Commitment Pooling

Decentralized Monetary Protocol

A monetary protocol grammar in which value is represented as plural commitment types pooled and exchanged through four protocol functions: a Commitment Registry (curation), a Value Index Registry (valuation), a Swap Limiter (rule enforcement), and a Treasury (settlement). Commitments are promises pointing back to issuers rather than transferable IOUs. Prototype: Sarafu Network operated by Grassroots Economics Foundation.

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License Libre (GPL); https://github.com/grassrootseconomics
Dev Status 🟢 Active
Dev Status Detail Released; over 26,000 users and 309,000 P2P exchanges as of July 2025.
Owner Grassroots Economics Foundation; protocol stewarded by Will Ruddick and collaborators.
Country Kenya (Grassroots Economics Foundation); global contributor network.
Start Year 2010
Stack Python (sarafu-network backend); Celo blockchain (current substrate); Vyper smart contracts; ussd-based mobile interface.
Funding NLnet NGI Zero grants; Foundation grants; Red Cross collaboration; humanitarian funding.
Last Investigated Jul 1, 2026

Use Case Domains

Platform Evolution & Sovereignty

Decentralized Monetary Protocol Attributes

Origins Mutual credit revival; African community currency practice; ancestral pooling wisdom; commons economics.
Data Formats Commitment metadata (issuer, redemption terms, expiry); Value Index entries; Swap Limiter rules; Treasury reserve composition.
Terms Free participation for community members; self-hosting available.
Funds Approximately $1-2M cumulative across NLnet and humanitarian partnerships; specific consolidated figure undisclosed.
Based On Bangla-Pesa community currency work (2013-); mutual credit theory; African pooling traditions; subsequent migration through Sarafu Credit phases.
Permissions Per-pool stewardship; participants opt into commitment pools; pool stewards configure limiter and treasury rules.
Smart Contract Yes — current Celo deployment uses smart contracts for swap limiter and treasury functions.
Development Tools Sarafu Network SDK; CIC (Community Inclusion Currency) toolkit; Celo development tools.
Protocol Maturity / Standardization Academic / Research with production deployment; formalized in IJCCR Vol. 27 (2023).
Trust Framework Pool stewardship; community membership verification; redemption commitments backed by issuer reputation and pool reserves.
Target Application Domain Community currencies, humanitarian aid, mutual aid networks, regional resilience finance, commons coordination.
Game-Acceptance Position Modify-Additive — commitment pools coexist with national currency and other monetary systems.
Accumulation Regime Structurally limited — accumulation governed by registry rules, swap limiters, and time-bounded commitments.
Coordination Mechanism Deliberative — Value Index Registry enables numerical or relational valuation per pool.
Issuance Model Pool-stewarded — communities issue commitments under shared rules; per-agent issuance within pool.
Value-Signal Type Commitment types (plural, relationally valued); diverse commitment forms aggregated through Value Index.
Federation Pattern Recursive — designed for federation; pools confederate through registry composition.
Substrate Independence Hybrid — current implementation is blockchain-based (Celo) but protocol grammar is substrate-neutral.