Mutual-Credit-on-Blockchain

Decentralized Monetary Protocol

A class of monetary protocols that implement mutual credit logic on a blockchain substrate, with trust relationships encoded as on-chain graph edges or smart contract permissions. Circles extends classical mutual credit with personal currencies plus periodic UBI minting per agent; Trustlines implements trust-line-based mutual credit. Prototypes: Circles (Gnosis Chain) and Trustlines Network.

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License Libre (AGPL/Apache 2.0 variants). https://github.com/CirclesUBI; https://github.com/trustlines-protocol
Dev Status 🟢 Active
Dev Status Detail Released — Circles operates on Gnosis Chain with active user base; Trustlines deployed and operational.
Owner Circles: Circles UBI cooperative; Trustlines: Trustlines Foundation.
Country Germany (Circles); Germany / international (Trustlines Foundation).
Start Year 2017
Stack Solidity (smart contracts); Gnosis Chain (Circles); custom blockchain (Trustlines); JavaScript clients.
Funding Foundation grants; ICO (Trustlines); ecosystem grants; volunteer development.
Last Investigated Jul 1, 2026

Use Case Domains

Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

Decentralized Monetary Protocol Attributes

Origins Mutual credit revival; UBI advocacy; trust-graph cryptography research.
Data Formats Personal currency token contracts; trust edge data structures; UBI minting metadata; graph-traversal payment paths.
Terms Free participation; gas costs paid by users or sponsored.
Funds Trustlines: approximately CHF 15M raised in 2018 token sale. Circles: foundation grants undisclosed.
Based On Classical mutual credit theory; Ripple's trust-line concept; UBI literature.
Permissions Permissionless participation; trust relationships encoded as on-chain graph edges.
Smart Contract Yes — implemented as smart contracts on EVM-compatible chains.
Development Tools Circles SDK; Trustlines clients (mobile and desktop); EVM tooling.
Protocol Maturity / Standardization Community Standard — deployed implementations with published specifications.
Trust Framework Cryptographic verification; trust-graph topology; smart contract enforcement of mutual credit rules; community vouching.
Target Application Domain Personal currencies, UBI distribution, community economic networks, peer-to-peer credit.
Game-Acceptance Position Modify-Additive — designed to coexist with national currencies and other monetary systems.
Accumulation Regime Varies by design — Circles adds UBI minting (mildly inflationary per personal currency); Trustlines is structurally limited like classical mutual credit.
Coordination Mechanism Bounded-trust mutual plus algorithmic mechanism design for graph-traversal payments.
Issuance Model Per-agent — each user mints their own personal currency (Circles) or extends trust lines bilaterally (Trustlines).
Value-Signal Type Single unit per network in practice; technically plural per-agent currencies in Circles design.
Federation Pattern Peer-to-peer mesh through trust-graph topology.
Substrate Independence Blockchain-native (EVM family).