entire ecosystem.

For us, this started by recognizing that it's the users that give apps their value. Not the app's features. Not their code. The users. Without users, an app is worthless.

Many apps offer their app to users for free in exchange for the right to advertise to those users. So users get a free and convenient product. But they give up control over their data, and all the value generated goes to the app company and the app company’s shareholders. Those shareholders enjoy a significant multiple on user-derived metrics like monthly active users and revenue per thousand ads served to users. So app companies work hard to maximize users' time and attention so they can acquire more data and serve more ads. Users become the products, and are often subjected to psychological manipulation and other exploitation by app companies. All in service to increasing value for shareholders.

Users can vote with their feet, but usually there's no better alternative and quite often there's no alternative at all. So the preferences of users - manipulated in any event as they are - have little bearing on this system.

If users are a necessary condition for value, but users are exploited and have little to no control over the system that defines that value, then the system is overdue for a realignment.

So we asked ourselves some questions.

What if advertisers had to pay users to advertise to them? What if apps were co-owned by their user communities? What if users controlled their data and privacy? What would that ecosystem have to look like? What types of organizations are needed? What do the relationships between them look like? And why shouldn’t the whole system prioritize our planet and a social purpose?

If we were to build a single app to address these questions we’d bet it would not only be viable but could also inspire others to build new models and change existing ones. And that would be a small success. But a platform; a whole ecosystem of apps, united in a common commitment and shared principles just might be able to deliver lasting, systemic change.

Fit for All is a benefits company, committed to people, planet, and purpose, with ESG built into its DNA. Run2Play is the fitness app created by Fit for All that will catalyze the ecosystem. We created the AVA Foundation to generate and manage a token that can be used across an ecosystem of apps. An adaptive reward engine allocates AVA Coin to users in proportion to their eligible activity. AVA Coin can be used to purchase in-app advertising space, used for in-app and sponsor purchases, and traded among users and on exchanges, providing value and utility to the coin. Each user selects up to three charitable causes to support, with the Climate Crisis preselected for all users, who donate 30-100% of their AVA Coin rewards, making seamless charitable giving a foundational element of the ecosystem.

While each component of the system is essential and complementary, the most innovative and important is the For All Cooperative. Formed in Colorado, the For All Cooperative is a multi-stakeholder cooperative composed of users, app companies, the AVA Foundation, and investors, each in four distinct classes of membership, with the investor class limited in equity and voting power. The app company membership agreement requires app companies to transfer increments of equity to the Cooperative proportional to Cooperative users acquired, up to 15%. The app company membership agreement also obligates them to accept AVA Coin for advertising placements, in-app purchases, subscriptions, and other services proportionate to AVA Coin rewarded for user activity in their apps, also up to 15%, after which it is burned. The Cooperative’s backend, Core, enables a single sign-on for all Circle Apps and an ad module that provides advertisers with anonymized but granular ad targeting for users who opt-in. The Coopertive’s app, Conduit, provides social and gamification components to user-members, enables voting on Cooperative initiatives, as well as a marketplace for Circle Apps.