Envienta
= "this project aims to tokenize open-source cosmo-local production, carries the p2pfoundation wiki logo on their homepage, cites Michel Bauwens in the first page of the above white paper, and has South-African cosmo-localizer James Gien Wong as advizer"
URL = http://www.envienta.com/ white paper
Description
Guy James:
"The Envienta project has recently come to my attention – it is a ‘connect the dots’ type initiative which aims to collect various forms of open source technology to make up an entire lifestyle based on low-cost modular solutions and open knowledge. They are clearly inspired by Jeremy Rifkin’s ‘Zero Marginal Cost Society‘ hypothesis, and – I would suspect – the Zeitgeist movement, talking about how ‘we must return to a harmonic, stable, science-based, inherently sustainable socioeconomic model.’
From their blog:
“We figured out a new lifestyle, focusing on households. A laterally scaled socioeconomic model begins at the tiniest piece of our society: the individuals and the families. To make our model time and cost-effective, we bring domestic developments under one roof.
In modern times – especially in large cities – to get food and water, energy, household objects, furniture and so on, in a reliable form subject to a lot of conditions. ENVIENTA was born as a Do it Yourself, community-based solution package for the 21st century, which provides share of know-how, resources, products, food and water for the members.
And as an open source model, it offers business plans to anyone for free, as well as full transparency.”
They have a crowdfunding campaign on GoFundMe which I suggest is worth supporting. If a mainstream-oriented project like this can help to spread the word about integrating open source design and technology into our daily lives, it could be an important initiative.
More about what they plan to do with the crowdfunding income:
“On our new website we’ll share the open source planning process, with version tracking. Searchable building techniques, collaborating experts, constructors, 3D printer hubs according to your location, all of these, with calculating the cost of your investments will be available on mobile, to propose the lists of available solutions in your region. It can be also a project organizer for groups. With the help of our new website and mobile application we build a maker movement – a community from innovative experts to bring commons-based peer-production into reality by building and managing ENVIENTA project centers around the world.” (http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/crowdfunding-open-source-ecology/2016/01/01)
Discussion
Critique and questions by James Quilligan:
"This is very interesting indeed. For me, the questions are usually 1) how is it organized (who benefits most) and is it run as a cooperative? 2) how does it establish valuation?; and 3) what is the standard of value that is being used?
With 1), it is hard to tell, but there is clearly a hierarchy of organization and I see no evidence that it is structure as a cooperative. It it were, they would celebrate it. It all feels to me like a libertarian structure embedded within a progressive communist society. There is no understanding here of the structure of society.
In 2), it generates value through a financial chain where value is Etherium-based and is convertible into national currencies. Looks to me, then, that this a financial rather than a monetary form of value. The tokens are not real money but investments which can function as cash within the Envienta world. This is not a sustainable form of value because it is subject to all of the other pressures and constraints of the modern market economy. Hence Envienta creates a microbubble space within a market-based society which is already a superbubble -- not a viable alternative as presently structured.
In terms of 3), the "Resource-Based Contract (RBC) as a reward for contributions based on human labor and other shareable resources."now we can see wha this is based on. There is no indication at all of how human labor and other shareable resources are measured or that value is based on anything other than human labor and shared resources, which are after all renewable resources. Again, this sounds to me like a confused mash-up of libertarianism and communism. .So. what is the actual value of non-renewable resources? Never mentioned. This is another red flag which indicates there is no standard of value other than self-referential and/or dependence on mainstream currency value as both a metrical baseline and a means of cashing out.
On balance, many elements of a thorough approach are present, but to me the organization has no understanding of the meaning of sustainability. The blockchain of everything has forgotten something." (email, July 2018)
Response from László Fazekas
"1) In the case of a decentralised token based system it is really important to see that the investors do not invest in a single company. It is rather crowdfunding where the company is raising money to realise something for the community to have. So it is very important to make a difference between the ENVIENTA LTD and the ENVIENTA Community. The task of the ENVIENTA LTD is to collect the necessary capital during the ICO which enables it to get through the developments and build the ecosystem (create software, educational material, project centres, bring participants together from all over the world etc. ), which is later on owned and used by the ENVIENTA Community. After having achieved these goals the ENVIENTA LTD as a company might even be eliminated! The ENVIENTA Community consists of the manufacturers, open source developers, customers etc. who use the platform and the ecosystem. The aim of the project is to reach the critical mass, from which point the community will become self-organising. We do not force any fixed alignment within the projects, the participants themselves define the hierarchy, the operation is regulated by smart contracts.
2) The tokens in fact can be exchanged to fiat currency, so ENV is also a kind of “traditional currency”, which is a money-based incentive. We have tried to realise the ENVIENTA ecosystem in many different ways without money on a nonprofit basis, but we had to face that it is impossible in our money centred world at the moment. We are also dreaming about a world based on resources without money but we assume that it is possible only is we “play by the rule of this present world” based on money. It is true that the model is operated by money but this is not the point. The point is that a lot of open source hardware and knowledge is created as a so to say “by product” of this process and this is common property! Entirely free! This is what we are working for and this makes us expect the boost of innovation and the increase of global well-being.
3) The operation of the Resource Based Contract is not yet refined. The elaboration is a part of the project. The plan is to map out a reputation and evaluative system which would be a basis for measuring the participants’ performance and their contribution to the ecosystem. We wish to reward and encourage them according to this rate, in order to build the ecosystem further relying on the experience gained during its operation. The system can be totally automatic or a democratic system based on votes where the community decide about who to support. Elaboration is in the making..." (https://www.facebook.com/groups/p2p.open/permalink/1932952333415603/?)
Status
This describes what they say is happening now (July 2018):
László FazekasLászló explains:
"The development was closed (in a private GitLab repo) until now. We wanted to wait the alpha state before the publication. By the way, the platform is in very early stage with a minimal feature set (MVP), and this Laravel based PHP portal is only a part of it. I'm planning to write an article about our platform plans, the decentralization of it, and how it will use the blockchain."