Re: [Taler] Mutual credit on GNU Taler

[Christian Grothoff]

On 3/19/24 18:36, b@utermann.ch wrote:
> Hi Christian,
> Thank you for the quick answer. I'll give a try at the regional currency 
> setup.
> Do you know of regional currencies using this currently? If not, what 
> are the blockers?

https://netzbon.ch/ is in testing. Another group from Bern is blocked by 
having babies and no time to work on it ;-). The other blockers are 
bugs, see https://bugs.taler.net/ ;-).

> Another question I have: is it possible to have exchange-to-exchange 
> transactions? 

Not yet, see bug #7271.

> What I'm specifically looking (cf. Credit Commons 
> protocol) is for users in different mutual credit networks to trade 
> together (a network would be a special account on an exchange, and the 
> exchanges would relay the transactions to the users, if that makes 
> sense). It would be a kind of federation of exchanges (mesh), but it 
> could also be organized in trees, making global transactions possible, 
> even if 2 users are many exchanges away. I have too little knowledge 
> about GNU Taler right now to understand if this is something that could 
> be done with Taler or if that's too much of an edge case to bother.

Aside from exchange-to-exchange transfers, it might be better to have 
some kind of trading service, where you can sell one currency and buy 
another. That's *not* what #7271 is about.  Here, the main issue is 
actually that you'll need some kind of market making logic and find a 
way to provide liquidity, which I suspect is the biggest (and completely 
non-technical) issue with mutual credit networks.

Happy hacking!

Christian

> Many thanks!
>
> Billy
> On Tue Mar 19 17:34:34 GMT+01:00 2024, Christian Grothoff 
> <grothoff@gnunet.org> wrote:
>
>     Dear Billy,
>
>     Taler (specifically: libeufin) includes a bank suitable for setting up
>     *regional* currencies, and in such a bank you can fully control money
>     creation and also support credit/debt. The libeufin-bank can thus be
>     used to set up a mutual credit network, and then Taler can be used for
>     payments in a regional currency on top of such a bank.  Note that the
>     KUDOS used at https://demo.taler.net/ is also such a "regional" setup
>     with its own stand-alone currency and a, eh, peculiar way of creating
>     the initial money supply.
>
>     git.taler.net/deployment.git/regional-currency/ includes some scripts to
>     simplify creating such a setup.  There is also the documentation at
>     https://docs.taler.net/libeufin/index.html
>
>     I hope this helps!
>
>     Happy hacking!
>
>     Christian
>
>     On 3/19/24 16:55, Billy Utermann wrote:
>     > Hi there,
>     > I've been following the development of GNU Taler these last years and I 
> really like what you all are doing!
>     > 
>     > I'm researching protocols for creating and administrating mutual credit networks and I wanted to ask if somebody here has any plans on trying that with GNU Taler.
>     > Taler seems to be working mostly with existing banks, which a mutual 
> credit network does not have. Is it possible and wishful to use it without a bank?
>     > 
>     > For my recently submitted bachelor's thesis, I researched the Credit Commons protocol, which "supports independent entities to keep track of their exchange on a ledger which they control. Ledgers can be recursively nested, allowing trading blocs of all scales to exchange with each other without using money." (creditcommons.net)
>     > The current reference implementation is somewhat lacking in terms of 
> privacy and security primitives, so that's why I landed here :)
>     > 
>     > I'm thinking mutual credit (meaning the system must track negative and positive limits per user) is contrary to a value-based / token-based system, but maybe I'm wrong and they can be combined.
>     > 
>     > Let me know if this list is the wrong place to ask, or if there is information that I missed somewhere else.
>     > 
>     > Thanks in advance,
>     > 
>     > Billy
>     >