First off, I love what you all are doing with Duniter (and especially like the “Web of Trust” concept). A bit on my background—My name is Rhys Lindmark and I’m currently exploring, understanding, and advising different crypto-UBI variants. I’m also giving a talk about them on Monday! I’d love to check my understanding of Duniter with you all (the experts!). Sorry for my lack of French . Feel free to respond in either French or English!
So here’s how I understand Duniter:
It’s built on a “non-standard” blockchain (name?) that uses a modified proof-of-stake consensus algorithm (with ~6 current miners).
Every [period of time] (currently daily?) a certain amount of Dunies are issued to all members.
You deal with Sybil attacks through a “Web of Trust” and by certifying members (currently ~60).
Currently, Dunies can’t be traded on an exchange, but are accepted by a couple (how many?) shops in France. They have value because they’re scarce and because they can be exchanged at stores for valuable items (food, etc.).
What am I getting wrong? And what am I missing? What are your expansion plans for the coming year?
Thank you all so much and keep up the good work!
Rhys
Hello Rhys and Welcome here ! I’m glad that you enjoy what we are builiding here
I will answer you questions below :
It’s built on a “non-standard” blockchain (name?) that uses a modified proof-of-stake consensus algorithm (with ~6 current miners).
I don’t know what you call “non-standard”, but it’s not a fork from bitcoin blockchain and it is not based on ethereum, like most of altcoins. Our protocol uses the proof of work algorithm + the web of trust. Put simply :
Only members of the community (one become a member if he matches the rules of the web of trust) can compute blocks
When one computes a block, his personalized difficulty increase drastically. It’s exponentially, so that he could not compute many blocks in a row.
The personalized difficulty decrease everytime someone else compute a blocks
This creates kind of a rotation. It’s like if we had a token that was given turn by turn to the members for them to create the next block.
The software is called Duniter, but the first currency issued using it is called Ğ1. Everyday, 10.00 Ğ1 are created. At each equinox (every 6 months, thought), the Universal Dividend is recomputed using the following formula : UD(t+1) = UD(t) + c²*M/N . c is the speed of growth of the monetary mass (around 5%), M is the monetary mass, and N is the number of members.
This formula is chosen because it ensures that a future member of the money will create the same share of monetary units during his life, even if he joins the network in 20, 80, or 200 years.
We can’t trade Ğ1 for other currencies right now yes. Any contribution is welcomed, but the current developers are focused on other topics at the moment.
We have a really basic market place on ğannonce : https://gannonce.duniter.org/#/ . On this marketplace, you can buy stuff, pay for services, or even crowdfund projects.
For the stores, I know of 2 or 3 restaurants which accept ğ1 officially ( http://www.etrillum.fr/home for example, in Toulouse there are also a vietnamese restaurant and la boucherie végétale La Boucherie Végétale | Toulouse ) . I know that some farmers in Laval accepts ğ1 for their foods. We can also take vacations in belgium ( http://www.besoindecalme.be/ ) … These are only the things I found on the internet.
ğ1 values because it becomes traded. Because we can buy and sell things, services with it. They are not scarce at all (one effect of the libre currency units is to ease exchanges a lot)
We are more than 140 members right now ! Our expansions plans is to grow at the same speed as now. We want the currency to be traded for real goods and services first. We think that the current web of trust can grow up to 1M to 10M members. But since it’s really experimental, time will tell
Awesome. Thank you SO MUCH for this overview. It really helped me understand Duniter better. Here’s the talk I gave that featured Duniter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESXwN9pYUH0
Follow up question: would someone at Duniter be interested in being on my podcast? I’m interviewing people at GrantCoin, Resilience, etc. and I’d love to feature Duniter to give you all more press. (You can see more about my work here: patreon.com/rhyslindmark)
Thanks again and let me know about the podcast!
Rhys
Hi Rhys,
just to clarify a few things from your video:
we don’t have “miners” per se in Duniter and we try to refrain from using the “mining” term, rather we prefer to use “compute” a block, and we have “computing nodes” on the network, this is because finding the correct nonce/hash for a block doesn’t produce any money at all,
the daily money issued is not “mined” but rather co-created by all members, regardless of them having a “computing node” on the network or not, having a computing node is purely based on volunteer actions, although there is an external service (currently called remuniter) that everyone can gift to and that redispatches the donated money to the members who compute nodes, but that is totally optional and not part of the core of the system,
exchanging for fiat is possible, as long as you find someone who will accept to do it, and there were some occurrences where some fiat money was exchanged for Ğ1s, even if there currently isn’t a “mainstream” exchange for that,
Ğ1 is not a “universal basic income” system, but rather a “universal dividend” system, the main difference is philosophical: the “universal dividend” doesn’t guarantee a “basic survival income”, whereas “the basic income” tends to try to guarantee some kind of “fair basic lifestyle guarantee”,
finally, Ğ1 is based on the “Relative Theory of Money”, which answers quite a lot of the questions you might get about “inflationary systems” as people wondered in the final questions ; it also defines the 4 core economical liberties that defines a “free currency”, in a similar way than the software open source philosophy defines “free software” based on 4 liberties for software usage.
Hope this helps, feel free to ask any question if things are not clear enough.
“an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement”
That means that only french people made a confusion with the historical and fundamental definition, and that’s why I quitted the fundation assembly of the MFRB in France.
When I proposed to change the bad definition with the good one, that was voted and accepted on Saturday, and then, breaking all assembly laws on the Sunday, Marc de Basquiat took the speech to vote again to add again the Debt - only : “dont le financement est…”.
Yoland Bresson who made the preface of the TRM was there, he is founder of the UBI also, and agreed with my change on Saturday (back to UBI definition), he wasn’t present on Sunday when that dramatic virus was implemented in this association.
Fortunately a Libre Money does’nt mean any definition, nor any agreement of any association to be developped and used by individuals.
. Feel free to respond in either French or English!