“The earliest mutual organization established in the British North American colonies was created in 1735 in Charleston, SC” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cooperatives_in_the_United_States#18th_century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cooperatives_in_the_United_States#18th_century)
“The Philadelphia Contributionship mutual insurance company, founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1752, is the oldest continuing mutual insurance company in the continental United States. “
Coop says more about the governance (democracy + open membership) than the business model, IMO
A cooperative is defined as an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.
Working through this now: more of a playbook [https://elements.disco.coop/](https://elements.disco.coop/)
* [SSI for Organizations: Who’s behind this DID?](https://iiw.idcommons.net/14G/_SSI_for_Organizations:_Who%27s_behind_this_DID_)by Dominic Wörner, Christian Bormann, Michael Schäfer ([video](https://eu01web.zoom.us/rec/play/hh2Uribpcy71pc7u0D_-7XCVoBmmC6feq22r4rgbnYBwnBnCd3Zib8l6WvhpOT0Esu5eFdhk00F38vaX.Z23dGksHI22vsdde?continueMode=true)
> a simple mechanism to provide public information concerning an entity by advertising a public profile service in the DID document of a public DID. A good analogy for this public identity information would be a machine-readable and cryptographically-verifiable imprint.
> Real progress is made by rich, cross-disciplinary teams and heterogeneous coalitions coming together to attack hard problems from every angle at once.
