Top Ten P2P Trends of 2014

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1. Reaching of the tipping point for (distributed) renewable energy

This is probably the most important trend in 2014, the breakthrough of the solar economy, and part of which is clearly being done on 'peer to peer' lines, i.e. distributed renewable energy, as in Germany where there are now two million energy providers, many of them citizen cooperatives.

Just before the end of the year, E.ON, the major utility in Germany, took stock of that situation and is re-organizing itself for the distributed energy revolution. When such a major player acts, it means the emergence is no longer margin. Find out more here.

2. The rise of open cooperatives and ethical enterpreneurial coalitions

Earlier this year, I made an intervention calling for Open Cooperativism, i.e. a new type of social goal oriented, multi-stakeholder governed cooperatives that also directly produce commons. A first example, which embraces the concept, is working towards it (see Fair.Coop), is the Catalan Integral Cooperative, which is rapidly growing in Catalonia.

2014 also saw the coming of age of ethical coalitions, very p2p oriented in their practice, such as the very innovative Enspiral, born in New Zealand.

3. The emergence of cryptoledger applications and a crypto-currency for the commons

Readers of our blog know that we are critical of Bitcoin, which exhibits some of the worst features of a wild hyper-capitalism, creates even more concentration of wealth as sovereign currencies and is based on a rent-extraction mechanism that favours oligarchic early entrants. See here for a summary of that critique.

But apart from the currency, the ledger of bitcoin is an important development, and hopes for Distributed Autonomous Corporations or organizations, where p2p governance could be enabled through smart contracts, directly encoded in the software, as proposed by Ethereum and others. We should be sceptical for two reasons, one is that this is still largely vapourware, i.e. proposals, dreams and prototypes; the other is that it may be like Bitcoin, another way to code hyper-capitalist value systems in code. But, as Primavera de Filippi and others have argued, there is a priori no reason that emancipatory projects and forces could use such platforms to encode more egalitarian values.

Of particular importance for us at the P2P Foundation, was a related development to use a equally disctributed cryptocurrency, Faircoin, to develop a global coalition for fair trade by open cooperatives. This is a project of the Catalan Integral Cooperative, supported by the P2P Foundation.

4. Cities and Countries of the Commons

The highlight for the P2P Foundation in 2014, was the invitation by three Ecuadorian institutions, i.e. the FLOKSociety.org project, to create transition policies and proposals to create a social knowledge economy in that country. It resulted in a Commons Transition Plan and more than 18 separate legislative proposals. The transition plan is the first ever transition plan to be focused around the commons, and historically important even though the project itself seems stalled at the nation-state level. But more local pilot projects, like the plan for open agricultural machinery in the poor district of Sigchos, under the leadership of mayor Mario Andino, is progressing, with the help for example of Kate Swade of Shared Assets.

But if nation-state transitions seems premature, there is a lot happening at the city level.

A breakthrough is undoubtedly the framework, co-developed by Christian Iaione, called the Bologna Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons, which has reportedly been copied by 40 other Italian cities. Co-Mantua is one of the examples of such projects. Italy is generally a very mature country for commons initiatives, and Michel Briand, of the pioneering collaborative city of Brest in France, has calculated there may be more than 100,000 urban commons projects in France alone.

For more information about commons-oriented transitions, see commonstransitions.org .

7. The rise of anti-austerity forces in Spain Podemos and Greece (Syriza)''''Bold text'

8. The netarchical capture of the sharing economy

http://www.shareable.net/blog/debating-the-sharing-economy

9. Collaborative Places

coroutine, mutualab, the Omni Commons

10. Piketty, Rifkin and the Pope

Extra

Cryptoequity ?