Aaron Fernando: We recently explored how blockchain is being used as a force for good and conducted a handful of interviews with practitioners in the industry. Yet the blockchain space is fast-moving and constantly brimming with new projects that could make the sharing economy increasingly accessible to all. This is a list of some other projects to look out for in this space:

1. Helbiz

Helbiz is a startup creating a marketplace that allows people to share not just cars, but any vehicle — bikes, boats, and other modes of transportation. Using both hardware and software, the idea is to be able to turn entire vehicles into Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices that it can be unlocked with a smartphone, tracked with GPS, and monitored for problems and maintenance. The Helbiz app will allow users to unlock vehicles and pay for vehicle usage in cryptocurrency. Though innovative, there are other organizations developing similar capabilities in the shared mobility space including HireGo and Xain.

2. Open Bazaar

Though there are other decentralized marketplaces that use blockchain technology, OpenBazaar was the first of its kind and is still going strong. Users are able to pay for goods in over fifty cryptocurrencies. Since there is no company or entity running it, there are no fees or limits to what can be bought or sold. Though significant technical differences exist, for the casual user, up-and-coming challengers such as Swarm City, Public Market, and Blockmarket will offer similar services with different features.

3. Sarafu-Credit

As a country, Kenya has been one of the fastest countries in the world to wholeheartedly embrace mobile money and mobile payments, with two-thirds of the population using it on a daily basis. So, not surprisingly, it is also among the first countries where blockchain-enabled community currencies are being used by merchants who might otherwise be too cash-strapped to transact with each other. The organization Grassroots Economics has been operating multiple community currencies in Kenya and and South Africa for the past few years to increase the buying and selling power of various communities. Recently, in partnership with blockchain-startup Bancor, Kenyan vendors have been signing up to accept cryptocurrency versions of these community currencies which they already accept in paper form.

4. Chamapesa

Another Kenya-based project making use of Kenyans’ high rates of adoption in mobile banking is Chamapesa, which is using blockchain technology to facilitate lending circles with smartphones. The organization has pointed out that it is not trying to change any core behavior, but rather is using blockchain to facilitate this type of community finance scheme — in one tweet, it said “We’re not changing Chamas behaviour except that instead of using paper books were going to be using smart phones.”

5. Holochain

Although the proponents of Holochain proudly stand by the fact that it is not a blockchain, for the layperson Holochain has very many similar use-cases. One main difference is that it comes without the prerequisite of using the enormous amounts of energy required by “proof-of-work” blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, yet it is still possible to run a blockchain exactly like Bitcoin on Holochain. Instead of having only one global agreement about what data is valid (as with a regular blockchain), individual users create their own intermeshed ledgers of valid data and personal histories.

Additionally, whenever we access a website on the Internet, we are really accessing information hosted on servers operated by some third party — usually in a location we don’t care about, owned by a separate private company. What Holochain makes possible is a blockchain-like method and reward structure for storing and accessing data and applications between users themselves, without having to rely on these third parties. This makes it possible to create and run applications of any sort between users, allowing the operation of a truly peer-to-peer internet.

6. Right Mesh

Only about half of the world’s population has regular Internet access, which means billions still do not have the ability to take advantage of web-based peer-to-peer technologies. Right Mesh is working to change that by allowing people can create their own networks with limited access to internet using mesh networking.

In a mesh network, information leaps between phones, computers, and other devices like frogs on lily pads until it gets to its destination. It does this by using these devices’ ability to connect directly with each other via Bluetooth or Wifi without being linked to the Internet itself. By encrypting the information — whether it’s a message, image, or payment — the network can ensure that only the desired recipient can understand and make use of the message, which opens up a host of mesh applications that can run on peer-to-peer devices in the absence of internet. Other mesh networks and mesh software already exist, but by using blockchain, this network will allow users to get paid for providing content to peers and existing as an infrastructure of the network itself, offsetting hardware and battery costs of doing so.

7. Beenest

Just like AirBnB, the platform Beenest connects hosts with potential guests and leverages blockchain technology to keep costs down. If using its own cryptocurrency — Bee Token — no fees or commissions are taken by the platform on booking and listing properties and charges lower fees than AirBnb when using other currencies or cryptocurrencies.

8. Possible

Possible is a Netherlands-based project is intended to increase social capital by giving people incentives to do the work that might not normally earn money, yet is crucial for healthy societies. Possible is a time bank, meaning that it enables individuals to offer up and use each other’s services denominated in hours of time rather than in some other unit of currency. Time banks have been around for well over a century, but they are often volunteer run and administering them using a centrally-managed database can, at times, prove difficult. By using blockchain technology to and decentralize who gets to update the database, projects like Possible could make it easier to operate time banks without having to rely on volunteers.

9. ShareRing

ShareRing is developing an app that uses blockchain technology that will allow users to find and search for nearby services and actually share anything with each other. Like a truly decentralized library of things — both physically and digitally — ShareRing could maximize the usage people get out of physical objects by enabling people to share them easily and fairly. The idea is to have a truly global network, so that the ShareRing app can be used to find and pay for similar services no matter where in the world a person  may be. The app will use two of its own cryptocurrencies: one that allows merchants to access the blockchain, and the other as a currency for paying for services on the platform.

10. Digital Town

Platforms like Amazon, Uber, and AirBnB offer useful services but continuously extract wealth from those who generate it though high fees, which are paid to these companies and their shareholders. Digital Town [one of Shareable’s sponsor] aims to change this business model by linking users in specific geographic localities with the information, resources, and services they need, but instead of extracting high fees, but instead of extracting high fees will ensure more of the profits generated locally, stay local.

With DigitalTown’s blockchain-based solution, merchants and consumers are rewarded for engagement. Merchants receive a free storefront with low commission rates and everyone receives a free SmartWallet, which supports traditional and cryptocurrencies. Businesses pay just a 1% payment processing fee and everyone enjoys free peer-to-peer transfers.

DigitalTown’s tools make it easy for communities to share content, discussions, events, and projects. Users of the platform are rewarded with CommunityPoints. Merchants can use CommunityPoints for marketing campaigns on DigitalTown and consumers can use CommunityPoints with participating merchants.

Header image by John Schnobrich on Unsplash.

The post 10 blockchain projects to keep an eye on appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Niko Georgiades: Athens, Greece – Experimenting with alternatives to capitalism has continued to become more popular as huge wealth divides devour chances of relieving poverty across the world. During the summer of 2017, a speaking engagement at the self-organized squat of Embros Theater in Athens, Greece, showcased alternatives to capitalism. In the second of our three part series on alternative economies and community currencies, we spotlight Kenya’s Sarafu-Credit.

Community currencies are types of complimentary currencies shared within a community that are utilized as a means of countering inequality, class, debt, accumulation, and exclusion.

With community currencies, lower-income communities are given the ability to improve living standards by building infrastructure sustainability through networks of sharing, providing access to interest-free loans, and increasing the economic viability of the community.

This is a major departure from conventional national currencies. Most are generated today through fractional reserve banking, wherein units (“broad money” or M3) are created at the bank when loans are instantiated and destroyed upon repayment.

During economic slowdowns including the US Great Depression, the “velocity of money” drops as fractional currency is unavailable. Locally issued “Depression Scrip” substituted for fractional money in the 1930s. Today alternative currencies that improve velocity of money by distributing credit creation power to the whole population are taking root in many countries.

The first speaker of the discussion at Embros Theater was Caroline Dama, a Board member of Grassroots Economics (GE). GE is a “non-profit foundation that seeks to empower marginalized communities to take charge of their own livelihoods and economic future” in Kenya.

Caroline Dama, Board member of Grassroots Economics

Will Ruddick, who started the Eco-Pesa (no longer in circulation), a complementary and community currency, founded Grassroots Economics in 2010, which has created six networks of community currencies that now works with over twenty schools and twelve hundred businesses in Kenya.

In 2013, 200 businesses, 75% of which were owned by women, became part of the new self-organized and self-determined community currency, Bangla-Pesa, in Mombasa’s largest slum, Bangladesh.

Kenya’s government quickly saw the formation of these community currencies as a threat. Five individuals involved with Bangla-Pesa, including Will Ruddick and Caroline Dama, were implicated on charges of undermining the national currency, the shilling. They were all eventually cleared of all charges and the Sarafu-Credit system continues to break new boundaries and change the narrative of alternative economic systems.

SARAFU CREDIT – BANGLA-PESA

Drastic economic and social inequalities run rampant throughout Kenya as at least 46 percent of its population is living in poverty. With basic needs like clean water and healthcare becoming hard to attain, the Sarafu-Credit community currency system was created as a safety net for citizens to improve living conditions.

The word sarafu means currency in the Kiswahilli language. Sarafu-Credit is system of community currencies used as a “regional means of exchange supplementing the national currency system.”

The community in Bangladesh, the biggest slum in Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa, is very poor and has little access to the shilling, the national currency. Caroline Dama, from GE, stated that the community is “able to come together and come up with a system to exchange our goods and services” using “community dollars.”

A Bangla-Pesa voucher

These community currencies are complimentary with the national currency and Caroline stated that not all of them work towards abolishing the current currency or system, but that they are “trying to make sure that the community banks have a way to survive in times that they wouldn’t otherwise survive.”

“it’s a form of community governance and self-taxation … the community has been able to come up with its own rules to solve its own problems.” – Caroline

GE explains Sarafu-Credit as: “A network of businesses, schools, self-employed and informal sector workers form a cooperative whose profits and inventory are issued as vouchers for social and environmental services as well as an interest-free credit to community members. These vouchers circulate in the community and can be used at any shop, school, clinic or cooperative businesses and form a stable medium of exchange when the Kenyan Shilling is lacking. This injection of money into the community in the form of a community currency, based on local assets, increases local sales and helps directly develop the local economy. Sarafu-Credit, Grassroots Economics’ Kenyan Community Currency program, creates stable markets based on local development and trust.”

How the Sarafu-Credit system works

Caroline stated that only with a bottom-up approach can the community create economic equality. “Communities thrive when they are able to make their own decisions.”

“Community currency gives that power to the people because they are talking to each other, they are able to exchange, and now they are meeting their basic needs, they have enough to sell and when they sell they can pool their resources together to build that better school.” – Caroline

Graph of how the Community Currency Vouchers operates

“If we have problems in the society we want to deal with … what we do, is we can come together as businesses instead of waiting for the government to do it for us”, said Caroline, who stressed the importance of self-determination and community empowerment.

The community currency vouchers are issued for social services and mutual credit for all sustainable needs of the community.  According to the Grassroots Economics website, “The community currency circulates around the community helping to connect local supply and demand for people who lack regular access to national currency.”

Furthermore, Caroline gave an example of women in a village collectively working on projects together, like helping each other build new houses. They would make each person in their network a new house and they would gather the material needed to build the house from other cooperative businesses.

There was a lively discussion with plenty of questions after the presentation on Sarafu-Credit’s Bangla-Pesa. One of the many questions focused on hatching new ideas around sharing-based communities, instead of exchange based communities that could present inequalities based on the ability of services to exchange. Caroline said,

“We are trying to move into a community whereby we are recognizing individual talents … that there is diversity in the community and that we should move away from the idea that we should monetize that. We try to live in a community that recognizes peoples needs, not monetizing them.” – Caroline

Grassroots Economics have created .pdf with their user guide and have plenty of resources on their website. The video below shows how the Bangla-Pesa works.

To hear the full speech and question session of Sarafu-Credit listen below:

For further reading on the Bangla-Pesa, here are a few attention-worthy papers:

• Complementary Currencies for Sustainable Development in Kenya: The Case of the Bangla-Pesa (PDF)
• Re-imagining Money to Broaden the Future of Development Finance – What Kenyan Community Currencies Reveal is Possible for Financing Development (PDF)
• Trust and Spending of Community Currencies in Kenya (PDF)

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