How it works
Money that remembers where it has been.
Local currencies have been tried for a hundred years, and they die two ways: the payments cost more than they carry, or the rule that keeps money local punishes the wrong people. Barangay fixes both. A payment in town costs nothing and lands in under a second. And instead of a flat tax on leaving or money that shrinks in a drawer, every unit simply remembers how many hands it has passed through, and leaving costs five percent only for money that never went round, nothing after five hands. The town keeps the change.
Why Arc
A town runs on forty-peso payments: bread, a jeepney, a kilo of fish. A town’s own money only works if each of those costs nothing to move and lands at once, and if the money can remember where it has been. On Arc a payment costs a fraction of a cent and is final in under a second, in dollars, so the contract can count the hands and the town can keep the change.
Six things, in the order they happen.
Everything the contract does.
- 1
Dollars in, town money out
One for one. The contract holds the backing, so every unit of town money is a dollar that is really there. It arrives fresh.
- 2
Pay anyone in town for nothing
Bread, fish, wages, the clinic. A payment costs nothing and lands in under a second. Your freshest money goes first.
- 3
Money remembers its hands
Every unit carries a number: how many hands it has passed through in town. It arrives one hand older than it left, up to five.
- 4
Leaving costs only the fresh part
Cashing out to dollars costs five percent for money that never went round, four after one hand, down to nothing after five. Your most travelled money goes first.
- 5
The town keeps the change
What leaving costs goes to the town’s pot, less a fifth to the platform. The council spends it on the town, and every spend carries a memo anyone can read.
- 6
You can see it go around
How many times each unit changed hands last month, how much of what was spent stayed, and which places send money out of town.
What is an example
San Roque on the home page is an example and says so: made-up places and people, example money, but the same arithmetic the contract runs. With Barangay’s contract on the registry and a wallet, Get town money is real dollars in, paying is real, and everything on the board is read from the chain.
Fair questions.
Is this real?
San Roque on the home page is an example and says so: made-up places on the arithmetic the contract runs. With Barangay’s contract on Arc and a wallet, “Get town money” is real dollars in, paying is real, and every hand is counted on chain.
Why would a town want its own money?
Because money that leaves does not come back. A town that spends at the market, the mill and the bakery keeps its own wages going round; a town that spends in the city sends them away. Local money makes the choice visible and the staying cheaper.
Why not just charge for leaving?
Every local currency has, at a flat rate, and the shops that import goods hate it because they pay it on everything. Here the money itself remembers: what has been round the town five times leaves free, and only money that came straight in and went straight out pays the full five percent.
Why not make money shrink if it sits still?
That has been tried too, and it punishes the poorest savers, who keep cash. Nothing here shrinks. The only cost is at the door, and only for money that never worked in town.
Who is the council?
Whoever deployed the town’s contract, usually the barangay or a co-op. It can spend the pot only through a payment with a memo, which everyone can read, and it can rename the town. It cannot touch anyone’s money.
What does the platform take?
A fifth of what leaving costs. Getting town money, paying, and holding it cost nothing beyond Arc’s fee.
Can money get stuck in town?
No. Anyone can cash out any amount at any time; the only question is what it costs, and the most travelled money goes first so it is usually little or nothing.
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