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Solidarity Commons Protocol

Community Currencies and Timebanks

Community currencies and timebanks matter because groups sometimes need exchange rules that ordinary money does not provide. A local currency can keep value circulating in a place or network. A timebank can make care, skill, and neighborly help visible without pricing one person’s hour above another’s.

Basic Pattern

Section titled “Basic Pattern”

TimeBanks.org describes timebanking as time-based exchange: members offer time, receive help when needed, and build reciprocity without using money. Its how-it-works material emphasizes the equal-hour rule: one hour of help earns one hour of help.

Community currencies are broader. A Sustainability Science article describes them as alternative forms of money usually issued and managed by citizens, NGOs, companies, or local public administrations, used in limited territories or communities. The design depends on the project’s goal, context, transaction mechanism, governance, and evaluation rules.

Demurrage currencies add another design choice. Demurrage makes money lose value over time unless the holder pays a fee or uses a stamp. The IMF Finance and Development article on community currencies links this idea to Silvio Gesell’s free-money theory and the Worgl experiment. Citeco describes Worgl’s 1932 currency as losing 1 percent of its value each month to discourage hoarding. International Journal of Community Currency Research adds a caution: demurrage may help as a steering tool, but the rate itself is not necessarily what determines usage, turnover, or velocity.

That example is useful because it turns an abstract monetary rule into software requirements. A demurrage system needs to know the issue date, current holder, stamp or fee schedule, expiry rule, redemption rule, and any public circulation report. A timebank needs a different shape: offers, requests, matches, acknowledgments, disputes, and member accessibility rules.

Why It Matters Here

Section titled “Why It Matters Here”

These mechanisms create records that mix exchange, governance, and trust:

  • member eligibility, sponsorship, and account status;
  • units of account, such as hours, local credits, vouchers, or mutual-credit units;
  • issuance, redemption, expiry, demurrage, and balance rules;
  • requests, offers, matches, transfers, acknowledgments, and disputes;
  • reserve assets, backing rules, or convertibility rules when a currency connects to ordinary money;
  • public circulation reports and private member records.

The important design question is not whether a unit “is money.” The question is who may issue it, who accepts it, what rule gives it value, what records prove circulation, and which outside tax, accounting, or legal obligations still apply.

What Software Should Not Flatten

Section titled “What Software Should Not Flatten”

The dangerous simplification is treating every community currency as mutual credit, every timebank as volunteering, or every demurrage currency as a policy trick. Each model changes trust differently.

A timebank needs dignity, reciprocity, and accessibility. A local currency needs issuance, acceptance, and redemption rules. A demurrage currency needs clear expiry, fee, stamp, or depreciation records. A mutual-credit network needs credit limits and risk governance.

Solidarity Commons Protocol should preserve those differences instead of forcing every exchange into one ledger shape.

Section titled “Read Next”