The Tyaga Plan:
An Open Infrastructure for Adaptive Currency Information Systems
Problem
- If I were to establish an independent currency brand, what information system components would I need?
- What are the high-level information needs of a ledger-based currency issuer?
- How to design an open information infrastructure for adaptive currency information systems?
Tyaga Plan
- Consider currency-issuer needs beyond accounting systems and internal advertisement boards
- Scalable design demands detailed attention to transaction device and reporting needs of currency issuers
- The concept of "currency brand" requires a currency-issuing entity to have its own publication platform for promoting its "brand"
- How to effectively separate concerns and promote interoperability among currency information systems
Infrastructure Plan Building Blocks
- A lot of tools available already - jump to demonstration list (last slide)
- It is getting easier to network transaction devices, accounting systems and publishing platforms
- More work needed on creating reporter and brand index service applications
- More consensus needed to develop "publisher"-"reporter" protocols
Building Block I: Transaction Device
- Concern: User authentication, transaction record documentation, record submission, user-friendly interface
- Could be as simple as pen and paper, but personal mobile devices such as cell phones should scale better
- Take advantage of existing device capabilities, such as SMS, to promote widespread adoption
- Design for user convenience
Building Block II: Accounting System
- Concern: Handles transaction authorization against user credentials, available balance, applicable limits/restrictions, etc.
- Transaction processing of account debits/credits; Submission of transaction record for publication
- Accounting System may be paper or mobile-based, but online systems should scale better
- Design for data consistency, integrity and reconcilability
Building Block III: Publishing Platform
- Concern: Acts as a uniform interface between Accounting Systems and Reporter Service Applications; avoids the need for accounting-to-accounting system messaging
- Generalizes the verification of transaction records using recognized conventions for publication syntax/semantics/formats
- Examples include blogs, where transactions may be published in real-time and various product news and advertisements could be categorized easily
- Design for information traceability and readability, for both humans and machines
Building Block IV: Reporter Services
- Concern: Collects and represents information about publishers of transaction data
- Basic services includes itemizing independently verified transaction records
- Extended services includes auditing and evaluating currency issuers; also aggregate product news into searchable market advertisements
- Design for responsiveness, service capabilities and information accuracy
Building Block V: Brand Index
- Concern: Aggregates real-time information about ledger-based currencies for public use
- Serves information regarding potential lenders/borrowers, 'health' of community currency and/or which currency brand to accept
- Aggregated information may be published on the web and/or print
- Design for ease of reference in public assessments of currency brand performance and market trends
Policies and Protocols
- The Tyaga Plan encourages the proliferation of ledger-based currency issuers
- An open infrastructure must accomodate different accounting models and system preferences
- How can the different layers and module implementations interoperate? PaCT example with Prowl
- The Tyaga Plan promotes the use of existing standards (such as HTTP, DNS, SMS)
Software Applications and Hardware Constraints
- Applications should be offered as easy-to-use services, including online Accounting Systems, Publishing Platforms such as blogs and aggregator services to generate reports and indices
- Accomodate widely available, affordable technology: a basic cell phone with SMS capabilities; shared servers/web hosts
- Aggregate market data that are expensive to follow or difficult to view using mobile devices may be published in local periodicals (similar to newspaper stock bulletins)
Summary
- Problem: How to design an open information infrastructure for currency systems
- Plan Layers, Concerns and Design Objectives for: Transaction Device, Accounting System, Publishing Platform, Reporter Services, Brand Index
- Accomodating Policies, Protocols, Software-as-a-Service Paradigm and Hardware Constraints
- Examples and demonstrations are already available
