And How Does It Differ from Smart Contracts or Turing-Completeness? The Question: If smart contracts are Turing complete, and thus capable of expressing any rule-based logic, what’s the point of talking about an “economic grammar”? Isn’t that just another way of saying programmable economic logic? The Answer: Turing-completeness means you can, in theory, express any computable function. But it tells you nothing about what kind of system you're building, how its logic is shared, or who can meaningfully participate in it. We use the term economic grammar to emphasize that economic systems—like languages—have not only formal rules (syntax), but also shared meanings (semantics), and socially embedded uses (pragmatics). Grammar, unlike code alone, is both technical and expressive. It shapes both what can be done and what can be understood, both how a protocol behaves and how subjects relate to it. 1. A Note on Origins: Why Economic Grammar? The term economic grammar didn’t originate as a theoretical assertion, but as a working tool, born from the need to collaborate across disciplines that do not naturally share a language. Our work unfolds at the intersection of protocol design, political economy, finance, game design and media theory. To move coherently across these terrains, we needed a shared conceptual structure, one that could bridge formal logic and political semantics, operational design and subjective meaning.

Distributed economic computation (DEC) is an architecture where all layers of the economic stack—state, computation, value definition, and governance—are made programmable, interoperable, and composable at the edge. Unlike blockchain systems that merely replicate state at the edge, distributed economic computation enables agents to compute, coordinate, and evolve value together, in real time, across the network. See here a comparison table we are working on: The rise of the internet native economic agent: a new value computation paradigm. DEC is the paradigm that distributed computation protocols enable. It means leveraging network connectivity and programmable protocols to perform economic computation directly within the network fabric and at its edges (agents). Key characteristics include network-wide state awareness, multi-dimensional value (utility) calculation, coordination via peer protocols, and programmable economic logic executed decentrally. DEC represents a fundamental leap beyond previous economic coordination models. It's not merely about decentralizing and replicating the network state, but about fundamentally changing where and how economic intelligence operates. Contrast with previous paradigms: Legacy economic computation (LEC): While markets are distributed in one sense, their core computational logic often relies on centralized intermediaries (banks, exchanges etc) and crucially, compresses information into narrow price signals primarily optimized for capital accumulation. Corporate computation is explicitly centralized and maximizing the local view. Blockchain computation: Innovated by decentralizing state replication and transaction validation via consensus protocols. However, re-centralizes the economic logic itself around a single global ledger and a monolithic token/asset model, limiting expressive capacity and forcing diverse activities into a constrained monetary grammar.

Economic computation has always been defined by tools available for its expression. Each new substrate has expanded our economic coordination grammar - revealing a clear trajectory toward the edge. Our thesis is that the current computational networks are no exception. They are a new economic media: they are changing the nature of our economic coordination - what can be expressed economic-organizationally. Tablet & Tally Stick Computation (~3000 BCE) What it is: a shared state. A durable memory for economic agreements, moving logic from the individual mind to a persistent external object. What it enabled: Durable record & basic syntax. It established a formal syntax for accounting (e.g., this many sheep for this much grain), enabling economic trust and coordination to extend beyond immediate personal relationships and memory. Limitation: Local & static. Computation was manual and confined to the physical object. The logic was local to the specific record-keepers and could not dynamically coordinate across a wide network. Double-Entry Ledger Computation (~1500s CE)

Economic computation is the process by which an economic system defines, measures, calculates, coordinates, and distributes value and resources. It operates according to an underlying economic logic, often implicit in legacy systems. It’s more than data processing – it’s the very grammar of coordination, encoded in mechanisms that guide decision-making, resource flows, and relationships between agents. Every economic system has one, even if it’s invisible. We understand economic systems not just as social phenomena or resource allocation mechanisms, but fundamentally as computational systems. Every economy, from a local market to a global corporation to a decentralized network, is actively performing computation. Economic computation is the underlying logic by which any economic system defines, measures, calculates, coordinates, and distributes value. This isn't a metaphor. Economic computation involves the core processes that constitute economic life: Defining: What counts as valuable? (Profit, utility, reputation, data, health of biosphere?) Measuring & calculating: How is value quantified and aggregated? Coordinating: How are actions between agents aligned? How are dependencies managed? Distributing: How are resources, rights, and rewards allocated?

A paradigm shift in economic computation and economic agency 2D0F77DD-AC14-4F2C-A062-BEC701FF76D1_1_201_a 1. What is happening? Economic computation is moving to the network edge → Where and how economic logic lives is shifting. Economic systems are fundamentally computational. They operate according to underlying rules – a formal logic that dictates how value is defined, recognized, measured, and coordinated. This shapes their outcomes, limitations, and the economic agency they enable for their participants. Understanding this is the key to guide their evolution. Blockchains decentralize the replication of state, but re-centralize the economic logic, reducing economic agency to a matter of account holding and asset transfers. We are working to push economic computation fully to the network edge, empowering participants—people, groups, AIs—to define, coordinate, and evolve their own economic relations directly. It’s not just decentralization—it’s a new form of economic intelligence and agency. Context items: Economic computation

Our project is fundamentally focused on designing a new economic computational substrate – a richer grammar and set of protocols for defining, computing, and coordinating value. By value we refer to a network-defined way of determining the worth of its units of output and how the network’s net surplus of output value is to be distributed within the network. While our designs are architecturally biased towards distributed computation, specific implementations may pragmatically leverage existing technologies at different stages. Not a Blockchain We are not primarily focused on building a new “Layer 1” consensus mechanism or a general-purpose global blockchain in the traditional sense. Our core innovation lies in the Economic Space Protocol (ESP), which is a higher-order economic grammar and set of coordination primitives. ESP is designed to define how economic agents and spaces interact and compute value, which is a different layer of concern than how transactions are ordered or how state is globally agreed upon. While the long-term vision for ESP implies a truly distributed computational substrate that could be considered "Layer 1" in terms of foundational economic logic, our initial focus is on deploying the economic protocols themselves, which could potentially utilize existing L1s for specific functions. Relation to Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, etc.

Computing economic value through distributed algorithms "The emergence of computer networks as economic substrate fundamentally transforms our capacity for economic coordination. While traditional economic protocols emerged in environments limited to local information and simple arithmetic, today's distributed systems enable sophisticated network-wide calculations with provable properties. We show how this computational capacity allows us to move beyond single-dimensional market calculations to a rich ecosystem of interoperable value protocols. By formalizing markets as one instance of distributed value calculation, we demonstrate how network-native economic protocols can capture and create forms of value invisible to traditional systems. We present a general framework for designing such protocols, proving their ability to maintain conservation laws while enabling value translation across different calculative spaces. Our results suggest that network-centric economic coordination can transcend the "faster, more" paradigm of digital finance to enable qualitatively new forms of value creation and economic organization..."" [An excerpt from the ecsa whitepaper (forthcoming, 2025): Network value protocols: Computing economic value through distributed algorithms] Related context items - What is emerging? Economic media Agency born in protocol

A.k.a. Economic space agent. An actor (individual, collective, organization, AI agent, network itself) capable of participating in and performing economic computation within a specific economic space, according to its governing protocols. An economic agent is not just a "user" or "node"; instead an agent possesses defined capabilities (agency) within the protocol. Exists natively to the economic protocol logic. Related context items - What is emerging? Economic media Agency born in protocol Network value protocols Internet-native

The network-native economic agent: From market actors to network intelligences "Traditional economic protocols emerged from profound limitations: agents could only access local information, perform simple calculations, and maintain basic records. Market prices served as a vital but drastically compressed network signal, reducing the rich dimensionality of economic value to a single number. This was not just a practical limitation but a fundamental constraint on economic coordination. The emergence of computer networks as an economic substrate changes everything. Network-native economic agents can: Access and verify distributed state Perform complex network-wide calculations Maintain provable protocol properties Coordinate across multiple value dimensions This is not merely quantitative improvement in calculation speed or information access. It enables qualitatively new forms of economic coordination and value creation. To illustrate this transformation, consider how even simple network calculations reveal value invisible to traditional market mechanisms. [Example figure showing how network centrality reveals value that price alone misses]..." "

Internet native, as a term, captures both the medium and the mode of the new agency we are creating. “Internet-native” refers to agents, organizations, or forms of coordination that are not simply hosted on the internet, but composed by it — constructed through protocol, defined in computation, and enabled by distributed connection. Internet-native economic agents are born in code, governed by logic, and expressed through networks, not confined by the structures of firms, platforms, or markets. In the 20th century, agency was organized around institutions like firms, governments, banks. Due to their limited computational capacities, these structures managed coordination through hierarchy, law, and accounting. In early internet economies, agents still existed within these forms — users of platforms, account holders, service providers — but the underlying structures remained centralized. Today, a new kind of agent is emerging: born in protocol, composed of code and coordination logic, not legal charters or organizational charts. These internet-native agents don’t just act on the internet, they are composed through it. Their agency arises from computation: from access to a protocol, from participation in a network,

602DF4FC-9A81-41A3-AFA5-846506B3EDB7 477988ED-302A-4591-A12D-FC8FDD09659F Related context items - What is emerging? Economic media Agency born in protocol Network value protocols Internet-native Economic agent

Understanding computational networks as economic media is at the heart of our vision. It invokes a deep insight from media theory: the medium itself profoundly shapes the message, the actors, and the nature of interaction. Our insight is to extend this to the economic realm, seeing protocols not as neutral pipes for transactions, but as active media that structure perception and condition how value is understood and expressed. Legacy media, legacy economics: Markets as media: Traditional markets can be seen as a medium that prioritizes price signals, competition, and transactional relationships. The "message" it conveys is often about scarcity and optimal allocation for individual gain. Money as medium: Currency is a collaboration medium that standardizes exchange, but also flattens diverse values into a single third party given metric. Platforms as media: Web2 platforms became powerful media, shaping social interaction and attention, but with centralized control and extractive value models. Network as computers: a new economic medium The emergence of Internet-native economic agents is inseparable from the new medium they inhabit – network computations governed by expressive economic protocols like the economic space protocol.

AI is evolving, but Economic Intelligence is not We think AI is revealing the failure in our economic computation - not just in how we work, but in how we define, measure, and distribute value: AI is evolving, but Economic Intelligence is not. Right now intelligence is owned, enclosed, and optimized for corporate shareholder value rather than network intelligence. Economic compute must move to the edge, just like intelligence. AI cannot reach its full potential without economic compute moving to the edge. If this happens, AI becomes the interface to a historic opening: the emergence of Internet native economic agency. If networks get an economic grammar that matches their intelligence, wealth creation becomes unlimited.

0C82389C-6B5D-4557-8E5B-08EFE6D6CC79 Federico Campagna, Akseli Virtanen & Bifo in dOCUMENTA(13) at Ständehaus 11.9.2012 (video here) Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative participated in dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel, as an experiment in “RUN morphogenesis” – an emergence of a new social form. Below is our debrief - a Love letter after dinner in Kassel - by Karolina Kucia, about the Robin Hood experience at dOCUMENTA(13). It is written in a form of love letter, following the love letters by the artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Please, read it. It is from me to you. But first, here are the basics:

PROTOCOLS FOR POSTCAPITALIST EXPRESSION Nome_ecsa_Berlin_poster_reduced_290524 A discussion on postcapitalism and economic media with Dick Bryan, Jorge López & Akseli Virtanen, the authors of the Protocols for Postcapitalist Expression (Minor Compositions / Autonomedia, 2023). TIME AND PLACE Wednesday May 29th Nome Gallery @ 18h POTSDAMER STR. 72 - 10785 BERLIN https://nomegallery.com/

A discussion on postcapitalism with Dick Bryan, Jorge Lopez & Akseli Virtanen, the authors of the Protocols for Postcapitalist Expression (Minor Compositions / Autonomedia, 2023) ECSA - PROTOCOLS FOR POSTCAPITALIST EXPRESSION from Economic Space Agency on Vimeo. A discussion held on Tuesday 21.5.2024 18-20, The House of Text, Helsinki “To change our economy we need to change our economic language, for the nature of our economy is bound by the expressivity of the language that can conceive it.” Welcome to a discussion on postcapitalist economic-organizational expression!

Agency, Finance and Sociality in the New Economic Space By Dick Bryan, Jorge López & Akseli Virtanen [Colchester / New York / Port Watson: Autonomedia / Minor Compositions, Forthcoming 2023] ECSA ECONOMIC PAPERS [Chapters 1 & 2 for Close Collaborators, March 2023] TABLE OF CONTENTS

Agency, Finance and Sociality in the New Economic Space By Dick Bryan, Jorge López & Akseli Virtanen [Colchester / New York / Port Watson: Autonomedia / Minor Compositions, Forthcoming 2023] TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword: On Economic Intelligence, by Jonathan Beller 1. Introduction

By Prof. Jonathan Beller [A foreword to Dick Bryan, Jorge López & Akseli Virtanen: Protocols For Postcapitalist Expression. Agency, Finance and Sociality in the New Economic Space. (Minor Compositions/Autonomedia, 2023)] ECSA ECONOMIC PAPERS March 2023 Protocols for Postcapitalist Expression, written by ECSA (Economic Space Agency) thinkers Dick Bryan, Jorge López and Akseli Virtanen, marks an advance in the struggle for economic justice by directly addressing, and endeavoring to redress, the expropriation of the general intellect. The questions: Will the accumulated know-how of the species, alienated and, as Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi (2012) put it, ‘looking for a body’, lead to so-called humanity’s absolute demise (along with massive unrest and incalculable ecosystemic damage)? Or, is there emerging a path towards reparations, restoration, a just economy, and thus, a sustainable planetary society? It is as if the political slogan ‘No justice, no peace!’ now defines the spread of the possible futures for the global timeline. Significantly, Protocols for Postcapitalist Expression does not give up on economic calculation or computing. It acknowledges that Economic Intelligence exists in historically sedimented economic categories and practices, but at the same time it recognizes that the form of knowledge that existing accounting creates simply cannot care about, and much less for, everyone. Composing a virtual computer, capitalist accounting processes allow for the judicious, that is profitable, apportioning of resources by producing a matrix of the fluctuating costs of production. Capital accumulation may be optimized by watching, in Hayek’s famous phrase, ‘the hands of a few dials’. However, this calculus remains an imperial project beholden to the myriad violences of racial capitalism. In order to operationalize the world, the integration of money and computing reconstitutes the world as numbers, which is to say, as information. Arguably, we could even say, information is itself a derivative of the value-form. We might be forgiven for asking: does the collapse of values to exchange value, and more generally of qualities to number and thus to information have any liberatory potential whatsoever?

JL_photo_lohja_garage_2018 DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS ARCHITECT - NETWORK CHOREOGRAPHER Here is some of my code: Protocol.js ProtocolJS is a JavaScript-based Protocol Development Framework intended to emphasize formalization, interoperability, verifiability. This framework serves as a valuable resource for specifying, implementing, simulating and visualizing protocols. At its core, ProtocolJS boasts an extensible typing system that seamlessly handles the validation, serialization, and deserialization of messages exchanged between two protocol endpoints. Here is more about our work with the Economic Space Protocol Economic Space Protocol as a formal networking protocol (Video explainer) End of cycle report 16.1.2024 (Video explainer)