"Circular Multilateral Barter" Beta 2 Release Announcement

[Michel Bauwens]

Via Evgeni Pandurski:

We are pleased to announce that the second public beta release of our
software for peer-to-peer barter exchange is now available. This beta
release is made available to allow a broad user base to test and
evaluate the novel approach to bartering that we propose. The source
code is available at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cmb/

"Circular Multilateral Barter" (CMB) is free server-side software for
managing peer-to-peer networks for barter exchange. CMB advances
conventional barter by making it multilateral. It does so by engaging
peers' trust to decouple the actual delivery of goods from the
agreement to deliver the goods. Here are some of the advantages that
CMB offers compared to traditional approaches:

* Traditional approaches (fiat money, barter dollars, LETS points)
unfortunately blend social trust into a fragile system of
collectivized credit. CMB makes it possible for individuals to use
their own judgement in choosing whom they are willing to
trust. That is: you supply products to customers who trust you,
and you receive products from partners whom you trust.

* CMB does not suffer the double coincidence of wants problem. The
trader you deliver goods to and the trader you obtain what you
need from do not need to be the same person, so there is much more
flexibility for arranging trades.

* CMB allows virtual money to circulate at infinite velocity so that
no real money is actually needed. That is: trading is not limited
by the global scarcity of money or any other commodity.

* CMB uses money solely as a standard of value for a short period of
time (typically a day). Thus CMB is insusceptible to changes in
the value of money.

You can try the newest version of the software on our demo-site:
http://www.multiswap.net/