The Holobiz (working title) project aims to build a software infrastructure for a decentralised sustainable economy. The platform will be an open modular framework which can easily get enhanced with additional functions.
In contrast to the approach of HoloREA, to build a solution from scratch, Holobiz will be build upon existing open-source software frameworks. That would allow to move faster and build a bridge to traditional software infrastrucure for business and non Non-Profit organsations.
There will pass a lot of time until Holochain is mature enough to run enterprise grade business logic on it. The approach of Holobiz does mitigate this timegap in using the number one Open Source business suite and adding modules to this stack which connect to Holochain. So in the beginnning only less critical information are handled with Holochain and the rest is untouched and stored in the SQL database.
The same approach should work for Cryptocurrencies and micropayments. It will need some time until Holochain can savely host FIAT or cryptocurrencies for larger amounts. Adding a mature DLT payment network as Stellar, allows the easy exchange of FIAT money around the globe with quite tiny fees.
Feedback is highly welcome. If there is enough interest, also from devs for the Holochain part, I can organise ressources for the other stacks.
Hi @lucode, this is in interesting idea. What existing open source frameworks are you exploring and using?
Also, I am curious to know what are some benefits of using the Stellar network vs other payment networks?
What else is needed to bootstrap the P2P economy?
Odoo would be a good solution as a business suite framwork, it has a great community and we would get an enormous amount of apps for very different purposes mostly for free ->appstore. The additional Holobiz Odoo modules would primarily provide the integration of Holochain into Odoo, which is due to the openess of Odoo not such a hassle (see for instance what Darfchain did by integrating Ethereum and BigchainDB into Odoo).
Protip: Don’t get lured by the Odoo marketing strategy to drive people to the Enterprise version. The community version is good enough for 95% of the projects.
Regarding the benefits of Stellar; in the Keybase blog you can find a nice list why the did choose Stellar as Cryptocurrency framework to integrate into the Keybase stack.
BTW if you sign up in Keybase you will get some free Lumens (Stellar tokens) as they run an airdrop for some month. And from my perspective the Keybase app/wallet is a nice example how to intergrate a powerfull chat app with a currency wallet.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I have never heard of Odoo. At this point, I am curious how this will be implemented and how it will work in real time. Looks like you have looked at many options.
I have looked at Stellar. What are your thoughts about the Stellar Grant Partnership Program? Is this something that can help you bootstrap your idea?
Also, have you done extensive product/market fit? And how will you develop and grow the community?
From my perspective a minimal set of additional apps/functions are required to turn Odoo into a p2p framework, additonal p2p verticals could then be built on top of that:
Chat and Social Media
Chat and Social Media features are essential for any p2p framework. The Holobiz chat/discuss module should also allow to create context related discussions, for instance about a certain Product in the Goods & Service Register.
Wallet-Payment
A critical issue is how to integrate FIAT currencies into the framework. Of course Odoo allows the integration of different payment gateways for E-Commerce, but to avoid unnecessary fees and build a more or less disaster resistant platform the integration of at least one cryptocurrency (apart from Holochain tokens), that allows micropayments, needs to be done.
Mutual Credit
One or several Mutual Credit systems allow the exchange of goods and service in a situation of financial crises and before. An existing distributed payment rail for FIAT currencies is also foreseen to allow a smooth transition and exchange to other systems.
Goods & Service Register
This Register acts as a permissioned shared and distributed database and enables building a register of sustainable, regenerative products enhanced with additional Metadata. This register could be designed in a similar approach as the one as Mattereums “Smart Property Register”. But Goods & Service Register is mainly listing products that are essential for a specific community and not everything as in Mattereum. The goal is to create a Register which lists at least all essential products and service for a specific region with ties to other regions and globally.
In addition this Register store the information about where to find those products and how many of them are stored. The owner of some products needs to define with whom he wants to share this information, which is an essential feature to avoid targeted looting or theft. In case of a disaster instead of just hoarding products in an unstructured way Holobiz allows to build fine grained stocks of many essential goods.
Marketplaces
For products or services that are on the market, as well for demand of such, the marketplace allows to publish the product details from the Goods & Service Register to the market. Later on Goods & Service Register plus Marketplace could be enhanced with AI functionalities to match distributed supply chains. This could be done in a similar fashion as the “Resources - Events - Agents (REA)” model.
ERP plus
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning Systems are nowadays the brains of modern industries. The ERP system needs to be enhanced by modules that allow to manage Circular Economy models and Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning as one already exists.
Governance
Some aspects of how to deal with governance are delivered by Holochain, but as Holobiz is a hybrid platform there might be some challenges in order to set up governance and access rights in all the components.
Yes I’m working on this topic since quite a while and we tested many frameworks. Of course any stack has some less exciting aspects, but Odoo definetely has more pros then cons.
You have definitely thought about this. Out of this list, governance seems to be the greatest challenge. Many projects have experienced forks due to governance related issues.
Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Hopefully we can join the dots between Ostrom’s 8 design principles and the capabilities of Holochain
As someone who is helping with HoloREA, I welcome a different approach to some of the same problems. Good luck! Let’s compare notes down the road a few months. Maybe even find some meeting points.
Ofcourse Bob, the goal and even a lot of the functionalities are the same, just the way to get there is quite different. Ostrom’s 8 design principles are a part of the DNA of the project, as well as the P2P accounting paper.
Hi Lucas, Our Planetmakers Platform is a project with similar goals, see our website at https://planet.coop. Note that Holo is one of our partners. We have an approach to governance that builds on Ostrom’s design principles and viable systems but without needing to explain the theory, as it is built into the user interface. We have recently applied for a €1 Million EU Prize in their Blockchains for Social Good project. It might be useful to compare notes. We have a PoC prototype built on Discourse, but it is very light on the exchange side at present.
That looks cool, but I would consider, that a discourse based solution is eventually not able to deliver the tools and security that businesses would expect. When it comes to business processes, accounting and all which is connected, businesses are conservative. They ether don’t want to take risks or using parallel systems. Ping me if you like to share our opinions and intends deeper.
Yes, of course, our Discourse based prototype is a Proof-of-Concept, where we explore the various features with groups of users. It certainly couldn’t scale in its present form.
What stage are you at? It sounds like you are working out the various parts of the infrastructure you want. Do you have any prototypes? User interface designs?
Gary
We did build an Agent-Portal in Odoo for another project. Those economic agent can sell products or services on the platform. The software we built is quite modular and flexible so adding circles to it would be easy. Ping me at the contact form at the site moneygrid.net to discuss your needs. I can’t see a way to communicate direct on the forum.
You might want to check out https://bitbucket.org/ccomb/rea/src/default/rea/ and connect with Christophe Combelles. He’s been doing some experiments with REA in Odoo.
This is a nice article about how to build the ideal cloud-native framework (with Odoo in mind).
At the end it all boils down to the choice on what framework you should develop your stuff.