Colony is a protocol for self-organizing teams that run via software rather than paperwork. In a typical organization, the rules for decision-making, compensation, ownership, and seniority exist in documents. Colony encodes those rules in smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum Blockchain. This approach to work is: 1. Trustless. The Ethereum Blockchain enforces the rules of an organization. Members can’t break the rules or change them arbitrarily at the expense of other members. 2. Open. Strangers can collaborate on a colony without formal hiring processes, contracts, or fear of being cheated. Participation is open and fluid. 3. Meritocratic. In this trustless, open system, members earn payment or ownership commensurate with their contributions to the colony. 4. Networked. Anyone can take on work in the Colony Network and be rewarded for quality output. No existing marketplaces provide this degree of access and choice. Put simply, Colony is infrastructure for “open organizations”: self-organizing teams that run via software, not paperwork.