Turns out I was one of several people with backgrounds in adjacent fields who were relative newcomers. But we didn\u2019t feel like newbies for long. Everybody was open and welcoming, making CoFi #3 the perfect spot for learning about new financial models, which can be tricky for outsiders.<\/p>\n
The conference venue was a beautiful spot, too. Right at the foot of the Alps, the Hirschwangerhof has been lovingly restored by the brothers Felix and Emil Fritsch. Housing the\u00a0CommonsHub<\/a>, it had ample room for Open Space sessions and direct access to the mountains for anyone who wanted to go hiking.<\/p>\n About 50 people had come to the event from all over the world, including the US, Canada, Central and South America, China, Scandinavia and many Western and Middle European countries. Several in fact were \u201cdigital nomads\u201d with no permanent base. Backgrounds were varied too: from blockchain technologists, computer scientists, engineers and designers to community currency practitioners and activists.<\/p>\n The organisers of the conference, Stephen deMeulenaere and Matthew Slater, have decades of experience implementing community currencies.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing this to bring people from the community currency movement together with people in the blockchain\/web3 movement to cross-pollinate our ideas, values and desired outcomes,\u201d they say of their aims for CoFi.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Collaborative Finance is about settling obligations between parties in a network without recurring to state money. This can be done in a completely analogue way, or with sophisticated digital technologies like blockchains or graph algorithms. You can find an\u00a0introduction to Collaborative Finance here<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the gathering, there were lots of analogue activities, like financial board or card games. The organisers also deliberately did not record everything, favouring participation over documentation. As a speaker you had to ask for a recording if you wanted it to happen. If you sat in the front row \u2014 the \u201cinner circle\u201d \u2014 you were asked not to use your phone or laptop.<\/p>\n Matthew kicked off the conference by reflecting on the current state of affairs: \u201cWhat does success look like in this field of alternative systems?\u201d There had not been much visible impact. \u201cBut there\u2019s always the chance that what we do is a spark,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t compete with the global economy. It could be that it all unravels, and if we\u2019ve done our homework, maybe we will be able to create useful systems.\u201d The measure of success would be change in the world. \u201cAt the moment CoFi is just a conversation, when it could be a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n Each day followed a fixed pattern. Mornings began with five minutes of silence, after which we were invited to share our reflections on the previous day. There were then three or four presentations \u2014 and unconference-style sessions in the afternoon, based on suggestions posted after lunch on sticky notes.<\/p>\n Sessions were varied and engaging. Some invited you to test new games. In Nicolas Franka\u2019s Coins game, for example, you were an emperor of an ancient culture. Stef Kuyper\u2019s\u00a0Happonomics card game<\/a>, meanwhile, had two rounds each using different money distribution systems. From Scott Morris we learned about the origins of the Monopoly board game, which were not capitalist at all, quite the opposite. It was in fact invented by Elizabeth Magie as the Landlord\u2019s Game which included two sets of rules, one of which made for a much more egalitarian outcome.<\/p>\n One talk by Teodoro Criscione showed how hierarchies and power structures\u00a0always emerge<\/a>, even in decentralised or egalitarian systems. Interestingly, this gathering did not exhibit those power structures much at all.<\/p>\n It was also interesting to see some sessions that looked beyond CoFi. There was a \u201cBitcoin maximalist\u201d, Hubertus, who presented on local Bitcoin projects and challenged the group to a debate about why Bitcoin could be the only successful crypto blockchain, and Sara and Cristof presented on\u00a0\u201cCompassionate Economy\u201d<\/a>, a type of gift economy that managed to get a number of representatives into an Austrian local council.<\/p>\n In the evenings, conversations continued at the bar and in the garden. You could also take a dip in the \u201cliquidity pool\u201d \u2013 a Hot Tub.<\/p>\n One evening we watched the nerve-wracking movie\u00a0Escape from Pretoria<\/em>\u00a0about then anti-apartheid activist Tim Jenkin\u2019s escape from a high-security prison. He later started the successful Community Exchange System that I will come to later.<\/p>\n On the first day, we heard from Stefan Sch\u00fctz about the\u00a0Chiemgauer<\/a>, a successful regional currency that arose from a game started at a German Waldorf school by a team of seven girls. The vouchers created in the game became so successful that they were turned into a local currency backed by the Euro in 2003. The Chiemgauer, which\u00a0 is still going strong 22 years later, now exists in digital form. In fact, it has become more popular through a new climate initiative. Stefan attributed the success to a dedicated core team, a committed leader person, and a strong community of early adopters.<\/p>\n While the Chiemgauer involves paper notes, many community currencies, like LETS (Local Exchange Trading Schemes) and timebanks, only use a digital ledger. Different pieces of software exist for that. One example is\u00a0CES (Community Exchange System)<\/a>, which is as old as the Chiemgauer and now has\u00a0hundreds of groups<\/a>. There\u2019s also\u00a0Community Forge<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Cyclos<\/a>, the latter being much closer to a banking app.<\/p>\n As communities running these schemes are usually small and risk accumulating trade imbalances, there\u2019s long been an idea of federating them. Matthew, the creator of Community Forge, has written the\u00a0Credit Commons Protocol<\/a>\u00a0which can integrate with CES communities as well.<\/p>\n Another long-standing effort is\u00a0IntegralCES<\/a>, which has been used in Spain, Italy and Greece. It is just being updated based on the platform\u00a0Komunitin<\/a>, as is CES itself, putting mobile functionality first. Esteve Badia, developer of IntegralCES and Komunitin, gave a talk on that.<\/p>\n Kevin Sundar Raj discussed Citizenwallet, which\u00a0 is a Belgian non-profit and another provider of local currencies that uses crypto and NFC technology. It looks geared towards an urban environment, and is in fact behind a new local currency called\u00a0Brussels Pay<\/a>. Shops in the city are now obliged to accept digital payments, which means incurring fees from payment providers. If the stores join Brussels Pay, they are given terminals that can take either conventional payment or Brussels Pay and avoid the fees, which seems an elegant solution.<\/p>\n Circles<\/a>, presented by Max, is another blockchain-based project, which was started in Berlin and lets members issue their own tokens as a basic income that can be used in participating shops. In the Berlin pilot, businesses could turn the Circles currency back into Euros through a subsidised programme.<\/p>\n Roberto Valenti and Simon Quarmby used their project\u00a0Holons<\/a>\u00a0for a thought-provoking interactive demo, asking people to post continuations of these prompts in Telegram channels: \u201cCan you believe we used to\u2026\u201d, \u201cWe did not have\u2026\u201d and \u201cWe only had to\u2026\u201d (the latter was combined with creating a task that others could join).<\/p>\n Cecilie Smith-Christensen talked about UNESCO World Heritage sites, and how many tourism-dependent communities suffer under economic leakage and are vulnerable to disruptions affecting the tourism sector. In the context of UNESCO\u2019s World Heritage Convention she founded World Heritage Catalysis through which she explores how collaborative finance can contribute towards circular and regenerative local economies and enhance communities\u2019 economic resilience.<\/p>\n Clara Gromaches gave a talk on affordable housing projects in and around Barcelona that she is involved in. In response to her question \u201cWho has been to Barcelona?\u201d almost all hands shot up. In the last 10 years there has been a staggering growth of 50% in tourism, while 50% of locals have been displaced from the area. Co-operative housing projects provide secure and affordable lets that can also be passed on to children.<\/p>\n Hans-Florian Hoyer explained his concept of Twin Tokens, which could be implemented by a community in various ways, including just pen and paper. He demonstrated this on a flipchart by creating random transactions between two parties and recording amounts owed by whom to whom in a matrix. After a number of transactions, he showed how many of the debts could be fully or partially cancelled out.<\/p>\n Several people mentioned that what ultimately underlies all the issuance and debt-clearing mechanisms is a technology that has been around since the middle ages (and really started even before that): double-entry accounting.<\/p>\n Saying that, with today\u2019s digital technologies you can go much further.<\/p>\n As Jorge Lopez would later say in a conversation with Arthur about the\u00a0Economic Space Agency<\/a>\u2019s work: \u201cThe moment we move accounting into a computational network, things happen. Much more becomes possible.\u201d<\/p>\n For this to happen, accounting needs to be translated into a network protocol. \u201cThe agents gain network responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n The ECSA (Economic Space Agency \u2013 I love that name) aims to encode different economic politics. \u201cCapitalism utilises accounting practices in pursuit of profit and increase of capital. The financial architecture of capitalism can be coopted, composted, hacked.\u201d<\/p>\n Toma\u017e Fleischman talked about\u00a0Cycles<\/a>, which is an \u201copen, decentralized clearing, settlement, and issuance protocol\u201d that can benefit existing business networks by clearing debts through multilateral obligation-setoff.<\/p>\n He explained the four ways to discharge a payment obligation, emphasizing how important it is to keep track of settlements. Settling debts with less money means using conventional money\u2019s unit of account, but not using it as the exchange medium.<\/p>\n How the boundaries of a network are defined can have a big impact on how much clearing can be done within those groups.<\/p>\n Message-based settling is another computerised clearing method, which is used by\u00a0Ledgerloops<\/a>. It is triggered by a single transaction instead of being run at certain intervals. Michiel de Jong and Johan Nygren talked about solving a problem associated with this, involving multihop payments. Michiel began more generally by discussing how software creation can be organised (for example monoculture, commons, or public good), and how different ledgers can coexist if there is an interoperability layer. \u201cBut what about the interoperability layer? Everybody will want you to use theirs\u201d, came a voice from the audience. Still, the crucial thing is that they exist.<\/p>\n Collaboration was a big theme at the heart of the conference. Many groups at the meeting have already worked with one or more others, and it is crucial that projects talk the same language and federate for the movement to grow.<\/p>\n Talking of collaboration, Gustavo Segovia gave a talk on\u00a0Collabberry<\/a>, a decentralised app that allows a team to evaluate and compensate members\u2019 contributions in a transparent way.<\/p>\n After impressive talks about the\u00a0Mycelium Learning Network<\/a>\u00a0in Costa Rica by Arturo Montanaro, and on\u00a0Island Power<\/a>\u00a0based in the UK (with both managing projects around the world; see interviews with\u00a0Marcus Saul<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Chris Cook<\/a>\u00a0from Island Power on Lowimpact), the last two presentations were a fitting finale.<\/p>\n Jakub Lanc talked about his adventures in the Czech Republic, bringing new financial technologies to universities and other institutions. I enjoyed the slides on his methodologies which comprised ADHD, rabbit holes and a Trojan horse. \u201dYou need someone to open the door for you\u201d, he commented, although he admitted he would like \u201cto find a less war-like analogy\u201d. It was interesting to hear that universities, such as Cambridge, are now offering courses on Regenerative Economics.<\/p>\n Scott Morris, the \u201cToken Jedi\u201d who appeared wearing a Star Wars inspired outfit, talked about his experiences advocating for a revolutionary blockchain protocol called Bancor, named after the clearing solution that John Maynard Keynes had unsuccessfully proposed at the 1944 Bretton Woods meeting. As its namesake, Bancor allows (crypto) currencies to be converted into another, their values being automatically calculated by supply and demand. The new Bancor did not get much of a chance to become a force for good. Its founders made promises that they did not keep and compromised the project in other ways, which left Scott feeling burned.<\/p>\n On a more positive note, Scott has just written a book with Stephen DeMeulenaere called\u00a0\u201cPathways to Regeneration\u201d<\/a>, which I can highly recommend. Their combined massive experience in the realm of new economies, and how to implement them, shines through on every page.<\/p>\n The last day also saw CoFi in action, as the Commons Hub found its first investors towards expanding the place. The interest on the loans will be paid in nights of accommodation.<\/p>\n Summing up, this was a mind-blowing and nourishing gathering and more than I could have imagined.<\/p>\n A key take-away for me is that if communities take issuing and settling credit into their own hands, the value lies in the relationships and cannot be as easily co-opted as conventional money. At the same time, they must guard against, or find ways to deal with, accumulation of credits and debt.<\/p>\n One of the main obstacles to creating networks like that might be in our own minds. I have not mentioned the sessions on shadow work and money trauma yet. I was not part of them, but from what I heard they were powerful.<\/p>\n In highly individualised Western societies, the necessary trust and connection can be hard to come by, with people tending to stick with what they are used to especially if it looks to be \u2013 kind of \u2013 working. Still, I believe that to trust and connect can be learned again, as it is in our human nature.<\/p>\n Chiemgauer Regiogeld\u00a0https:\/\/www.chiemgauer.info<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Stefan Sch\u00fctz<\/p>\n GLS Bank\u00a0https:\/\/www.gls.de<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Hans-Florian Hoyer<\/p>\n Local Bitcoin projects \u2013 Hubertus<\/p>\n Holons\u00a0https:\/\/www.holons.io<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Roberto Valenti and Simon Quarmby<\/p>\n Resilinets by World Heritage Catalysis\u00a0https:\/\/www.whcatalysis.org<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Cecilie Smith-Christensen<\/p>\n Affordable Housing Projects in Barcelona\u00a0https:\/\/claragromaches.com<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Clara Gromaches<\/p>\n IntegralCES\/Komunitin\u00a0https:\/\/docs.komunitin.org<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Esteve Badia<\/p>\n Citizen Wallet\u00a0https:\/\/citizenwallet.xyz\/<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Kevin Sundar Raj<\/p>\n Circles\u00a0https:\/\/joincircles.net<\/a>\u00a0Max<\/p>\n Twin Tokens\u00a0https:\/\/www.e-c-o.net\/wiki\/uploads\/Twin%20Token%20short<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Hans-Florian Hoyer<\/p>\n Compassionate Economics\u00a0https:\/\/www.verantwortung-erde.org\/<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Sara and Cristof<\/p>\n Cycles\u00a0https:\/\/cycles.money\/<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Toma\u017e Fleischman<\/p>\n Software Coexistence + Multihop payments\u00a0https:\/\/ledgerloops.com<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Michiel de Jong and Johan Nygren<\/p>\n Collabbery\u00a0https:\/\/collabberry.xyz<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Gustavo Segovia<\/p>\n Dialogue about Economic Space Agency\u00a0https:\/\/economicspace.agency<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Jorge Lopez and Adam DL<\/p>\n Mycelium Learning Network\u00a0https:\/\/myceliumlearning.com<\/a>\u00a0Arturo Montanaro<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lowimpact.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cofi4.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA perfect blend of the analogue and the digital<\/h3>\n
Conference and unconference<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lowimpact.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cofi5.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe faces of local currencies<\/h3>\n
Collaboration<\/h3>\n
The power of accounting \u2013 from matrix to network<\/h3>\n
![\"Review](\"https:\/\/www.lowimpact.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cofi1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lowimpact.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cofi2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRegeneration<\/h3>\n
![\"Review](\"https:\/\/www.lowimpact.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/cofi3.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSchedule<\/h3>\n
Day 1 Localisation<\/h4>\n
Day 2 Collaboration<\/h4>\n
Day 3 Allocation<\/h4>\n
Day 4 Integration<\/h4>\n
Day 5 Regeneration<\/h4>\n