What Is it
What is it?
'’Say Alice, Bob, and Charlie have access to different resources a, b, and c. Say Alice wants b, Bob wants c and Charlie wants a, but they do not know each other, nor do they trust each other. Here a, b and c can be anything, e.g a the ability to give maths lessons, b some barrel of beer, and c coins from a certain currency. Finally, say Alice, Bob and Charlie have an iPhone, Android, or whatever smart phone in their pockets. Using Secure eXchange Protocols on their smart phones, they should be able to quickly declare their resources and needs on virtual ad hoc markets, which in turn should detect and propose the obvious deal between them. If the three of them accept the deal, then an electronic contract will be secured, which is a formal proof of their agreement to perform the swap.’’
Let us now explain what is meant by an open, ubiquitous, peer-to-peer, secure protocol suite for multi-party exchanges of contracts.
Protocols
A protocol is an agreed common language, and an agreed series of steps, designed in order to achieve some task, over the network. More on protocols.
Contracts
An electronic contract is a legally binding document, electronically signed by the different parties, where the parties engage in doing or giving something in due time. Hence, being able to exchange contracts means being able to exchange anything from goods to services. A protocol will serve to settle a barter, a payment, or any combination of both. More on contracts.
Multi-party exchanges
A clear disadvanatage of bartering versus paying is that in a barter, both parties must be interested in each others items, whereas in a payment, the vendor can take the money and spend it, later, on some other item. Here we will avoid this downside by: allowing all sorts of moneys; allowing exchanges between many parties at the same time; facilitating further exchanges of newly acquired items. This way contracts do not have to be between or depend upon just two participants, they can involve several transactions that are interdependent, such as a chain. More on chains.
Markets
In the real world shops or markets have several beneficial roles: they facilitate offer/demand encounter, they secure the producer/consumer exchange, they guarantee the quality of the items, they generate VAT for the good functioning of states. The protocols will allow for virtual counterparts of these markets, accomplishing just the same purposes. More on markets.
Deals
Part of the diffucilty is to compute possible multi-party exchange chains, also referred to as deals. The protocol will promote openness for facilitating the computation of the best possible deals within a market. Moreover since they will run the same protocols, markets will be interoperable. Hence cross-market exchanges will often happen. More on deals.
Peer-to-peer
SXP protocols should run in the most decentralized manner as possible, allowing for ad hoc exchanges, market creation, deal exploration under dynamical, reconfigurable scenarios. For instance, an electronic signature is what identifies a market, not its IP address, which may change. This is for the sake of resiliency and monopoly avoidance.
Ubiquitous
SXP protocols should be able to run on smart phones.
Open
The SXP Wiki is under Creative Commons license. The developed SXP software will be under GPLv3 licence.
Secure
SXP protocols should make sure that contracts are only signed if all parties are willing to sign, that signatures are synchronous in a way, that they cannot be forged, that contracts themselves cannot be forged…
What is it not?
The scope of the SXP project is restricted to designing and implementing Secure eXchange Protocols. The following are potential uses of such protocols, in increasing orders of magnitude, and decreasing likelihood:
- Secure multi-party contracts. Thus, in case one breaks the contract, another can prove that the contract has been established. Still, for this to be of some effect, one needs a guarantee policy, an insurance policy, a trust system, or even a judiciary system that are willing to back up the contract… These may be provided by the virtual markets or via a wider legal context. But SXP does not promote any such policies or systems in particular.
- Create virtual markets. Those may look like the merchant sites, second-hand sites, barter sites, gift economy sites that we already know of… or novel, unexpected, ad hoc virtual markets. But SXP does not promote any such sites or markets in particular.
- Witness the rise of novel currencies. Having a fast and secure way to exchange items may ease the appearance of novel forms of moneys such as those proposed in related projects. But SXP does not promote any such scheme in particular.
- Help suggest improved economic systems. Solidarity and ecology are natural aims, and there should be some ways of raising taxes on the virtual markets. But SXP does not promote any such vision or method in particular.
The reason for this apparent neutrality of the project is its technicality and its generality. In the same way that your browser’s http protocol is not bound to any website in particular, SXP protocols should not be bound to any potential use. Since part of the aesthetics of the project is to fully generalize payment methods; we are fully aware that trying to enforce a particular use will immediately lead to a fork.