First published on 3 January 2014 and last modified on 8 January 2018
......................................................................
NOTE: Before 2017 SENSORICA used the expression ''value accounting system''. The current expression in use is ''contribution accounting system''. See more on the OVN wiki. The origin of this modification is a redefinition of value, inspired by Tibi's essay ''Scale of social structures''.
......................................................................
With the advent of the Internet and the development of new digital technologies, the economy is following a trend of decentralization. The most innovative environments are open source communities and peer production is on the rise. The crowd innovates and produces. But the crowd is organized in loose networks, it is geographically dispersed, and contributions to projects follow a long tail distribution. What are the possible reward mechanisms in this new economy?
Our thesis is that in order to reward all the participants in p2p economic activity, and thus to incentivise contributions and make participation sustainable for everyone, we need to do contribution accounting: record everyone's contribution, evaluate these contributions, and calculate every participant's fair share. This method for redistribution of benefits must be established at the beginning of the economic process, in a transparent way. It constitutes a contract among participants, and it allows them to estimate their rewards in relation with their efforts. We call this the contribution accounting system.
For the rest of this article we will try to explain why a contribution accounting system is needed in a more decentralized economy, and unavoidable in a p2p economy.
