Agent-centric currency framework
Emerging Alternative Game position: Modify
Prototype: Holo (Holochain)
Not a currency itself but a substrate letting any community define and cryptographically validate its own currency rules without a shared global ledger.
Structural profile
Topology view
Architecture
- Game position
- Modifies the game; substrate for plural mechanisms
- Value-signal richness
- Multiple units per agent permitted; richness depends on app
- Accumulation regime
- Depends on currency design; framework imposes no regime
Medium-of-Exchange Properties
- Divisibility
- Divisibility isn't fixed by the substrate — each currency app built on it sets its own granularity.
- Uniformity (Fungibility)
- Fungibility isn't fixed by the substrate either — depends entirely on the app's own design.
- Durability
- Not fixed at the framework level — durability depends entirely on which currency app is built on the substrate.
- Portability
- Not fixed at the framework level — the substrate imposes no distance constraint itself; app-dependent.
- Acceptability
- Undefined at the substrate level — acceptability belongs to whatever currency is actually built on it.
Operation
- Coordination / discovery
- Tacit-emergent at protocol level; primary mechanism depends on app
- Governance & issuance
- Per-agent issuance with cryptographic validation; no global consensus
- Scale & federation
- Local-first; scales through agent connectivity; federation native
Anthropological assumptions
- Default ethical orientation
- Smithian by default; the framework itself imposes no assumption about human nature — the taxonomy's default reading for architecture that doesn't engage the question.
- Accumulative drive
- Depends on currency designed atop the framework
- Status / recognition
- Depends on currency design; framework supports separation
- Time preference
- Variable — a pure substrate that lets each agent define and validate its own currency rules; the framework itself takes no position on time horizon.
In Practice
- Track record
-
The Holochain framework has been live since 2018, with several currency apps built on it (e.g. early HoloFuel testnets) , but no single agent-centric currency has yet reached mainstream adoption at the scale of established cryptocurrencies. - Governance requirements
- Depends entirely on the specific app built on the substrate — the framework itself imposes none.
- Resource requirements
- Running a Holochain node is modest (laptop-class hardware, unlike blockchain mining); building a new currency app requires development expertise.