A Case for a Currencyless Economy Based on Bartering with Smart Contracts
This addresses the problem of economic inefficiency and waste for enterprises, individuals, and governments by suggesting a barter-based alternative, but it is incremental as it builds on existing technologies.
The paper proposes reintroducing bartering using smart contracts and blockchain technology to create a currencyless economy segment, aiming to enable peer-to-peer trading of tangible and digital items and services, though it notes that additional research is needed for integration.
We suggest the re-introduction of bartering to create a cryptocurrencyless, currencyless, and moneyless economy segment. We contend that a barter economy would benefit enterprises, individuals, governments and societies. For instance, the availability of an online peer-to-peer barter marketplace would convert ordinary individuals into potential traders of both tangible and digital items and services. For example, they will be able to barter files and data that they collect. Equally motivating, they will be able to barter and re-introduce to the economy items that they no longer need such as, books, garden tools, and bikes which are normally kept and wasted in garages and sheds. We argue that most of the pieces of technology needed for building a barter system are now available, including blockchains, smart contracts, cryptography, secure multiparty computations and fair exchange protocols. However, additional research is needed to refine and integrate the pieces together. We discuss potential research directions.