Eleutherious: LAN Issue 2, page 12, from the print file

2026-11-03T14:41:47Z

LAN Issue 2, page 12, from the print file

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[[Issue_2|← Issue 2]]
{{Infobox article
| issue = 2
| section = Parallel Economy
| page = 12
| location = Kenya
| date = October 2026
| source = grassrootseconomics.org
}}

''Parallel Economy''

Crypto built rails for a parallel economy and then used them mostly for financial products. However, there are still examples of what a real onchain economy looks like. One such example is the [[Sarafu Network]], a platform for community economies where people actually transact in their own parallel money, backed by goods and services their neighbours need. Grassroots Economics, a non-profit foundation in Kilifi, has run these community projects since 2010. It is designed to be accessed through simple phones and currently settles on the Celo blockchain.

The Sarafu currency used by these economies is issued by a mechanism called [[Commitment pooling|commitment pooling]]. It works like this: a savings group writes down what its members can supply, for example, seeds, water, cooking, or a day’s labour. The group issues vouchers backed by those commitments so that anyone holding a voucher can redeem it for the goods and services behind it. Neighbouring groups can then agree to accept each other’s vouchers, creating direct swaps of value that do not rely on scarce national currencies. In the example Grassroots Economics uses to teach it, one group’s vouchers are backed by seeds and labour, the next group’s by erosion control and water management. If it is mutually beneficial for these groups, they simply exchange their services through the vouchers.

Until now, the state monopoly on money has already tested their setup once. In May 2013, the founder, Will Ruddick, and five others were charged with forgery for launching Bangla-Pesa, a community currency in the informal settlement, or slum, known as Bangladesh in the town of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. In August of that same year, the Director of Public Prosecutions cleared all six, finding that no law had been broken. The currencies kept running, a testament to the effectiveness of parallel organising.

Today, the Sarafu network runs at scale. A peer-reviewed dataset published in Scientific Data covers around 55,000 Sarafu accounts and every transaction on the network between January 2020 and June 2021. In a 2025 phone survey of 855 active users, 71% were women. Five new neighbourhood pools opened in January 2026, and the code behind the app is open on GitHub, which means a [[Logos]] Circle anywhere can fork the commitment pooling protocol and run its own version. As of October 2026, the network is moving to a successor platform, Cosmo-Local Credit.

''[https://grassrootseconomics.org grassrootseconomics.org] · [https://github.com/grassrootseconomics/sarafu.network github.com/grassrootseconomics/sarafu.network]''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pooling Commitments}}
[[Category:Issue 2]][[Category:Parallel Economy]][[Category:Kenya]]

Issue 2/Pooling Commitments - Revision history

Eleutherious: LAN Issue 2, page 12, from the print file