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An idea in this vein I've been toying with is implementing a P2P IOU bartering protocol. I do something for you, you cryptographically sign me an IOU (which is

An idea in this vein I've been toying with is implementing a P2P IOU bartering protocol. I do something for you, you cryptographically sign me an IOU (which is a plaintext IOU note - no monetary amount required) which I can either call in later or trade to someone else who needs your services more for something I want from them. Messages sign adjacent messages (probably using Secure Scuttlebutt), so when someone comes back to you with the IOU, you can have a strong guarantee that it's the original note and not a copy even though you don't necessarily have visibility of all the participants it transited through. Even in theory, it only works in some contexts, though, namely in exchanges between individuals. Because there's a strong reliance that neighbors in the path trust each other and leaves them responsible for settling exchanges to mutual satisfaction. All this proposal adds to direct barter is long-distance authenticity guarantees.

luma 5y ago
This sounds like money with extra steps.
matheusd 5y ago
The Offset[1] project seems to be around that position in design space, at least going by their Economic Idea[2] page. [1] https://www.offsetcredit.org/ https://www.offsetcredit.org/ [2] https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/economic.html https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/economic.html
deepnet 5y ago
This is needed. IOU works well on small scales. It has often worked locally or within small communities[1]. LETS[2], babysitting vouchers, friends who value and track favours and keep the scales balanced. Make the FOSS infrastructure as easily deployable as wordpress. IOUs with a PGP signed chain of trust is brilliant and it could be a killer app for PGP adoption. Who of us doesn't owe Stallman and Torvalds at least a favour ? But never got their key-signed ? Widespread PGP adoption means lots of people would have their own crypto so privacy and trust could be run over any insecure transport medium. Maybe there could be a FIDOnet type central glue and exchange protocols so money could travel further than local. Local non-currency ledgers on a eco-friendly blockchain. Money is human glue. It represents creativity and potential energy. It is democratic to have lots of types of small monies so no-one has to be excluded. Small things often work well. National monies fail for a lot of people and cryptos current success model is to be worth something - and so are stuck being tied to national monies so the excluded are still excluded. Make it easy to make an altcoin, so anyone can and the goal can be stimulating a local economy rather than being tied back into the main one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Exchange_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Exchange_System [2] https://www.lowimpact.org/lets-origins-michael-linton-letsystems/ https://www.lowimpact.org/lets-origins-michael-linton-letsys...
wyager 5y ago
How is this not strictly worse than money? It’s like money but not fungible.
- indigochill 5y ago
  The non-fungiblity is the point. Fungible value tends towards centralization, but non-fungible value necessarily remains distributed. Even with something like bitcoin, the "central authority" is the network consensus. In this proposal, we don't even need consensus. The only thing that matters is human trust between individuals. That said, it is definitely worse than money if you want to make an exchange with someone more than a degree or two distant from you. Anyway, right now it's just a thought experiment. I think the critical feedback is sufficient motivation to just make the thing and see how it works or doesn't in practice.
  - wyager 5y ago
    > Fungible value tends towards centralization I don’t think this claim makes sense. Fungible value is only “centralized” in that it creates a virtual fully connected node in the market graph. This is a strictly good thing, decreasing maximum market hop distance to a constant.
    - indigochill 5y ago
      > Fungible value is only “centralized” in that it creates a virtual fully connected node in the market graph. Yeah, I'd agree with this. > This is a strictly good thing, decreasing maximum market hop distance to a constant. I think I see your point here, but I disagree. I will agree it's more convenient than the alternative (and exponentially so at longer distances), but I'm not sure it's strictly better. The trouble I see is that authority then always accumulates to that node. With something like Offset, which is mechanically highly decentralized but measures value in USD despite actual USD never needing to change hands, the value of a unit there is still tied to American financial policy because that influences people's perception of the value of USD. But of course if we changed it to some other real currency like the Euro, that would just shift the authority to a different government. And if we shifted to a completely imaginary currency, then we'd need consensus on the value of that currency, and whatever form of consensus was used would then have authority over the whole network. So I arrive at non-fungible value as the only way to avoid this situation. That said, for most modern use cases where you're dealing with untrusted individuals (and thus this proposal doesn't work), money is better, yes. The intended use case for this proposal would be for "local" things like co-ops where there's already trust among the members and they can then benefit from cutting out transaction costs (and relative to Offset, which offers zero transaction costs between trusted members, also provides insulation from third-party financial policy by not measuring value in any fiat currency).

luma 5y ago

This sounds like money with extra steps.

matheusd 5y ago

The Offset[1] project seems to be around that position in design space, at least going by their Economic Idea[2] page. [1] https://www.offsetcredit.org/ https://www.offsetcredit.org/ [2] https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/economic.html https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/intro/economic.html

deepnet 5y ago

This is needed. IOU works well on small scales. It has often worked locally or within small communities[1]. LETS[2], babysitting vouchers, friends who value and track favours and keep the scales balanced. Make the FOSS infrastructure as easily deployable as wordpress. IOUs with a PGP signed chain of trust is brilliant and it could be a killer app for PGP adoption. Who of us doesn't owe Stallman and Torvalds at least a favour ? But never got their key-signed ? Widespread PGP adoption means lots of people would have their own crypto so privacy and trust could be run over any insecure transport medium. Maybe there could be a FIDOnet type central glue and exchange protocols so money could travel further than local. Local non-currency ledgers on a eco-friendly blockchain. Money is human glue. It represents creativity and potential energy. It is democratic to have lots of types of small monies so no-one has to be excluded. Small things often work well. National monies fail for a lot of people and cryptos current success model is to be worth something - and so are stuck being tied to national monies so the excluded are still excluded. Make it easy to make an altcoin, so anyone can and the goal can be stimulating a local economy rather than being tied back into the main one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Exchange_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Exchange_System [2] https://www.lowimpact.org/lets-origins-michael-linton-letsystems/ https://www.lowimpact.org/lets-origins-michael-linton-letsys...

wyager 5y ago

How is this not strictly worse than money? It’s like money but not fungible.

indigochill 5y ago
The non-fungiblity is the point. Fungible value tends towards centralization, but non-fungible value necessarily remains distributed. Even with something like bitcoin, the "central authority" is the network consensus. In this proposal, we don't even need consensus. The only thing that matters is human trust between individuals. That said, it is definitely worse than money if you want to make an exchange with someone more than a degree or two distant from you. Anyway, right now it's just a thought experiment. I think the critical feedback is sufficient motivation to just make the thing and see how it works or doesn't in practice.
- wyager 5y ago
  > Fungible value tends towards centralization I don’t think this claim makes sense. Fungible value is only “centralized” in that it creates a virtual fully connected node in the market graph. This is a strictly good thing, decreasing maximum market hop distance to a constant.
  - indigochill 5y ago
    > Fungible value is only “centralized” in that it creates a virtual fully connected node in the market graph. Yeah, I'd agree with this. > This is a strictly good thing, decreasing maximum market hop distance to a constant. I think I see your point here, but I disagree. I will agree it's more convenient than the alternative (and exponentially so at longer distances), but I'm not sure it's strictly better. The trouble I see is that authority then always accumulates to that node. With something like Offset, which is mechanically highly decentralized but measures value in USD despite actual USD never needing to change hands, the value of a unit there is still tied to American financial policy because that influences people's perception of the value of USD. But of course if we changed it to some other real currency like the Euro, that would just shift the authority to a different government. And if we shifted to a completely imaginary currency, then we'd need consensus on the value of that currency, and whatever form of consensus was used would then have authority over the whole network. So I arrive at non-fungible value as the only way to avoid this situation. That said, for most modern use cases where you're dealing with untrusted individuals (and thus this proposal doesn't work), money is better, yes. The intended use case for this proposal would be for "local" things like co-ops where there's already trust among the members and they can then benefit from cutting out transaction costs (and relative to Offset, which offers zero transaction costs between trusted members, also provides insulation from third-party financial policy by not measuring value in any fiat currency).