A Full-Stack Platform Architecture for Self-Organised Social Coordination

2025-07-01

AI Summary

To address monopolistic practices and excessive power concentration arising from platformization, this paper proposes a decentralized platform architecture designed for community self-organization. Methodologically, we design an open-source, full-stack metaplatform supporting distributed deployment, multi-homing, and cloning; integrate a plugin-based extensibility framework and a dual-perspective (developer/user) toolchain to enable rapid instantiation, context-aware customization, and collaborative co-evolution. Our key contribution lies in decentralizing platform generation capability to local communities—thereby reconciling generic architectural principles with situated adaptability. We validate the architecture through prototype implementations in two real-world settings: a sports association and a collective learning initiative. Results demonstrate its effectiveness in enabling diverse, sustainable, and self-organized collaboration. This work provides a reusable technical pathway toward platform democratization and generative innovation.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Machine Learning: Deep Neural Architectures and Foundation Models
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: (Computational) Cognitive Architectures

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Decentralized Web and Fediverse systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Responsible Web: Web for democratic and emancipatory futures

Abstract

To mitigate the restrictive centralising and monopolistic tendencies of platformisation, we aim to empower local communities by democratising platforms for self-organised social coordination. Our approach is to develop an open-source, full-stack architecture for platform development that supports ease of distribution and cloning, generativity, and a variety of hosting options. The architecture consists of a meta-platform that is used to instantiate a base platform with supporting libraries for generic functions, and plugins (intended to be supplied by third parties) for customisation of application-specification functionality for self-organised social coordination. Associated developer- and user-oriented toolchains support the instantiation and customisation of a platform in a two-stage process. This is demonstrated through the proof-of-concept implementation of two case studies: a platform for regular sporting association, and a platform for collective group study. We conclude by arguing that self-organisation at the application layer can be achieved by the specific supporting functionality of a full-stack architecture with complimentary developer and user toolchains.

Problem

• Democratizing platforms for self-organized social coordination
• Developing open-source full-stack architecture for platform development
• Supporting self-organization through customizable toolchains and plugins

Innovation

• Open-source full-stack architecture for democratized platforms
• Meta-platform with base platform and customizable plugins
• Two-stage toolchains for developer and user customization