Valnet Software

i think software for Open Value Networks would best be implemented as a set of apps in the App Ecosystem. in addition, i think a great foundation for the OVN apps and other apps that involve economic resources would be a set of apps that implement the Web Payments standards, starting with the Commerce vocab, PaySwarm vocab, and related specs.

@joshuavial we would not argue that a single valnet app is the way to go.

We did it that way for convenience, because we were two people, it was a new and untried area, we and Sensorica and the software were learning as we were going, and we did not know what the separate pieces should be.

We know what some of the separate pieces should be now, some of which you have listed in your document. But there's still a large territory that we don't know how to carve up yet, and don't know if it is a good idea to carve it up.

A value network is a network. So it is in essence separable into nodes. But how much machinery (in terms of both software and hardware) does each node want to have?

And what is the protocol by which the nodes become a network and not just a set of individuals?

And if each node (that is, each person, and each organization) has its own server, then you got a lot of server administration going on.

I think at some stage every device will be both a client and a server, but we are not there yet. And coordinating distributed objects over an unreliable network is a very tricky problem that will not go away. Blockchains are an interesting solution to some, but not all, of those problems.

Moreover, economic relationships are not just about payments. We'd like to live in a world that is not ruled by money.

So anyway, we figured we would start by learning how this stuff needs to work by working with real value networks, which we are still learning, and then rethink the architecture. At some point we will outgrow the platform we are using, but think that will take a couple of years. And in the meantime, we plan to develop an API that people could plug point apps into. As soon as we got live people who want to develop those point apps.

More groups are starting to use the software: two more starting now. Probably because it is the only thing out there so far. So we'll all be learning more soon. And we expect that other people will start addressing this territory in different ways, which will also be instructive. We're not trying to own territory or develop a product and a business, we're trying to get some changes to happen in the real world. So if somebody else does this better, we'll go help them. In the meantime, we'll keep working.

That was a long post, but that is a longer conversation, which we are always happy to engage in.

P.S. we love to get into the gory details of all this stuff. Don't know if this is the place, but if anybody wants to do it, we're game.

@josefdaviescoates - valdev is pretty much open for experiments now, depending on what you want to do. Lynn will be in there setting up some stuff for the Guerrilla Media Collective, but you should be able to stay out of each others' way if you set up a different network for yourself.

Anyway, send me an email if you still want to play. My first and last names separated by a period at gmail.

hey thanks @bobhaugen - in the end I watched this recent video which showed quite well the current state of play and answered most of my questions :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOlzNsv8ly0

@josefdaviescoates - Glad you got your questions answered. That video was a generation behind the actual current state of play, but Tibi does an engaging demo, and Steve is always a good interlocutor for him.