Geek Credit FAQ

• The problem is that for such a protocol to work, somebody must fill the role of banker. Somebody, a reputable somebody, must accept cash, and generate E-coins for people to hold, and pass on for goods, and services rendered. This same somebody, must also be in position to accept E-coins in exchange for cash, for this protocol to be of any use.
  This is absolutely correct for the digital money covered by real money. Community currency is using a different approach. Here is the best explanation for the beginner.
  As a financial system, the Geek Credit is almost the same as LETS described there. The notable difference is that the account balances information is distributed among the participants and central balance store is not required, and the money are not annonymous. The drawback is that it is more difficult to quickly accumulate the credit for the community tasks, unlike in LETS where it is done by manipulating accounts. The statistics also suffers.
  Here is an excellent article on the concepts, pros and cons of complementary currencies.
  The notion of the complementary currency is not a pure theoretical concept, there is a plenty of users. This the best collection of links on monetary systems I know. Here is a link to the discussion on software implementations of the complementary currencies.
• What about privacy? If I pay for anything with Geek Credits, the transaction time and my ID along with seller ID is added to the Geek Credits involved. Later in circulation, anyone can examine my transactions!
  Yes, the information about some of your transactions in Geek Credits is always available to someone. However, it is quite difficult to obtain the whole picture. It is unlikely that some person will possess the information about all your transactions. You are right, this is the weak point of the Geek Credit system, because the transactions history remains in the Geek Credits being in circulation, and the only thing that preserves the privacy is the low probability to find all tickets involved in the same transaction by the interested party. So Geek Credit is not anonymous digital currency. This is because the Geek Credit system was designed to work without central trusted authority, that is essential for true anonymous currency. However, the central authority is a major threat to the privacy and security too! Once central authority is compromised by a Goverment agency or less official mob, privacy is in a huge trouble. With Geek Credit, this is impossible to compromise all users privacy at once, and it is impossible to shut down working Geek Credit system. It is possible though difficult to compromise the privacy of some particular user. This attack will not compromise the security, it will allow to collect some information about user's transactions, and this information is likely to be incomplete.
  Moreover, if you are seeking a solution thats main focus is privacy, you are unlikely to find one yet. Most popular complementary currency LETS that has a numerous decent software implementation, also does not provide a good privacy. Techically, it can do that (and Geek Credit could do that too), but this would compromise the ratings and feedback system that is more vital for the complementary currency.
• How can Geek Credit be used right now, when Geek Credit pocket software is alpha?
  
  1. If there is a group of people planning to use or using a community currency, where everybody have a computer, they can start using Geek Credit right away. Geek Credit pocket software has a feature that allows creating a private community currency.
  2. It can also be used to create a rating system.
  3. It will remain alpha forever if no one will use it.
  4. It is alpha not because it is unstable or lacks any essential features, but because I do not have an evidence that it was deployed and tested yet.
• How to setup and run the Geek Credit community currency system?
  Those who want to participate should understand how Geek Credit works and install GnuPG. The Geek Credit pocket software is not neccesary, it is possible to accept and pay the Geek Credits using a text editor and GnuPG, but the Geek Credit pocket automates this process and is complied with policy without extra efforts by the user. As long as there are few people knows how to pay and accept Geek Credits you may start. Geek Credit does not require that everyone trust each other. New user may always install GnuPG and start issuing and accepting Geek Credits as long as there is anybody who is willing to trade with this user.
• Isn't internet community too big for a single community currency to be useful?
  Yes, it is big, so it is worth using Geek Credit within a limited community. Geek Credit pocket software and policy support private Geek Credit communities that discourage using Geek Credits issued within a community outside. Most LETS networks do not grow more than 1000 users, mostly because they have a central authority bottleneck. Geek Credit does not have this bottleneck, but I think it tends to break to subsystems based on the local PGP webs of trust. By design, the Geek Credits best operate within PGP web of trust (though this is not necessary), so if web of trust does exist within a community is easy to add Geek Credits.
• What if someone will violate the policy. Is it possible to steal or counterfeit Geek Credits?
  Can attacker harm the Geek Credit community or steal goods from community?
  This is easier for attacker to exploit the main drawback of all community currencies, including Geek Credit: it is possible first to earn the reputation within community and to receive goods and services in exchange to the Geek Credit (commitments) and then refuse to accept them. This is the common problem for all complementary currencies networks, but it is very unlikely that malicious person will spend much time promoting the society first to earn enough reputation to steal valuable amounts of goods and services. Technically, this is pointless to steal the Geek Credit pocket files or wiretap the Geek Credits because only designated person is able to use the Geek Credit. Most attacks that can break the GnuPG web of trust model will harm Geek Credit community too. The Geek Credit policy is designed so that if someone will violate the policy, he will either automatically loose Geek Credits, or he will gain the extra Geek Credits for some time, but the honest users will very soon get the evidences of the broken policy digitally signed by the attacker. This evidence Geek Credits would be published in the Internet so that everyone within Geek Credit community can make sure this person really is an attacker and it is not wise to accept his payments.
• How is Geek Credit different from other community currencies: LETS, HOURS, ROCS, WATT?
  WATT and Geek Credit are the only true distributed currencies in this list. All other currencies require a central issuing and control authority. LETS is the most well known community currency available. Geek Credit has a few features common with LETS: it is also interest and demurrage free, it is also based on mutual credit and money is always in sufficient supply, but Geek Credit does not have a bottleneck any working LETS system has. Major difference from ROCS it that Geek Credit has a working software implementation, but ROCS still does not. Geek Credit is essentially the same as WATT. i-WATT implementation will become available soon . However, i-WATT author have choosen different design approach than me. This is not polite to discuss it here until it is publicly available.
• Why Geek Credit format does not use XML?
  Geek Credit format contains 6 types of entities and it is very unlikely to grow much. I consider XML as too much overhead. It is also a good thing that currently Geek Credits are human readable, parsable and understandable text. I think this makes them more "tangible". This is easier for me as a programmer to make them XML, but I still think plain text is better. XML is OK to use for statistics, Geek Credit transformation and parsing, etc.
• Why GPL?
  GPL is an excellent license for the infrastructure projects that should be always free. I consider it is the best for Geek Credit.
• Does Geek Credit support OpenPGP?
  I have OpenPGP support in my plans for Geek Credit software. Geek Credit system does support OpenPGP.
• I have more questions.
  Send an e-mail to geekcredit-users@gna.org or to my mailbox toor aT izardsnest dot org

Changed at Tue Apr 20 09:04:17 MSD 2004