Draft: Using Holochain for real estate and other economic activities

General Chat App Ideas
#1

While I’ve seen mentions of sharing economy apps (like AirBnb and FairBnb) being redesigned to run on Holochain before, has anyone thought otherwise about how Holochain may be used for or affect real estate, through the perspective of using a commons-based, stable-value, mutual credit cryptocurrency that is backed by services, or perhaps assets? Is it sensible to design such cryptocurrencies that are backed by assets rather than services? Designing cryptocurrencies that are backed by services only can get complicated for goods, where there is a lot involved before a good can be used: extraction of raw materials, processing and refining, manufacture into components, assembly of components, transportation between each phase of the good’s life cycle, all of the human resources that are associated with the good’s life cycle, secondary and recursively deeper related inputs to the life cycle such as electricity, water, and other resources.

Do people envisage society transitioning from fiat currencies to currencies running on Holochain, or similarly cryptographic, agent-centric, scalable, distributed app frameworks? If so, how are many currencies and apps that are tailored for specific use cases going to be able to act as current-sees for all of current and future uses: societally, economically, and otherwise?

If more and more of society tries to use Holochain-supported currencies and apps for purposes that do not pertain to the specific use cases of such currencies and apps, e.g. storing value, medium of exchange, etc., could that create adverse consequences for such currencies and apps? For instance, could hosters (or other cryptocurrency suppliers/service agents) potentially gain more influence over the rest of society? It seems like they may not, since they are ostensibly not able to form cartels, or influence pricing by withholding supply. See Holo Fuel Economics 101 for more information.

In the context of residential property that one owns and lives in, I suppose that you could have a Holofuel-like cryptocurrency that is backed by real estate as a good, to owners or mutual owners of property. It may also be backed by lending it to owners that use property to rent it out to others, which seems like designing a currency and app for that use case may less problematic than for the buying and selling of property. However, for the buying and selling of property, I suppose the service or useful output that backs the currency may include the services of real estate agents or marketplaces. Measuring useful outputs for property that one lives in could be quite difficult, as the useful outputs can be derived from the occupants of the property and the services that they offer to society, which may include potentially any services offered by the property itself, such as renewable energy generation, agriculture, etc.

Other background reading that may help may include:

Cross-linking to Draft: Renewable energy generators as a commons.

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#2

As a sidenote, for currencies that have a transaction fee I guess society probably wont do that.
More importantly, if society does that, this increases the demand for the currency. The supply of the currency on the other hand is determined by the credit limits.
I would argue that we can get problems and need the rules to allow credit limits for non-providers, like reserves, to the degree that the currency is held for other purposes. Say 90% of the currency would be held as a store of value or means of payment for other stuff, then I would say 90% of the credit limit volume should be by reserves etc. The caps for the reserves would need to increase accordingly. I could argue economically, why I think that is the case. I am not sure how one assesses these how much of the currency is used for what things in a decentralized manner.

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#3

I’m intrigued by prospects for emergence of land-based currencies. As innovations enable new plenitude at near zero marginal cost, we’ll likely see land values rise fast in the areas most open to exponential technologies.

Here are slides on how personal currencies might include “flex conversion” options for visiting/living in communities – https://is.gd/bigchanges.

Will welcome your ideas for scenarios where Holochain might rev up a pilot with startup communities.

PS This also may be of interest re land-based currency rollouts – https://is.gd/startupsocietiesbook .

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#4

There’s also Tender, which plans to have no transaction fees.

OTOH, allowing credit limits for non-providers to the the degree that the currency is held for other purposes, would create additional complexities (with dynamic loan issuance to such non-providers of hosting) and side-effects. In short, Holo fuel would not solely be backed by hosting (or it may even be backed only in a small proportion by hosting) and the internal economic signals within the network, and is more subject to the influence of external economic signals. If the network is (at least more) subject to external economic signals, then from:

Firstly, we intend to implement a cap on the overall amount of fuel that can be created, proportional to the hosting capacity of the network. We do this to manage the overall risk exposure in the system and to ensure that the value of each individual unit of Holo fuel cannot be inflated away by hosts working together.

Secondly, we implement special accounts called “Reserve Accounts”. Reserve accounts add structural resilience by amplifying certain economic signals from hosts and acting on their behalf to sell/redeem Holo fuel, influencing price and supply in the process. It is important to understand that reserve accounts do not “manage” Holo fuel since that implies some form of agency and an objective function of sorts.

By extending credit limits to reserve accounts, this gives them agency, and an ability to manipulate the price of Holo fuel that may not be in the interests of hosters, and influence the price of Holofuel, to the extent of economic signals from non-hosting demand relative to hosting demand. With influence from economic signals, there is greater risk exposure to external entities to influence the price of Holofuel, and affect the ability of a currency to be fully backed by a tangible, valuable service.

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#5

Hi Mark,

Thank you for your comments. I’ll read your slides on Monday AEST, and I looked at the Startup Communities website.

Personally, startup ideas that I am most interested in right now would centre around sustainable energy, sustainable development, and leveraging Holochain and commoning, in order to more effectively utilize and build on my skills and experience. There’s some preliminary ideas here and another general idea/proposal for a whole range of commoning use cases here.

It just occurred to me that I neglected to mention that you could loan a Holofuel like currency (HLC) in a real estate happ for the purpose of mortgaging properties. The mortgagee would have to do something productive to pay back the HLC debt (like working for an income, for example). And then you could continue to adapt other aspects of the Holo fuel economics design. I suppose you could add other features or functionalities to the app, like a real estate distributed, p2p marketplace, maybe with fees for posting ads; VR and AR touring; etc.

I should really look into Tender more as well, since not having fees can obviously be advantageous, although it may also risk externalising costs that are then recovered through for-profit activities built on top of Tender, while these profit-seeking activities could then lead to inequalities, rent-seeking and market-manipulating behaviours. But I don’t know as I haven’t looked into Tender enough.

#6

Thanks for the link :slight_smile: In my understanding that would be a currency precisely tailored to be a medium of exchange (with a value synchronized with national currencies), and not tailored for a different specific use case (like Holo fuel or real estate) and then being ‘misused’ my the people as a medium of exchange. If I got your question right, its concerning the latter ones.

Unless I got the Holofuel 101 wrong, Reserve Accounts do have a credit limit. Did you think they would need to buy the fuel (which they sell against say Dollars put into the reserve) beforehand? Then they could not increase the supply of holo fuel.
But they don’t need agency for that.
So in a sense Holofuel is partly backed by hosting services (hosts credit limits), partly by currencies held by the reserves (reserves credit limits) and partly by the fees (Holo company credit limit). Although ultimately they all come down to the hosting services as the underlying value. But that is only, because the credit limits for reserves and the company are chosen in a clever way, so that they are related to the hosting capacity of the network.
At least that is my understanding.

#7

Ah yes, my mistake. Yeah what you have said is correct.

Reserves are accounts that can sell Holo fuel against their credit limit as long as three conditions are met: first, the total amount of Holo fuel is below a system-wide cap. Second, the amount of recently sold Holo fuel is below a periodic cap. And third, they have to receive an accepted reserve currency such as USD or BTC.
—https://medium.com/h-o-l-o/holo-fuel-economics-101-c9631d63014a

#8

I read your slides and am still reading through the book. They’re very interesting. I’ll need to think about how I could quickly get an income from a startup idea, or otherwise get an income in other ways, either as other work in tandem or a full-time job first. In any case it seems like the Startup Society approach is a great way to go.

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#9

I’ve read all of the sample for the eBook, and it seems like I don’t really have the capacity to launch even a small-scale startup society.

Seems like it will be best for me to get a job.

#10

I’m open to exploring the development of land or property-based currencies further. I see that it can have a lot of potential.

I’ve been working on proposals for commoning grid infrastructure and EVs, charging stations, and EV services like ride sharing, with trying to find potential partners to trial with, and more generally generate interest. However, commoning grid infrastructure may be hard to make progress with, since it involves working with grid operators that have not been responsive to reaching out to them. Commoning EVs including manufacturer and across the whole supply chain will also be difficult to achieve. EV charging might be relatively easier, while it may be easier to partner Redgrid demand response management services with an existing charging station provider, like Chargefox, and also take inspiration from what Arcade City has done and their vision.

I think a good place to start would be designing the economics and exploring and mapping out the various options, e.g.

It would also of course help to develop a front-end prototype covering what’s needed, to drive back-end development.

#11

Regarding startup societies, Arcade City intends to create cities using peer-to-peer systems for everything, and a Holacracy goverance style. More here:

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