Announcing Villages.cc : a social barter network with Ripple as the accounting system

[Michel Bauwens]

Ryan Fugger a href="mailto:[e-mail]" target="_blank">[e-mail]>


Hi everyone.  I recently launched Villages.cc as a Ripple system that has a marketplace and discoverable user profiles:

http://villages.cc

It's basically a social barter network with Ripple as the accounting system.  To simplify things, since Ripple is already complicated enough the first time most people encounter it, the only units are hours, and credit limits are set by users giving each other "hearts" as endorsements, which is useful by itself as a reputation metric separate from any Ripple accounting.

I'm hoping that this will be more useful and usable than Ripplepay for most people.  If it proves useful, I intend to merge Villages and Ripplepay accounts onto a common backend server, so Villages accounts would be accessible through Ripplepay as well.  Right now, though I
want to see if Villages can grow given enough attention.

Please check it out and sign up if you'd like to create a profile.

You must be endorsed by an existing user to join, but I will endorse anyone I recognize from this list who fills out the sign-up form.

Most likely there won't be any users in your area yet, so I'm counting on you to invite some!  The goal is to enable face-to-face transactions, not just interaction over the internet.

Let me know what you think.  Thanks.

Ryan