The 5th Global Assembly took place last January 21th with greater participation than previously.
Here is a summary of the issues and what was decided:
1. Fairmarket Update
The work is going fine and we presume we can have the beta version ready at the begining of March. We talked about technical improvements, the payment processor we are implementing, a reputation system to provide trust in the market, and shipping methods that will be available in next versions; for now we’ll focus on downloadable products or digital products so that anyone in the market can deal with the shipping process by themselves.
For this beta version the reputation system will not yet be available but this will be developed as soon as possible. At launch time we won‘t apply any fee in orderto promote uptake, but in the near future we’ll need to have staff so the fees are intendedto provide income to cover these kinds of expenses. The currency usedwill be Faircoin only for now. So, soon our key project Fairmarket will be ready.
2. Crowdfunding Campaign for the Refugee Fund.
We are going to create the campaign in Coopfunding, our crowdfunding platform, we agreed on the proposed text for the campaign and we are developing the communication materials like text for posts, videos, and images about the situation of the refugees, to launch it and help to spread the word.
3. Set the criteria for the Local Nodes and help them create a FairCoin exchange point for their local solidarity economy.
This was already discussed in the previous assembly where there were some proposals. Now we should start taking decisions. Based on the proposal of one of the active members we decided about some points with which to create criteria to apply, manage and analyse of the proposal, you can find info about the proposal here: /groups/local-nodes/forum/topic/project-fund-for-the-local-solidarity-economies/.
So there are 5 points to set up the criteria that we developed in the assembly, and some of them should be more deeply developed, so we decided to continue working on this proposal in the local nodes group to have more people involved because it is a good way of experiment with how it works, and how to improve it.
4. FairCoin 2 development
An international team has been formed which will start to work in February to develop it by March-May with Thomas as the team leader of the project. We also develop ways of interconnection between different currencies and payment processors using the blockchain – some kind of a cross between Paypal and Ripple,combining features of both.
Also there are other groups like the Social Currency Institute that showed their interest in being part of it so this will help us to find liquidity for the necessary budget to develop it. We have now more or less half of the budget covered.
5. Following updates FairCoop pooled fund expenses.
As part of the transparency, we publish regularly the expenses of FairCoop. We spent 64186,8 Faircoin in that period.
We are fighting hard to give liquidity to the market that has improved a lot during January, trying to get stability for the launch of Fairmarket. The consultancy will have a role on that to have options to get a large income of money changed from Euros to Faircoin.
Related to new expenses, for next month we continue the same, but we should perhaps prepare to begin to create a stable income for coordinating work on Fairmarket – we should talk about that in the next assembly.
6. Freedom Coop
We have posted about this latest FairCoop project and the award we won with it so we discussed about the next steps required to make it happen but it willprobably be launched in the middle of March. We’ll keep you updated about it.
7. Invitation to join different networks.
We are starting to collaborate with the Common Good Hub and the Post Growth Alliance and be part of their networks so we decided to create a page on the website to give visibility to those networks and to the links we have with other organizations that will help us to spread the word and collaborate together.
You can find more info about that assembly here: /docs/notes-from-the-5th-faircoop-open-assembly/
and you can join us and be part of the decision making.
Next assembly will be as always the third Thursday of every month – so next February 18th in the assembly group.
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