Research Project 04: Build Simulation Tools for free currencies

Issue

How currencies evolve, stabilize or collapse in different communities? How do emission, circulation and spending rules, trust, social awareness, political context influence the final result? Are there typical growth scenarios related to currencies?

Project description

Build simulation tools that help envision how different currencies, with specific configurable parameters, can work in different community conditions. Such simulation tools should help not only in the design of more optimal currencies, but also in providing efficient feedback reporting tools? and stabilizing tools.

Methodology

• The starting point would be to list of all the parameters that should be taken into account. A first list will be added below...
• Then these parameters should be applied in simulation matrixes where each individuality represents a person with specific behaviors.
• Visualisation and analysis tools should be built.
• Stabilizing processes should also be explored (see feedback loop? tools).

Other related concepts: Sousveillance, Trust Circle?, Transparency?...

Such a project must be done under Open Source software because it success depends on Transparency?.

Similar and related projects

• OPTIMAES (Open Project To Investigate Money And Economic Systems): so enlightening to find people working on the same concerns! We should get in touch shortly.

Useful resources

The following are free/open source software that could prove useful

• MASON
• RePast
• Swiee
• Ascape
• NetLogo (freeware but not free software)
• MODULECO

The following are tutorials and other materials that relate to simulation

• Introduction to Computational Modeling of Social Systems - International Conflict Research - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
• Swarm Intelligence - Carleton University School of Computer Science
• Evaluation of free Java-libraries for social-scientific agent based simulation from the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation

Milestones

1. Build and grow a list of parameters
2. Built a matrix of individuals on which these parameters will be applied statistically
3. Build visualisation and analysis tools
4. Explore stabilizing processes
5. Link theoretical and empirical R&D, i.e. get linked to current alternative currency? projects
6. Develop feedback loop? tools
7. Publish, apply

There is no agenda yet.

Participants

• Jean-Francois Noubel as initiator
• François Rey as a software engineer
• mose as a coder, and more
• Open source practitionners and programmers, currency specialists... add your name!

Budget

• Budget is to be calculated.

Funding

• Who could fund this project?

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Discussion

• where is the cvs ? I mean, where should it be ? savanah ? berlios ? other ? sf ? — mose

Here is the full comparison
I prefer http://www.gna.org it is very responsive and is located in France.

• superb ! I didn't try that one yet :) — mose
• Should I open a project there named OpenMoney ? — mose
• Why don't we wait for our meeting next week to decide this? — jf
• Sounds wise — mose

oh, noticed while passing on GNA there is a currency project : https://gna.org/projects/geekcredit/
-- Yes, I noticed it a couple of weeks ago and made a specific wiki page for it at "Geek Credit". — jf

• I looked a little further into that code, it's in python, and probably could be useful as the author says it's good already. I invited the him to dream with us, sent him the url of this current page, and actually he's here around in The Transitioner for some time and modified some wiki pages, his user name is sashako. He'll be happy to help us when development starts (I don't like to talk for someone else, I hope he'll quote here then I can remove my comment). — mose
• mose, I am not particulary good as a dreamer ;) Even my Geek Credit is just exact implementation of the WAT, I did it just because it did not exist already. You resembled my words right, as long as the development starts I will catch on. (especially if you would chose python or C++). I am very interested in simulations myself, I've did only most simple ones for the WAT & Geek Credit. There is already a currency simulation project that is mentioned here (OPTIMAES), I think might be a good idea to use it too. Geek Credit code can be used right away now to run a complementary currency system. It does not require setting up or using a server and is a very easy way to touch a working complementary currency. So I guess this makes a perfect sence to try using the community currency for the community that is developing the complementary currency system. Hopefully, this will provide a lot of information on how to design the better complementary currency. The drawbacks for the current Geek Credit implementation are : 1. It requires user to install GnuPG (or other PGP tool) and to understand how to deal with PGP keys. 2. It does not work on MacOS <10.2. 3. There is no precompiled linux version, so linux users should have a python installed. — Alexander Komarov
• Hey Guys, it's a real pleasure to witness your discussion here. — jfn

• okay, so now I opened the space on GNA! : http://gna.org/projects/openmoney. Do you want we setup a general discussion mailing-list ? interested people should open an account on gna and add their login here to be added to the project. — mose

• I would like to see this sort of thing done in the form of a real time stratagy game sort of thing. If we could make a game that was fun to play, it would teach, publicize, and provide money all at the same time. This however, obviously, would be a whole lot more work, so without additional people, is not practical at this time. Might want to keep this in mind for later though. — Tony Bondhus