- System type
- A cross-cutting classification of how established a mechanism is and what kind of monetary order it belongs to — distinct from the fifteen scored fields above.
- Legacy incumbent. Issued or underwritten by a sovereign state or the regulated banking system; the mainstream default that policy and everyday commerce assume. Includes historical metallic money.
- Crypto-native incumbent. Native to blockchain / cryptographic rails, not state- or bank-issued, and has nonetheless reached large-scale real-world adoption and market significance.
- Established Alternative. A deliberate structural departure from both incumbent orders, with a sustained operating record (roughly a decade or more) at real if modest scale, under a mature legal or organisational framework.
- Emerging Alternative. A deliberate structural departure that is live in the real world but still limited in scale, reach, or length of track record — pilots and early deployments rather than settled institutions.
- Prototype / conceptual. Exists as a whitepaper, specification, simulation, or early prototype, with no meaningful real-world deployment yet.
- Game position (Accept / Modify / Replace)
- The mechanism's stance toward the dominant monetary game. Accept: works within existing market rules. Modify: adjusts specific mechanics while preserving the broader structure. Replace: proposes to supersede the existing monetary game entirely.
- Smithian
- Ethical frame assuming humans are rational self-interest maximizers; markets are the optimal coordination mechanism. Named after Adam Smith. The dominant frame in mainstream economics — and this taxonomy's default where a mechanism doesn't engage assumptions about human nature at all. Distinct from game position: that axis reads off the mechanism's own design (accept / modify / replace the money game), while this one is the background assumption about human nature the mechanism presupposes — a mechanism can accept the status-quo game (Smithian by default) while still doing something in its own design a purely Smithian frame wouldn't.
- Hobbesian
- Ethical frame assuming humans are naturally rivalrous, with no guarantee of reciprocity absent enforcement. Named after Thomas Hobbes. Two readings appear in this taxonomy: the state-of-nature premise itself — no third party enforces agreements, so exchange defaults to hard settlement backed by in-group trust or purchased protection — and the remedy Hobbes himself proposed, the sovereign Leviathan, which underlies programmable sovereign digital currencies where behavioral discipline is built directly into the monetary layer.
- Rousseauian
- Ethical frame assuming humans are naturally cooperative and generous; institutions corrupt this nature. Named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Underlies mutual credit and contribution-accounting designs.
- Hobbesian-Smithian
- A blend point on the ethical-frame line: ordinary market self-interest (Smithian) checked by a real institutional or coercive constraint (Hobbesian) — neither full sovereign discipline nor pure voluntary exchange. Replaces the old "Pluralist" catch-all for entries that leaned this way (e.g. fiat currency, bank credit).
- Smithian-Rousseauian
- A blend point on the ethical-frame line: ordinary market self-interest (Smithian) alongside a genuine capacity for civic virtue or communal stewardship (Rousseauian) — the "assumes capacity for X, alongside ordinary self-interest" pattern most former "Pluralist" entries actually described.
- Accumulation regime
- Whether the mechanism structurally enables, penalizes, or prohibits the accumulation of monetary wealth over time. One of the most consequential design dimensions.
- Divisibility
- Whether the unit can be split into arbitrarily small amounts (fine, like conventional currency), has a fixed, deliberately coarse denomination (granular — e.g. Timebanking's hour), depends on implementation (variable), or the concept doesn't cleanly apply to how the mechanism operates (undefined).
- Uniformity (Fungibility)
- Whether every unit of the same type is interchangeable (fungible, like conventional currency) or carries unique or relational identity (non-fungible) — a defining design choice for mechanisms like Antirival Accounting and Open Value Accounting.
- Demurrage
- A holding fee on currency — the longer you hold it, the more it costs. Acts like a negative interest rate on balances, incentivizing circulation over hoarding. Best-known example: Silvio Gesell's "Freigeld"; modern prototype: Chiemgauer (Bavaria).
- Mutual credit
- A monetary system where money is created when a member takes credit and extinguished when they pay it back. The sum of all balances in the network is always zero — net accumulation is structurally impossible. Prototype: Sardex (Sardinia).
- Antirival good
- A good that gains value when shared or used by more people — the opposite of a rival good (which loses value with use). Knowledge is a canonical antirival good. Antirival accounting designs monetary units to behave this way.
- Quadratic funding
- A public goods funding mechanism where the matching amount is proportional to the square of the sum of square roots of contributions. In practice: many small donations from many people receive more matching than few large donations from few people. Prototype: Gitcoin Grants.
- Retroactive public goods funding
- Rewarding demonstrated public value after the fact, rather than predicting future value. Allocates funding to projects that have already shown impact. Prototype: Optimism RetroPGF.
- Threshold-Based Flow Funding
- A decentralized allocation mechanism establishing minimum sustainable funding levels and maximum capacity thresholds for participants, with surplus funds redistributed through recursive network flows according to participants' collective allocation preferences. Contrasts with quadratic funding by adding both a floor and a ceiling. Simulation-only as of this writing — no deployed prototype.
- Fluid equity
- In Open Value Accounting (Sensorica / OVN), continuously updated ownership stakes in a venture. Each new contribution dilutes existing stakes proportionally — equity is never fixed but flows with ongoing contribution.
- Bonding curve
- A mathematical function that determines token price as a function of supply. Buying mints new tokens (raising price); selling burns tokens (lowering price). Creates a warm, community-anchored currency without requiring a counterparty.
- Commitment pool
- A monetary mechanism where obligations to deliver goods, services, or resources serve as the primary unit — not tokens or balances. Pools federate through registries. Prototype: Trustlines.
- Structural diversity
- The thesis (from Lietaer, Ulanowicz, Goerner) that monetary monocultures are fragile in the same way ecological monocultures are. Resilience requires a portfolio of complementary monetary mechanisms, not a single optimized design.
- Bioregional currency
- A currency backed by or indexed to the ecological health metrics of a specific geographic bioregion. Capital flows to projects that improve measurable ecological indicators in that region. Prototype: BioFi.