Mutual credit clearing
Established Alternative Game position: Modify
Prototype: Sardex (Sardinia)
Every transaction credits one account and debits another by the same amount, so the network's total balance is mathematically always zero.
Structural profile
Topology view
Architecture
- Game position
- Modifies the game; peer-to-peer credit extension
- Value-signal richness
- Single unit, often pegged to national currency for clarity
- Accumulation regime
- Sum of balances is zero; net accumulation impossible by design
Medium-of-Exchange Properties
- Divisibility
- Finely divisible, usually denominated to match national-currency precision for clarity.
- Uniformity (Fungibility)
- Fungible — each unit of clearing credit is interchangeable; only the zero-sum balance rule differs.
- Durability
- Not a stored value at all — balances are running ledger positions, not a token that changes hands.
- Portability
- Bounded to network members — balances only exist within the specific trust network (Sardex-style), not portable outside it.
- Acceptability
- High within the specific business network, zero outside it — participation IS the acceptability boundary.
Operation
- Coordination / discovery
- Bounded-trust mutual; peer-to-peer credit extension
- Governance & issuance
- Third-party ledger keeper; member-collective governance
- Scale & federation
- Regional typically; federation through nested credit commons
Anthropological assumptions
- Default ethical orientation
- Rousseauian; assumes capacity for mutual trust
- Accumulative drive
- Drive structurally limited; net accumulation impossible
- Status / recognition
- Separated from monetary signal; recognition through trust extension
- Time preference
- Variable — a peer-credit clearing substrate whose orientation depends entirely on credit-limit and settlement rules, not a fixed design choice.
In Practice
- Track record
-
Sardex has operated in Sardinia since 2010 , clearing a meaningful volume of business-to-business trade annually among several thousand member companies. - Governance requirements
- Requires a clearing-network operator (a company or cooperative) to admit members, set credit limits, and manage the zero-sum ledger.
- Resource requirements
- Membership in the specific clearing network; no separate capital reserve since balances net to zero across the network.