Reduction Over Time: Easing the Burden of Peer-to-Peer Barter Relationships to Facilitate Mutual Help

A peer-to-peer complementary currency can be a powerful tool for promoting exchanges and building relationships for coordinated activities. i-WAT[11] is a proposed such currency usable on the Internet. It is based on the WAT System[15], a polycentric complementary currency using WAT tickets as its media of exchange: participants spontaneously issue and circulate the tickets as needed, whose values are backed up by chains of trust. i-WAT implements the tickets electronically by exchanging messages signed in OpenPGP[3]. This paper proposes an extension to the design of i-WAT to facilitate mutual help among people in need. In particular, we propose additional “reduction” tickets whose values are reduced over time. By deferring redemption of such tickets, the participants can contribute to reduce the debts of the issuers, as well as to accelerate spending. Applications of this feature include a relief to disaster-affected people. A reference implementation of i-WAT has been developed in the form of a plug-in for an XMPP[6][7] instant messaging client. We have been putting the currency system into practical use, to which the proposed feature will be added shortly.