog is automatically enriched by two AI agents — one that extracts origin and supply chain context, one that generates the complete EU Digital Product Passport. When an order ships, a custody record is written and the provenance chain closes at the moment of sale.
Every signed record is machine-readable and queryable by AI agents directly — no platform intermediary, no API key. The record is the interface.
Economy3 aligns with the ValueFlows economic vocabulary — used by hREA and FEP-0837 federated marketplaces. A signed Economy3 record is readable by all of them without translation. The interoperability is not aspirational — it is in the JSON-LD and it is tested.
In infinite synthetic production, the signed record is the scarce one.
Economy3 thesis · formalized in Catalini, Cremer, Tucker (2025) §6.1.2
Theory of change
The Spiral Theory of Change
Economy3 is not trying to change the market by convincing people. It is changing the market by making the infrastructure so easy to use that it becomes the default. Five spirals, each one enabling the next.
Tools
Open-source tools that let makers sign their work from any phone. Zero friction. Zero cost. The infrastructure proves itself by working.
Daily use
Cooperatives and NGO directors adopt the tools for their members. Real records accumulate. The chain becomes queryable.
Structure
Standards bodies, regulators, and GI authorities recognize the signed record. Provenance becomes an asset class.
Bargaining power
Makers with verified provenance negotiate better prices. Brands with signed chains meet ESPR without paying intermediaries. Compliance costs stop being overhead and start being competitive advantage.
Power parity
A herder in Bikaner and a brand in Berlin operate on the same infrastructure, with the same data rights. No platform captures the value between them.
What Economy3 is not
The builder
Scott Frankum
Founder. Writer. Strategist. Technologist. Deep expertise in JSON-LD, Holochain, EU supply chain policy, and Global South production economics. Founder of Economy3, author of the weave3.org writing, designer of the chain3.org technology.
scott@economy3.net →Consulting
Caroline Rothwell-Gerstein
Strategy and consulting partner. ESPR compliance advisory, brand positioning, and sustainability officer engagement.
Caro@Caro.Consulting →