Alternative Currency Support

Userpoints can be used as a basis of arbitrary currency for web sites.

It has transactions, accounts (via term IDs) and debit/credit operations. What you use it for is totally up to you.

An upcoming feature will allow performing transactions remotely from other web sites and non-Drupal applications. This uses XML-RPC and can add/subtract points, or retrieve the current balance.

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I've been ruminating on just this idea since reading "Deep Economy" several months ago. I've done some research into the complimentary currency systems described in "The Future of Money" and other books. I don't have any actual personal experience with anything beyond plain barter though, so it's exciting to see your detailed plan.

In looking over your Currency Module Architecture plan, it looks like what would be needed most is an accounting module, probably using the API provided by the Userpoints module. Much of the other functionality you describe could probably be accomplished using CCK, Views, Organic Groups, Taxonomy, Location, and other modules. Later, an install profile could be used to tie all that together.

It looks like the deadline is approaching for getting a proposal posted. Can we boil down some more specifics of what would need to be included in an accounting module, to make this possible? I think the more concrete and concise the proposal, the more likely it is to catch a student's interest. Otherwise, this is an obscure enough topic that I can see it easily getting skipped by students more interested in APIs, RDF, and other more technical topics.

Thanks for doing this Matthew. I've been hoping for a long time that someone would bit the bullet and initiate a Drupal project along these lines. I'd hoped to be able to find the time to put together a specification over a year ago, but I've been kept busy on too many other projects.

I'm currently working on an incipent complementary (multi-)currency project, but have ended up embedding Cyclos within an iFrame in an otherwise Drupal-based. This is certainly not an ideal solution, but having compared a variety of options it seems to be the best open to me at this time.

LocalExchange may also be embedded in this way.

I believe it would be very useful to develop a Drupal-centred CC framework in which the accounting functions can be met be at least 3 means:
(a) embedded Cyclos+SSH (with interfacing back-end modules) where stronger security is an issue;
(b) embedded LocalExchange (with interfacing back-end modules) - which mght be particularly good for timebank systems; and
(c) a more tightly integrated Drupal-only system.

Both Cyclos and LocalExchange are already well developed and their embedment with Drupal might allow attention to be focused on those areas where they are lacking, i.e. social networking and multi-route resource-to-need matching; systemic indicators (in particular for the mapping of social capital); etc.

In particular, Cyclos may be of particular value where security is an issue. In fact it was rewritten in Java (the first version having been PHP) for security reasons, and its objectives seem to go far beyond the LETS/TimeBank requirements. Furthermore it already has interfaces to card payment systems, phone payment systems and (potentially) Ripple. The fact that it's written in Java and relies on Tomcat is also a drawback since that makes hosting more of a challenge.

LocalExchange is is PHP-based, clean and easily customized, but is essentially a single-currency system. Like Cyclos, however, it's released under the GPL and could probably be extended without too much difficulty to provide multi-currency support. Since it's PHP-based it might also be adaptable for tighter integration into Drupal.

Of course, the more tightly something is integrated with Drupal's existing (or incipient) modules the more use can be made of its features, but there's no reason to restrict it unnecessarily. By taking as modular an approach as possible we should be able to produce a very flexible and powerful framework to meet a great diversity of CC needs.

I believe there's particular benefit to be gained from building in visual indicators to show how well a particular CC is serving its community (such as Lorenz diagrams to indicate the distribution of trading or accumulated credits), connectivity matrices or the interesting spiral map used by Geoff Chesshire in his "Regenerosity" software to display the growth of social capital).

(I was pleased to see a few of my words comments extant in the "requirements" page. ;-)

John :)

A team has been assembled, an ideal student identified, and we've worked intensively to draft this application over the last few days. We'd love to hear any comments from other Drupalers, as we continue polishing.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddm6qs69_0qj7hx9f6

To conclude the discussion above, user points hasn't been proposed. Instead we plan to build an API to an open source java banking system, Cyclos, and let the admin decide whether to outsource transactions to a 3rd party java server, or to use a new transaction module, based on the new API.

Sounds interesting to me - maybe there's also some lessons learned from flat-swapping sites where you can lend out your capital (your flat) to someone in return for borrowing theirs.

Anyway, will be interested to see where this goes. Good luck, Matthew!

Hi!

I run an offline woman's social club (for mothers) and we have a complimentary-currency-like system. We have several instruments. Hours which we keep track of on a register. Coupons which are paper. Points (for various group activities) and credits. Each are exchangeable one into the next and back. Essentially, it does all = 0. There are no profits involved. It's presently very basic such as trading babysitting time so we can all finish college.

Anyway, recently I've been interested in seeing if I can put together a website for us to help with some of the administrative burden. I've been dabbling with Drupal Commons (not live) and it seems to be promising. I learned about the mutual_credit module but have some issues with it.

I see this thread is from 2008. Has there been any progress since then? It appears there are mods here and there but nothing works that I have tried. So we still have no website. And I'm something of a n00b so I am learning. I'm not a master of php by a longshot. So it's a learning curve.

Where can I go to keep up on any progress?

I did post on the module's bug report. Otherwise, I didn't want to bother you because you looked busy. I signed up for community forge to see how it works but my account wasn't activated yet. I will send you a gmail.