Open value accounting
Emerging Alternative Game position: Modify
Prototype: Sensorica (Montréal)
Tracks contributions across multiple weighted registers — time, expertise, capital — then allocates equity-shares by democratic agreement.
Structural profile
Topology view
Architecture
- Game position
- Modifies the game; tracks contributions across multiple registers
- Value-signal richness
- Multiple contribution types weighted by democratic agreement
- Accumulation regime
- Accumulation in equity-shares rather than spendable currency
Medium-of-Exchange Properties
- Divisibility
- Contribution types aren't a divisible common scalar — each register is valued on its own terms.
- Uniformity (Fungibility)
- Non-fungible — multiple distinct contribution types, weighted by democratic agreement rather than interchangeable.
- Durability
- Contribution records persist on the ledger, but the value they represent is periodically re-weighted by democratic agreement — durable record, revisable valuation.
- Portability
- Bound to the specific network's ledger (Sensorica-style); contributions don't transport to other networks.
- Acceptability
- Narrow — accepted only within the specific value-network it was earned in.
Operation
- Coordination / discovery
- Deliberative with peer review under social charter
- Governance & issuance
- Network-collective; democratic weighting of contributions
- Scale & federation
- Network-scale; cross-network federation through value transfer
Anthropological assumptions
- Default ethical orientation
- Rousseauian; gift-economy plus market integration
- Accumulative drive
- Drive reframed through equity-share rather than spendable currency
- Status / recognition
- Separated through multiple contribution registers
- Time preference
- Variable — allocation depends on the network’s own governance choices about which registers matter, not a fixed orientation.
In Practice
- Track record
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Sensorica (Montréal) has used open value accounting since around 2011 for its own hardware-development projects — a real, sustained, but small-scale deployment. - Governance requirements
- Requires a network with agreed rules for weighting and valuing different contribution types — typically democratic/consensus-based among network participants.
- Resource requirements
- A ledger system to track contributions across multiple registers; no capital reserve required.