---
tags: blog, holochain
contributors: pospi, Noah Thorpe, Emaline Friedman, Siddharth Sthalekar, Philip Sheldrake, Michael Linton
---

# Stable value instruments and the role of business in a post-enclosure era

There have been many interesting conversations in the Holochain community recently regarding economic models, sustainable funding structures and the often-controversial balancing act between user freedoms and the needs of businesses to be financially sustainable. It is a brave new world with many unknowns, but some patterns are starting to become clearer through the haze.

This is an attempt to explore some of these emerging structures and organising principles, to find a way towards a common vocabulary which can succinctly explain what is emerging here (and what makes this a groundbreaking step forward from the current norm).

To begin it's worth exploring where we've already been, what the outcomes were, and what we learned from the journey.

## The Ethereum ecosystem's tale of woe

The boom / bust cycle of volatile crypto markets is well known today and accepted as a given with most new blockchain tech. Ethereum is no different to any others in this respect, but is worth exploring because it promised *more*— a "programmable blockchain" which would facilitate a new era of innovation and a bring forth a new class of distributed apps.

At its peak, there was over $138 billion USD invested into the Ethereum network. But what were the actual *outcomes* that came from all that funding? What were the innovations? The big successes? Arguably, there seem to be few.

The story of "why?" is the story of that boom / bust cycle, and why it was accelerated by the economic environment. In the "golden era" of 2015-18, funds were flush. Early adopters like [ConsenSys](https://consensys.net/) threw money at everyone. Any project was worth funding and people were paid top-tier market rates to experiment and explore their own passions. Many of these were moonshots. Others had little intrinsic value of their own, but were given funding in order that they might "boost the value of Ethereum".

But later in 2018, when interest in the cryptoverse began to wane and Ethereum's value started to decline, "boosting the value of Ethereum" slowly became the raison d'etre for most projects to exist. Analytics software like [Alethio](https://aleth.io/) was prioritised for making Ethereum-based projects appeal to the interests of Big Data. [Infura](https://www.infura.io/) made it easy for people to deploy blockchain nodes as a service on AWS - great for adoption, but arguably fundamentally at odds with the ethos of decentralisation. [Truffle](https://www.trufflesuite.com/) improved the developer experience, bringing more talent into the network and thus inflating the price of ether. And so on.

Great as they are, none of these things made Ethereum more applicable to real-world scenarios or more useful to regular people. They just made a thing which has no demonstrable use easier to use.

So the market slowly began to fall. And with it, all the blockchain industry's young idealism seemed to fall away as well. Today their clients are Big Finance, governments and venture capital. All their work seems to be in aid of the very power structures that they originally sought to topple— Alethio for example is being developed as a tool for the IRS and other tax departments to de-anonymise public blockchain transactions. Blockchain players failed to understand how to monetize their efforts in a new paradigm, and now they are only maintaining their existence by working in standard capitalist paradigms with standard capitalist players.

You see this in the major players like ConsenSys and in smaller startups as well. You can see it frequently in the private sector, as startups with big fundraisers blow through all their capital and are left to close up shop when the volatile markets are unfavourable. Those who do survive are doing so by engaging with governmental and enterprise contracts, mostly building proprietary ledgers for industry consortiums; and aggregating already unequal power into the hands of even fewer players as a result.

So what happened? Why did an industry with more wealth than is reasonably imaginable largely fail to sustain itself or engender the change it had hoped for?

## Zero-sum incentive structures

Hindsight is of course 20/20, but looking back at the series of events as they unfolded starts to give a sense of how these problems manifest. Desire to see Ethereum flourish as an economy all its own was always a driver. But as that desire came to the forefront, unforeseen consequences were beginning to gather momentum.

Until "after the fall", most of the investment capital going in to Ethereum projects was provided in ether. And, as discussed, many of the projects in the space had one primary drive— boost the value of Ethereum.

So investors were parting ways with their ether and putting it into promising projects. Projects were undertaking the work to make this ether worth more. To economists, the consequences of this cyclical relationship bound to a single currency should be self-evident. Eventually, investors realised that they were letting go of the value they were trying to capture and so they stopped investing. What's the point of putting money into something in a way which simultaneously reduces your returns? It makes no sense.

> [name=noah] This is a deep insight with implications for nearly all sweat equity projects. This may partially be related to a public goods funding problem where no individual has an incentive to fund the public good but everyone wants the benefits. Also, its interesting that those who are paid in Eth for labor needs to spend it and so won't necessarily participate in the value they create based on their ned to pay rent.

The rest emerges from there. Funds dry up. Projects can't find capital to continue. So they change their approach and go back to what they know, thus accelerating the demise of the ideologically opinionated currency they once toiled to vaunt above all else.

The central problem in a system which operates this way is that *the value creation is entirely speculative*. Whether a project makes ether more valuable entirely depends on whether you believe there are *other* uses for that ether- because the project itself does little to make ether more useful.

>[name=sid] As a former derivatives trader, I can say that the comparison isn't entirely true (so maybe avoid?) Some derivatives actually are backed with tangible value.
I think the comparison to be made is with fiat-issued currencies by nation states. Since 1971 they moved away from being a promise against a tangible reserve of gold, to just deriving value through enforcement. It makes sense for the US treasury to do this since it's backed by a massive army. Random startup backed by tech-bro isn't.
In other words, a small community that isn't going to use violent enforcement needs to back it's issuance with a promise (ties in with what you're suggesting below)

> [name=sid] If I recall correctly, Art made the point about fiat issuances during the ICO, so I'm wondering if you need to go into detail with this?

In the end, if something lacks utility then all other value judgements are of little consequence. That's why housing markets collapse when nobody is living in the houses. There is no value there, despite the figures. Such figures are just pretence. Vapour. Bullshit.

## An alternative to speculative wealth

To begin exploring alternatives it's worthwhile looking at the proponents of alternative currencies and perspectives they have been sharing for many years. Radical circles are often well ahead of mainstream economic theory, and it's always validating to see evidence that the less-accepted models are starting to align with others.

[Matt Slats](https://matslats.net/) has been building alternative community currencies and exchanges for over a decade, and possesses critical insights into the dynamics of money at a tangible, grassroots level. A few years ago, he shared this small insight:

> We need to stop thinking of money in terms of what value it represents, and start thinking in terms of whose promises we believe.

If you take this idea and run with it, it turns out that you can do an awful lot.

One of the more detailed proposals involving this theme is offered by [Decentralized Citizens ENgagement Technologies](https://dcentproject.eu/), "a Europe-wide project developing the next generation of open source, distributed, and privacy-aware tools for direct democracy and economic empowerment". In their [design of social/digital currency](https://dcentproject.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/design_of_social_digital_currency_publication.pdf) paper, they reflect on some widespread economic theories that "institutionalizing trust may hold the promise of making trust more stable and enduring" and go on to propose that they "advance the state-of-the-art in the design of Trust Management Systems, in which trust is collectively self-managed".

You can see evidence of this fundamental design pattern in other alternative economic governance frameworks like [Participatory Economics](http://www.participatoryeconomics.info/) or in our own work in the [ValueFlows protocol's commitment records](https://valueflo.ws/introduction/flows.html#commitment). In all cases, the basic premise remains the same: **promises create stability**. If I can trust that my baker is going to bake 5 loaves of bread tomorrow, then I also know that I can eat 5 loaves today and not run out. Conversely, if I buy 5 loaves of bread every day then the baker knows my demand for bread is pretty high. *Trust* in the baker is what gives me the confidence to undertake this economic activity (in this case, pigging out on 5 loaves of bread).

> [name=noah] why is this value stable? For example, the promise by a yoga instructor that they would teach a yoga class in April 2020 was disrupted globally by lockdowns regardless of their intent. I'm wondering how much of system failure is related to length of supply chain vs. medium of exchange.
>
> [name=pospi] I think see what you're saying but wonder whether it reduces the impact of the piece in attempting articulating it. It's something like- things are as stable as they can be in this model, you're only going to be caught out to 1 degree (1:1 ratio of past & committed actions), and things only start to fail catastrophically if the entire system fails basically simultaneously. Or are you getting at something else here?

At this small scale, it's my personal relationship with the baker that engenders this trust and makes the wheels of society go round. But what about at larger scales and between groups of strangers? How do we create similar trust there?

> [name=emaline] It seems like there are two different motions: First, there's the value of the asset as actual or speculative. Then, there's the move from focusing on the value of the asset to the "who" of the promise a la Matt Slats.
>
> I think the commonality is a degree of abstraction that involves what others may eventually be capable of promising. I got the derivatives analogy above becase, even if they represent actually valuable assets, the trading is too far removed from its actual context of growth or production for it to be meaningful <i>as</i> a promise. Just like hoping the value of ether grows in someone else's eyes, or wrt some other, yet unseen case, there is a passing of the buck making a promise of value

## Asset-backed currencies and promise-driven value creation

Those new to Holochain but familiar with blockchain often enter the community with enthusiasm about mutual credit currencies and presume that HoloFuel is "the native currency" run by Holochain. But actually, this is not true. Holochain has *no* native currency&mdash; HoloFuel is just an app.

Things get weirder, and often prickly, when newcomers realise that HoloFuel works more like an investment than a currency. After buying in to the network, one cannot immediately withdraw the vested funds. They are locked in for a period and untouchable by the person who owns them. This quite obviously differs from "standard" mutual credit systems like [LETS](https://archive.org/details/WholeEarthReviewNo55Summer1987/) or [time banking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_banking), where debt is mutually issued and never withheld by any party. But why?

The reason is that HoloFuel is *not* a mutual credit currency optimised for peer-to-peer exchange. It is actually an *asset-backed* currency, backed by the hosting power of peers on the [HOLO hosting network](https://holo.host/). In other words, what makes HoloFuel valuable is that it can be used to run Holochain apps.

This means that in order for HoloFuel to be worth something, some hosting has to have occurred. That's why the credit is locked up when investing it&mdash; that credit has to *actually be made use of* by some app in order for it to then be worth something tangible. Once the value it represents is deemed to be real, it can be withdrawn again and used as a monetary instrument.

> [name=noah] this isn't that different than proof of stake on Ethereum 2.0. You stake tokens and they gain value when some computation verification and storage occurs. The value is realized when consensus validation occurs. Is Ethereum 2.0 a promise based system? Maybe the difference is related to the fulfillment of promises with a capped return instead of the oligopoly dynamics of proof of stake?
>
> [name=pospi] that sounds fair (my brother actually works for https://rocketpool.org/ so I can confirm with some authority)... also possibly too technical to get into in this article? And, yes. Oligopoly dynamics, treating it more as an investment. It doesn't look so much like an investment in Holochain because it's only exchanged 1:1 for hosting credits, right? So you can't *multiply* your money in HoloFuel, only spend & re-earn it. With Eth you're investing and gambling.

Thinking about this in terms of promises and trust, what is really happening is this: people buy HoloFuel with the promise that it can be used to host Holochain apps. Once someone runs an app for, say, 15 minutes; then it's a reasonable bet that they will continue to run similar apps for the next 15 minutes into the future.

*The perceived value of the currency is that services will continue as planned.* Ensuring that the HoloFuel monetary instrument can only project forward one degree of abstraction (by locking up the currency until hosting services have been delivered) ensures that speculation of future services can only extend linearly one degree into the future. You can't inflate the value of HoloFuel to sell promises that 15 minutes of delivered hosting today means you will host 1000 hours of apps tomorrow&mdash; the currency design explicitly prevents this.

As a result, you get a much more stable currency that can only really crash if the entire network decides to stop hosting all at the same instant- a feat which is both statistically and logistically inconceivable.

Let's look at another example from the Holochain universe&mdash; that of the [JustOne Organics](https://justoneorganics.com/) Living Economy System (or JOOLES). In this project, the goal of the organisation is to buy up farm "seconds" (crops which are still edible but aren't sellable to market due to cosmetic blemishes) and to powder & dry the foodstuffs as ingredients & nutritional supplements for other markets.

Here we see the same pattern: JustOne only mint new JOOLES credits in response to the creation of these supplements (proven via means outside the scope of this article), so the value of one JOOLES is *asset-backed* by one unit of provided nutrition. The fact that JustOne delivered 50 units of food today means that they will probably continue to deliver 50 units tomorrow; and owning 50 JOOLES means you are entitled to 50 units of food when that day comes.

And again, you can't speculate any further than that within the JOOLES ecosystem because the currency is tied directly to those real-world events. If you want the *actual food* then you need to give up your JOOLES in order to get it, and the exchange ratio is *always* going to be 1:1.

> [name=noah] what sets the value of the exchange. Is a Jool = 1 carrot? If Food unit = 1 carrot and there is a carrot blight what is a fair food unit cost? Or will carrot farmers just give up. If the exchange rate flucates it seems like speculation is possible and will still happen - is the speculation range safer? For instance in the Holofuel case the price of computation / hosting will change over time due to moores law - is it the short time window that keeps thing fair? What keeps the exchange/redemption rate fair? Sorry if I'm asking obvious things.
>
> [name=pospi] they sound like great questions to me but I'd have to defer to David & Art to answer them!

So, HoloFuel and JOOLES are just promises of what's to come, based *directly* on what's already been.

This is what we mean by **promise-driven value creation**.

> [name=pospi] if anyone has a better naming that feels more fluid to express please suggest! Looking for a good meme to spread...

> [name=sid] Holo used 'value stable currencies' which I thought was awesome.
> I think the framing should pop open a few minds in the investing community. COVID is pushing people to examine what 'stability' really is. While most of their wealth is pegged to the sovereign-nation circus, they realise they need to decouple. Going 'off the grid' basically means you hold wealth that is backed by a stable resource, which in this case is decentralised computing resources.
**> Another way to frame it is by saying Crypto relied on 'scarcity', so there was this race to get more people buying into it. The holo-verse relies on 'sufficiency', which is derived from value stability**

> [name=emaline] Wish I could remember precisely why now, but various Holonauts have been warned against touting value stability (though I like the sound of it too...who wouldn't? :). Less catchy and more descriptive of what's going on here might be "abstraction-resistant exchange vehicles" or something like that. The linear progression into the future is the big change in my mind. Value is never completely stable, of course, because of unforeseen needs and capacities, but there is delightful humility in light of this with "abstraction-resistant currencies" or "promise/fulfillment tied currencies" --- eeh, yeah, I'll be sitting on the name question!

> [name=sheldrake] To Emaline's point, yes, I can't imagine that any one with responsibility for external communications would approve "value stable currencies". The name sounds like a promise, and to Sid's points below, not one that can or should be guaranteed. Perhaps it's not so much the pro-stability that might be emphasised as the anti-speculation — "asset-backed non-speculative currency", "non-speculative currency" for short? So instead of meaning "have faith in the stability", it says "don't expect a speculative return here buddy".

## How will we arrive there?

> [name=pospi] This might be the part where we (/Art) write something about "fiat issuances during the ICO" that Sid pointed to above?

> [name=sid] A couple elephants in the room that you might want to address:
> 1. You've described HF at steady state, until it gets there, it's highly volatile. And that's because the value of HF is a function of the eventual efficiency in the network. No one knows what that efficiency will be, so everyone's shooting in the dark. But at least it's not linked with blindly funding projects like in Ethereum.
> 2. HF is backed by a promise of computing resources on the network, but on day 1, there will be an 'initiation debit'. Holo will have to manage how this HF can be utilised and redeemed. If everyone uses their ICO HF on day 1, there will not be enough resources in the reserve to pay hosts. To me, this is the only vulnerability of a credits based system like Holo.
> 3. Backing people's promises also entails its share or risk. It felt like you haven't spoken about that in the section above. For eg, Holo could easily fail to deliver, just like the baker. Of course, it's not the same as the speculative punting that exists in crypto-land. Maybe you could frame this as 'risking together'? I feel like it lends a human touch to the entrepreneurial act of funding another project.
> 4. Skin in the game: Eventually, I think a promise is backed by a person's (or collective's) reputation. If an entrepreneur issues a promise, their track record in delivering should be recorded on reputation fabric of some sort.

## What does this mean for Holochain business applications?

Tying this all together, it seems sensible to assume that this basic underlying pattern will continue in the Holoverse. In fact, it is arguable that the long-term success of the ecosystem will hinge on that being the case.

To explore why, let's reflect on what happened in Ethereum and what is different about these use-cases above.

Currently a lot of investment into Holochain projects has been in the form of HoloFuel, and so the same tragedy of zero-sum incentive structures is at play: investors will invest in things hoping that their HoloFuel becomes worth more due to more apps being in demand. From here they will eventually begin to hoard their monies when this begins to ramp up in a serious way, to avoid letting go of the newly created value.

>[name=sid] Are the investments pegged to HF? It need not be the case just because they were made using HOT. In SC's case they're pegged to USD until we have more clarity on HF. Same in a couple other projects I've come across.
>
> [name=pospi] yeah, true. I should probably avoid writing this part until the "how will we arrive there?" section has been done, since I don't really understand the economic mechanics between HOT/HF.

Only, apps such as JustOne's currency system *aren't about pumping the value of HoloFuel*. Sure, this might happen slightly as a side-effect, but it is not their aim. Their aim is to make JOOLES worth something. And so because they have a new value instrument of their own, and because this instrument depends on their productive output rather than unrelated hosting demand, the value they create is *decoupled* from HoloFuel. Investors into JustOne are getting benefits from holding JOOLES, not from HoloFuel. That means they can keep investing with their original value instruments without feeling as though they are giving up the value they're creating.

> [name=emaline] I think there's something to be said in this key about the importance of currency constellations. Because of the non-nativity of fuel, it can more easily stay in its lane, so to speak, as provisioning one asset among many universal basics (though I spose compute power as a universal basic is already controversial). The build out of other Holochain currencies should put fuel in its place as one facet of investment-in-kind, in the same way that it should theoretically be possible to contribute to a baker's crowdfund in rare yeast cultures or some such rather than money. I'm not clear enough about the original intent of ether, but this may be a place to deepen the contrast?
>
> [name=pospi] Nice, really good reflection. If someone else hasn't articulated this by some indeterminate point in the future I shall add it, perhaps as a final reflection.

Over the long term we should see that investments into Holochain projects continue to flow, in contrast to the drying up of funds in various blockchain projects. We should also expect investment to be more responsible due to the absence of speculative token-pumping&mdash; in fact, investing into a project with HoloFuel is actually just the act of paying for the hosting of that app when it is eventually delivered.

> [name=noah] I still don't get what the incentive for developers is to develop apps on the network. If that takes money to fund (to pay rent etc) and the developers don't have funds to pay their own rent they will borrow money and that money will be at a return based on the risk of the investors not getting paid back. Doesn't this just move the dynamic out of the network instead of solving it? Honestly without working this out it seems like the only difference between this and ethereum is the stage in the dissillusionment cycle that we are in. The dominant ecosysytem players will be the next Infura, Alethio and Truffle - they just will fund in cash instead of Holofuel.

But that's not the whole story. There are some other aspects of Holochain's design philosophy that are unappealing to many businesses attempting to turn a profit. Namely&mdash; it's a one-click operation to "fork" a Holochain app into a new network, even if you don't have the source code of that app.

This is a core tenet of Holochain's agent-centric approach to data sovereignty that should have digital rights activists cheering. No more vendor lock-in! We are finally free! But what does this mean for a business, when their customer base might decide to clone their whole company and run off without them?

Honestly? It means that the days of rent-seeking and extracting value through intellectual property laws are over. Depending on a "moat", as they say in the industry, is no longer an option. Businesses must now face the challenge of offering value created through means other than trying to own markets and limit options. Basically, they must provide *real*, *tangible* services to people.

That's where value lies. Not in maintaining an enclosure to charge for your services. There's no need really, when hosting costs have been pushed to near-zero.

But what if your service offering is digital? What if there is no real-world value to create?

Well, consider this: it's not your *app* that is valuable. It's the community *around* your app, and the data they generate together.

> [name=sheldrake] This sounds a bit wooly, or circular. The choice of the word "community" over "random collection of individuals" implies value of itself, for community does not form nor sustain absent mutual value.
>
> [name=sid] My two cents: This whole section feels like it should get more airtime.
>
> [name=pospi] Not sure which pieces to articulate further, please feel free!

Looking at the blockchain industry, those groups who have avoided collapse are few and far between, but they are out there. Some of them, like [CommonsStack](https://commonsstack.org/), were lucky enough to amass significant funds in the early days and diversify their portfolios. Many such groups have focused on maintaining strong counter-cultures and spaces for embodied and independent value creation, such as the [Giveth hacker house](https://numundo.org/center/spain/the-giveth-hacker-house), [Liminal Village](http://liminalvillage.com/) or the wonderfully named [Institute of Cryptoanarchy](https://www.paralelnipolis.cz/koncepty/cryptoanarchy-institute/).

> [name=pospi] feel free to suggest others, this feels a little nebulous & I'm sure there are other examples.

What gives these groups longevity and what makes them successes are their *communities*. So perhaps a good guideline for businesses hoping to build on Holochain, aside from creating asset-backed value, is to begin with a community of interest and work from there. Start by servicing the needs of the people you depend on, rather than building complex features to appease investors that your community may never need or find valuable.

Again- it is not the *app* that is valuable. It is the network and the data.

> [name=sheldrake] The app is in the mix. An app is valuable when it assists / helps mediate symmathesy; not valuable in and of itself, but in combinations that would be the poorer but for their requisite components.
>
> [name=pospi] yes, this is true. Holochain apps though, due to their instantly forkable nature, have a value that is impossible to capture. Maybe what I am speaking about is whether things are "captureable", vs "valuable"? In which case... nothing that is "captureable" by the developer is not also "capturable" by the users.

**Being community-minded is absolutely critical, for that is how you maintain loyalty.** Involve stakeholders in financing and governance conversations. Be as inclusive as possible so that people feel a part of something and *want* to stay around, rather than forcing them to remain.

In this environment, corporate entities will tend to be cooperatives that issue credits, rather than companies limited by shares. In fact, buying HoloFuel will function in exactly this way&mdash; exchanging fiat for "hosting credits" which can then be redeemed for the equivalent amount of hosting power.

Or, as [John Willshire puts it](https://medium.com/smithery/making-things-451aacaec170): "Making Things People Want > Making People Want Things".

Embracing this practise on its own should address most concerns related to forking. But there's still one place where the design of the system conflicts with the needs of businesses. What happens if you release your app, but someone out there with an *existing* community which is larger than yours then forks your app and takes over? That doesn't seem reasonable or fair to anyone.

One solution? Don't release your app on the publicly-visible "hApp store" and invite community members some other way. If outsiders can't see the app, they can't fork it. But a better possible avenue? Since forking a Holochain app happens inside the "hApp store", just code this functionality to include a provenance graph. That way, all forked apps are linked to the original networks they were spawned from. Since the "hApp store" is part of HOLO's hosting infrastructure and therefore linked to HoloFuel, the Holochain core team gets to decide how these actions are governed. Perhaps forked apps could automatically pay a HoloFuel tithing to their parent network if the app's creators have deemed these payments necessary.

> [name=sid] Provenance graph has a real ring to it. Side note, I'd love to build a version of it (with potential applications in neighbourhoods). It will go a long way in supporting the itty-bitty-widget-loving developers who have zero skills in fundraising and limited ability to build community with their code, and end up working as cogs in a big machine somewhere. Doing this will tilt the incentive for forking: you would fork if you want to spawn off a new culture from an existing one. Not because you're vested in stealing monetary revenue from another app.
> Rewards on the provenance graph could be reputational and monetary. (Which is why I think establishing a functional reputation economy is key, because people start valuing rep rewards as much as monetary. Forking is fundamentally suited to reputation since they're both non-zero-sum actions)

The final solution is yet to come. But these are the ideas gaining most traction at the moment.

> [name=sid] I like that you end on an exploratory note. TBH we're going to have to collectively figure this out. So this could end on a note of inviting thoughts and suggestions?
>
> [name=pospi] yeah, good idea. Could also shift the new "how will we arrive there" section to the end and talk about the on-the-ground realities today, but I thought it was nice to end on this exploratory note too.

## In conclusion

It seems that the complex set of incentives, constraints and design features surrounding the Holochain ecosystem are geared towards a world of tangible, asset-backed value. For this reason we should see far fewer scams and over-inflated promises than have plagued the blockchain industry.

But speculation is still possible, and the absence of zero-sum feedback loops which erode the stability of groups and companies in this ecosystem is anything but certain. Just because one technique of value creation seems most plausible and appropriate does not mean that other forms won't be attempted.

New business models and ways of generating value are embryonic, and many experiments are yet to be tried. Holochain itself does not yet know how to cater to traditional business in a way that is compatible with their need to generate profits. Perhaps this means that the world is irreversibly changing, or perhaps businesses will find a way to continue to make profit in ways they are accustomed to.

Either way&mdash; tokens are out, promises are in!

> [name=pospi] I'd like to see the conversations in the Holochain Business Course evolve to some final conclusions before signing off on this. I expect there might be answers very close afield!
>
> [name=sid] Yes, agree. Couple points I hope to get clarity on.

**Further reading:**

- https://medium.com/holochain/the-holocene-explosion-2-1-game-changing-possibilities-in-a-world-of-unenclosable-carriers-21ddbb15341a
- https://medium.com/holochain/the-holocene-explosion-2-3-game-changing-possibilities-in-a-world-of-unenclosable-carriers-7c1a97f32e9c
- [A New Type of Cryptocurrency, As Old As Civilisation](https://blog.holochain.org/mutual-credit-part-1-a-new-type-of-cryptocurrency-as-old-as-civilisation/)
- https://res.mdpi.com/futureinternet/futureinternet-11-00170/article_deploy/futureinternet-11-00170.pdf