A collaboration between Cashless and XCHC (Exchange Christchurch)
A simple app for working together
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Making gratitude
visible.
Communities build connections with gratitude. Gifts of kindness help new members feel visible and core team members reciprocated and valued.
No "optimizing engagement"
Keeping it open source means we're not trying to lock you in. We want you out there doing awesome stuff. Mutuality is our purpose, gratitude our currency, creativity our potential.
Contributors
At a time of global anxiety, it's refreshing to see people hailing from four different continents coming together to create togetherness. Our key contributors (so far) are:
Miles is the co-founder of Cashless, a decentralised autonomous collective building new forms of resilient, open source, mutual credit. He is also AI lead dev at Papa Reo, an Iwi led project focused on indigenous language. Previously, founding CTO at NY financial research company CreditSights.
Courtney got her start as a Drupal Solutions Architect specializing in accessible information design for public libraries. In 2014, she began to transition into roles focused on user experience and content design. An award-winning jazz composer, she loves working on projects that facilitate community and art.
Preston is the steward of XCHC, a Global Shaper, and advisor/collaborator on creative projects across Aotearoa, the US, and the Cook Islands. He's passionate about developing alternative tools and models that enable artists to experiment with culture and have a greater positive influence on society.
Previously an English translator, Kane is now a full-stack developer who builds applications for web, mobile, and servers. He's interested in game design and development as well as crypto and smart contracts. He aspires to create something that will bring people closer together and build stable and reliable communities.
Why this collaboration, now?
Cashless is keen to understand (and solve) the user experience around exchanges of real world acknowledgements and value.
Exchange Christchurch has been testing and exploring new ways for communities to work together for a while and is keen to find new ways to measure and acknowledge value in our communities.
Working together our collective objective is to create a platform that makes participation acknowledgments easy and can become a useful tool for bringing people together to do awesome things across a wide range of communities.
“It feels impossible to measure how much value everyone adds. But it's really how shit gets done. Not only at our space, but behind the scenes is a nationwide group of people supporting each other in all kinds of ways. That's where the real magic of community lies and there's so much more potential that current platforms aren't designing for; for current members and new members.”
Preston Hegel
The 'Anti' Social Network..
We want to build connection on the real social network. Useful tools connecting real people doing real work together.
Seemingly informal online communities are starting to mediate and organise ever larger sums of money. But using most existing social media spaces - with their likes and emojis and 'upvotes' - is like getting in a spaceship with a troupe of drunken monkeys in the driver's seat. It might be fun for a bit, but it's not a great way to get organized - and we all know it's not going to end well for anyone except the monkey.
Time for a new paradigm.
We don't have all the answers yet, but we know real value comes from creating real experiences with others. So let's choose those and follow that energy. Sign up, and add yourself to a network of people who choose being a participant over being a passer-by. Let's build something amazing.. together.
Current Status
So far, we have:
- A vision of what we're building
- A community that wants this
- Some user personas and an analysis of pain points
- Wireframes and the start of some higher fidelity mockups in figma
- Source code for a flutter mobile app.
- An archictecture and the start of some code taking us rapidly towards a more autonomous, decentralized version based on secure scuttlebutt.
We're working on:
- Finishing our initial beta and getting feedback and testing.
- Figuring out the protocol details, future technical roadmap, and white paper.
- Getting the word out and growing the energy. Why not join us?
Get involved
We’re looking for “people like you” to help us with our mission. Join us, and shape the future of how people connect with their creative communities.
Right now we especially want to map and understand the 'problem space' better so we're looking for:
- Artists and creatives willing to work closely with us to talk through your collaborative process and help guide the creation of a platform that is most useful to you
- Designers who can understand and capture those needs in user experience form - as mockups, figma designs and prototypes.
- Developers who can help realise this vision
- Beta testers from XCHC who can help us test the project once it goes live.
If you are any of the above or just interested in this project please let us know and we'll get in touch.
As an open source project, you're also always welcome to take this project in whatever direction interests you. Feel free to clone the project source and make your own changes. Or if you wish, find a 'a good first issue' and get coding.