Money Multiverse to Human Stigmergy

In the current socioeconomic reality, money and power intertwine in a corrosive cycle that weakens fundamental human values and fuels corruption, with war and arms trade being the most devastating examples.

There is an urgent need to rethink the one-dimensional nature of our monetary system, where financial incentives are deeply disconnected from human values. The gap between money and ethics is growing and gradually erodes the intrinsic values of society. Therefore, finding a multidimensional monetary incentive system encompassing all the richness of human value and allowing differential remuneration for social, environmental, or community contributions is crucial.

The answer to humanizing money and truly enriching our ecosystem through transactions may lie in a concept observed in nature — stigmergy.

Stigmergy is a natural mechanism used by animals like ants and bees, allowing individuals to coordinate and cooperate without direct communication. Instead, they leave trails — like pheromone paths — guiding each other’s behavior. It’s a form of “collaboration without words,” where cooperation is achieved through a natural technology consisting of “evidence” left in the environment.

Thanks to emergent distributed technologies, creating trails or ethical paths artificially became possible in human communities, using digital currencies programmed with specific functionalities, whose transactions are recorded immutably and transparently.

What about applying the stigmergy model to our economy, creating trackable “currencies” to incentivize and reward ethical entrepreneurship and individual merit? Will we finally be able to separate collective action from collectivist utopia?

Imagine a world where civil society itself takes on the role of minting ethical currencies, and people earn “agricoins” for supporting local agriculture, or “carecoins” for taking care of the elderly or sick. This world becomes viable now because distributed ledger technology (DLT) and artificial intelligence (AI) allow the creation of fully traceable and transparent digital currencies to incentivize and reward actions typically ignored by the current financial system.

DLTs distribute the necessary trust for creating an immutable record of transactions, creating a trail of “digital evidence” like the trail left by ants or bees. At the same time, AI, in turn, automates the necessary inferences to interpret and respond to these digital trails, optimizing cooperation and rewarding beneficial human behaviors for the community.

Such a multidimensional financial system will strengthen human community ecosystems, as their exchange currency is cooperation and never corruption. Far beyond the mere distribution of traditional monetary “wealth,” it’s about enabling a radical redefinition of value in financial terms, thanks to reengineering a monetary system that encompasses and values civic participation, sustainability, and social well-being.

We need civil society’s participation in real political reform to realize this vision. This isn’t a revolutionary call to populism but an appeal for ethical and humanist action. A political reform that privileges decentralization and transparency to encourage civic participation and combat corruption.

It’s time to harness technology for the service of society and the common good. Together, we can shape the future of money and create a financial system that benefits everyone, building a more just, transparent, and cohesive society.

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