P2P Exchange Infrastructure Projects

Here are projects that seek to create an underlying infrastructure for p2p-based exchanges, monetary, gift, or otherwise.

Examples

Here are projects that seek to create an underlying infrastructure for p2p-based exchanges, monetary, gift, or otherwise.

Barter

There is a whole ecosystem of modules and software which support bartering mechanisms:

1. folkd
2. giventake
3. cclite
4. sweblets
5. xolimited
6. bartertrainer

Currency/Payment systems

See: Complementary Currency Software for an extensive, updated directory of projects.

• Community Exchange System, linking complementary currencies in a global exchange
• Ripple standard protocol for routing payments through arbitrary currency networks
• Open Coin, anonymous virtual tokens
• Open Money, http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Money
• Principles for a Free Monetary System for the Digital Era, monetary part of the infoliberalism project.

General goods and services exchanges

• Give Get Nation from William Shanley, http://p2pfoundation.net/Give_Get_Nation
• P2P Yardsale Engine, http://p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Yardsale_Engine

Exchanges of labor and time

• Hospitality Exchange Networks
• Groundcrew
• Time Banks

Unclassified

• Cosmopool, community life without money
• Friend2Friend project, from Robert Upton, at http://www.altruists.org/projects/ge/ff
• Giftegrity of Timothy Wilken, http://p2pfoundation.net/Giftegrity
• Global Free Economy Project
• OpenXchange, from Francois Rey et al, http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Xchange
• Larry Penslinger's m-valued monetary systems, http://www.geocities.com/m_valuedlets/
• The Vodes.net multifacetted internal currency and governance model, http://www.vodes.net/rev/

Context

The above tools could be seen, and mapped, against the following typology of non-monetary exchange types:

Householding economies — meeting basic needs with our own skills and work at home and on or with the land: raising children, offering advice or comfort, resolving relational conflicts, teaching basic life skills (such as how to talk!), cooking, sewing, cleaning the house, building the house, balancing the checkbook, fixing the car, gardening, farming, raising animals. Many types of work that have often been rendered invisible or devalued by patriarchy as "women’s work."

Barter economies — trading services with our friends or neighbors, swapping one useful thing for another: "Returning a favor", exchanging plants or seeds, time-based local currencies.

Collective economies — in their simple form these economies are about pooling our resources together (sharing): bringing food to a potluck supper, carpooling, lending and borrowing, consumer co-ops; in their most "radical" form, collective economies are based on common ownership and/or control of resources: collective communities, health care collectives, community land trusts, and more.

Scavenging Economies — living on the abundance of Earth’s own gift economy: hunting, fishing, and foraging. Also living on the abundance of human wastefulness— "one person’s trash is another one’s treasure": salvaging from demolition sites, using old car parts, dumpster diving, the "swap-shop" at the local dump.

Gift economies — giving some of our resources to other people and to our communities: volunteer fire companies, community food banks, giving rides to hitch-hikers, having neighbors over for dinner.

Worker-controlled economies — workers deciding the terms and conditions of their own work: self-employment, family farms, worker-owned companies and cooperatives.

"Pirate" economies — various activities that might be labeled "theft" by those in power, but would be called "rightful re-appropriation" by those who have been robbed of power: re-incarnations of Robin Hood or Pretty Boy Floyd, squatters.

Subsistence market economies — thousands of very small businesses survive (and sometimes thrive) with little or no imperative to grow and accumulate wealth. These are subsistence-based businesses, created and run for the purpose of providing healthy livelihood to the owners (who are often the workers) and providing a basic service to the larger community (sometimes in the indirect form of creating a community gathering space). ( http://www.geo.coop/node/35 )

More Information

See also our entry on Peer to Peer Exchanges ; Complementary Currency Software