Sharism Banking

Description

A proposal by Isaac Mao:

"When we speak of value in the context of Internet culture, our reference to consumer products and cash money is secondary to the primary meaning of cultural goods, information capital and knowledge creation. However, traditional banking systems have had no way to value, and businesses no way to reward, the activity of networked individuals who share and create rather than simply consume.

We therefore propose to create a new type of decentralized, peer-to-peer banking system that is rooted in social capital and sharing activity rather than money or consumer goods.

The system will be called "Sharism Banking," following the philosophy of ✳Sharism (分享主义) which promotes a sharing culture and economy and lives by the rule: "The more you have to share, the more you have to gain." The credit you earn in the system cannot be spent or exchanged, but only earned. It therefore will operate more like a reputation system than a virtual currency.

We want to create a new protocol and technology that can be embedded in any business or content sharing service to store the value of your sharing activity. A ”✳Share" (份子) will represent one unit of social capital, a new currency. This model has already inspired at least one real-world implementation by the Xindawei co-working space in Shanghai, which offers "✳Shares" to members as a reward for sharing their work activity on social networks, and has contracted with local businesses to offer discounted services to the members who have earned Shares.

We will base the Share Banking system on top of the OStatus Protocol (http:/ostatus.org). We propose to embrace and extend this simple protocol that combines ActivityStrea.ms, PubSubHubBub, Webfinger, and the Salmon standards. We also intend to integrate the Bitcoin crypto-currency into Sharism Banking as the bridge to the commercial economy. With the simple concept that a share is between a sender and receiver, we can build plugins that can turn any website into a sharing bank. We can integrate the Share Banking technology into Status.Net software, Aiki Framework, Diaspora and more. " (http://wiki.sharism.org/Share_Bank)