Fairies - A local currency for Fairfax, CA
"Fairies" are a local cryptocurrency for the town of Fairfax, CA in Marin county. My fiancée and I have been working on the project for a couple of months now and we're committing to making this a multi-year initiative.
Why a local cryptocurrency?
Lots of reasons! One of the greatest reasons for the use of local currency – crypto or otherwise – is to encourage local consumption and to create local wealth. Local dollars have to stay local by their very nature, so using them as a consumer and accepting them as a business owner can go a long way toward retaining and growing local wealth. If you'd like to read more, you can start here.
The nature of cryptocurrencies allows us to do remarkable things that would otherwise be impossible with a local paper currency. For one, we are able to mint our currency at next to no cost. We're also able to tune aspects of the currency, if desired, to include otherwise very costly features such as inflation, demurrage, or whatever the community may consider worthwhile.
Why Fairfax?
Fairfax is ready to make use of a local cryptocurrency. Fairfax is a town of around 7,500 people located a half-hours' drive north of San Francisco. Generally, the townspeople are very proud of their town's unique character and are highly engaged civically and socially. People there are very environmentally conscious and excited about alternative means of economy, social organization, and governance. Fairfax already has had its own local currency, the Fairbuck!
The town is truly a community and can act as one - something necessary for a project like this to succeed. Creating a currency that works for a community is not something that can happen from the top down. Though I am hoping to spend many many hours over a number of years on this project, it is not and never will be "my" idea. Though I will be doing a lot of the technological implementation and community organizing, the ideas, discussions, and details can and will rely on the community of Fairfax.
What are Fairbucks?
The "Fairbuck" was a complimentary currency for use within Fairfax, which was minted in 2011. Its goals were to keep money local and raise funds for local sustainability projects. Over 40 businesses accepted Fairbucks as tender and the program ran until 2016.
There were a number of problems with the original Fairbuck program which limited its efficacy, but in the informal interviews I've so far conducted with local business owners, I've found that most businesses would love to work with another local currency project, including many who did not accept the original Fairbuck.
Why Stellar?
Stellar is perfect for the application of a local currency. The network itself resolves quickly enough that assets issued on Stellar can actually be used for payments in brick and mortar venues, taking only 2-7 seconds to resolve a transaction. Were we to work with something like Ethereum, this would be a no go.
Not to mention, ETH is expensive! XLM is cheap enough to allow the facilitation of a towns' worth of transactions at minimal cost.
The Stellar network is also incredibly flexible. If we want to jump on the existing Stellar network and have everything be done on the public chain, it's no problem. We also retain the ability to set up our own network if that's the direction we decide to go.
What work has been done so far?
My fiancée and I have spent dozens of hours doing supporting research on many topics: particular local currencies and their failings, the legality of local / complimentary currencies in the United States, and issues of taxation and accounting.
As far as the specifics of the Fairies currency itself go, we have been largely focusing on marketplace and social issues. A couple months ago I began conducting informal interviews to gauge local business owners' responses to the idea of a new local currency – they were overwhelmingly in favor of it. Through these efforts I was also able to get in contact with leading members of the Chamber of Commerce who are also very interested in the prospects of the project. Our interviews have given a good amount of guidance to the main "meat" of the project we've worked on thus far, which is the issue of establishing current. We will be conducting more formalized interviews in the coming weeks in order to further our knowledge of distribution of goods, business expenses, the presence and interest of local contractors, and other items which are paramount in ensuring we can help to develop a currency which can maintain flow or current.
I don't live in Fairfax. Why should I care?
We believe this project will provide a great deal of value to the Stellar community and to cryptocurrencies at large. We are talking about creating not just the first locally ubiquitous cryptocurrency, but becoming the first town in the world where it is routine to use a cryptocurrency for everyday transactions. Such a circumstance would surely work to grow the public's belief that cryptocurrencies are not just a gimick or something that is beyond their use or grasp. It would also surely drive interest to, and prove the utility of, the underlying technology and network of Stellar.
Furthermore, our success will not just rely on overcoming issues of design and implementation. It will require that we establish means for educating and organizing an entire community of people about what cryptocurrencies are, how they work, their benefits and limitations, and the steps necessary to deal with them securely. This is knowledge and experience we intend to disseminate to other municipalities and interested groups, so that other communities can also benefit from our work. We plan on open-sourcing not just our software, but our methods of outreach and education.
Why enter this in the SBC?
We wanted to let the community know that this project is occurring and to help raise some amount of funds for the continuing work on it, in the event that the judges of the SBC deem it worthy and worthwhile. As this is also a project which we plan on working on for quite some time, we wanted to establish a footprint here and now so that any future entries in the SBC or applications for a Partnership Grant with Stellar can have additional context for our history.
