Triangulating Open Money

Open Money is open source, permissionless, and decentralized

How to triangulate Open Money

Open Money isn’t just digital money. It’s a reimagining of what money can be when its more efficient and can operate at the speed and scale of other kinds of digital information.

Here are the three basic criteria for Open Money:

1. Open source: software as money

At its heart, Open Money is software. The most impactful and accessible software in the world is open source, allowing developers to inspect, modify, and enhance the code collaboratively. This transparency is crucial for trust, security, and innovation.

For Open Money, being open source isn’t a feature; it’s a necessity. Closed systems may work temporarily, but they inevitably create power imbalances, vulnerabilities, and inefficiencies. Open Money thrives on openness, where anyone can verify its integrity, adapt it to their needs, or build upon it without seeking permission. It’s money that evolves with its community.

2. Permissionless: freedom by design

If open source is the blueprint, permissionless access is the foundation of Open Money. Imagine a system where you don’t need a bank account, credit score, or institutional approval to participate. That’s the promise of permissionless money.

Permissionless systems eliminate chokepoints — those barriers and middlemen that slow down transactions, increase costs, and exclude billions of people worldwide.

But it’s not just about inclusivity or efficiency. Permissionless design also safeguards user identity, or gives users more identity options, as there’s less of a need for bureaucratic hoops. The result is a more frictionless way to exchange value, accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

3. Decentralized: strength through equality

Open Money isn’t governed by a single entity or central authority. Instead, its decentralized nature ensures egalitarian access and resilience. Decentralization spreads power across a network, making it harder to corrupt, manipulate, or shut down.

This design isn’t merely an ideological choice; it’s a practical one. Decentralization enhances security by reducing single points of failure. It also fosters innovation by empowering participants to contribute without hierarchical bottlenecks. In Open Money, every user is a node in a vibrant, interconnected network that grows stronger as more people join.

The synergy of Open Money

When systems are built in a permissionless, open source, and decentralized environment, it impacts other design decisions. Encryption, for example, becomes really important to secure important information in an open and accessible environment.

Creating systems that are both open and extremely protective of individual users is a massive computer science challenge – and this is exactly where Open Money comes in.

It’s import to not that while the goal is of Open Money is to create systems that are absolute — as in completely open, or completely permissionless, or completely decentralized — the reality is that many cryptocurrency and digital asset systems today operate on a gradient for these three things.

In the sections to follow, we’ll explore real-world examples of Open Money and distinguish them from projects that only appear open. But for now, this triangulation provides a lens to understand why Open Money is more than just a concept—it’s a paradigm shift in how we think about value exchange in the digital age.