Traduction Interview de Cédric Moreau parue sur Le Journal Du Hack
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More interesting to you is that I started developing [Duniter](https://github.com/duniter/duniter) in the summer of 2013. It’s the world’s first software for producing "libre" decentralized cryptocurrencies and is open-source, it goes without saying. I am the inventor and main developer to this day. It has been my life’s common thread for the last 4 years and will probably remain so for the rest it.
Words have special weight here and I have to make them extra clear. The word "libre" for instance doesn’t mean “this that or the other” and so saying that the user has free access to the resources doesn’t mean that he could take them all and leave none to the others. Liberty here should be understood as "without detriment to my peers". Everyone has freedom of access to the resources but the same quantity and quality is available to others at any time.
A money can only be called "libre" if it **respects** these 4 guiding principles, in the sense that its monetary code doesn’t infringe them. The euro for example is not a "libre" currency because it has legal tender and is therefore imposed to citizens by a positive order. Bitcoin and gold are not "libre" either because production is in the hands of miners only, rules 3,4 and 5 are not observed.
Our "libre" money should be understood as applying the principles of the [Relative Theory of Money](en.trm.creationmonetaire.info/), the work of fellow French engineer Stéphane Laborde and available under GPLv3 license. I suggest that everybody reads it, especially those who think a "libre" money is one that could be created by anyone. The RTM is our starting point.
**Cédric :** That’s right, A "libre" money because "libre" money doesn’t necessarily have to be digital nor need Duniter to work. A paper version could be created for example although it would be very costly to implement, both time-consuming and energy inefficient. In addition, IT tools would be needed at some point to make sure no one is stamping excess money or distributing too many Universal Dividends and/or of incorrect amounts.
Starting out with a digital implementation is much smarter especially if you want the community to grow fast. It makes it so much easier to verify that no-one has a double identity which would grant him or her twice the amount of Universal Dividends. This verification is done through a Web of Trust (WoT).
So let me go back to your question of where we stand right now. I’m very proud to say that after 3 ½ years of development, we launched the very first "libre" money powered by Duniter on the 8th of March 2017 at 4:32PM. Codename: Ğ1. It was officially announced on the [duniter.org](https://duniter.org/en/) website.
As of today (April 13th, 2017), the Ğ1 has been adopted by 73 users and has a supply of 18 220 units. Being a "libre" money this value increases daily because all member co-produce their fraction of it. Today at around 1PM I myself will produce 10 Ğ1 credited to my personal wallet. Just like everyone else who’s a member of the WoT.
**Cédric :** We’re only at the beginning obviously but the currency doesn’t seem to be used much as a medium of exchange yet. The community needs to grow so that more products and services become available but some are starting to accept it as payment. There’s a restaurant in Nantes called the [Etrillum](https://forum.duniter.org/t/etrillum-restaurant-en-monnaie-libre-g1/2145) where you can pay in Ğ1, the café at the last Rencontre de la Monnaie Libre 9 (Libre Money Meetup) or a carpool ride to the event were payable in Ğ1 as well.
Most of the transactions we are seeing on the blockchain are donations, mostly to those running a Duniter node, to the developers working both on Duniter and its clients (Sakia, Cesium, Silkaj) and in a broader sense to all those involved with the Ğ1 in one way or another. I’m not constantly keeping an eye on transactions so there must be many I’m unaware of!
A marketplace will soon be launched (now available) offering goods and services payable in Ğ1. It’s called ğchange and was created by kimamila, the person also behind Cesium. Ğchange (pronounced the same way as “I exchange” in French) will be available as a website (it is, see here) and will be built with either Mastodon or Diaspora-like pods. I think it is the one thing we need to make the next big step forward. Ğchange runs on ElasticSearch nodes and the front-end is based on Ionic2. Any help is more than welcome!
**Cédric :** If Duniter is the heart of the network [Sakia](https://github.com/duniter/sakia), [Cesium](https://github.com/duniter/cesium) and [Silkaj](https://github.com/duniter/silkaj) are satellite utilities that connect to it. We use the word client for them. Why do we need clients? Because not every single user needs to have Duniter running on his/her computer, which would require it to be online 24/7, have a full copy of the blockchain and verify its current state to generate new blocks. Clients are tools that communicate with Duniter (the heart) to make operations such as send and receive transactions, join Ğ1 as a member or certify your peers.
Silkaj is the latest kid on the block. It’s an online command line interface whose main function until now was to explore the network and see a few technical details. Its capabilities were recently extended to manage transactions. You can now exchange money over the command line, which can be very useful for setting up recurring payments or other automated tasks.
**Cédric :** In my wildest dreams there’s a million of us in the WoT. Quite a small number when you think of it, 1 in 67 French. To think that a million users are creating their own money every day and are deciding what has value instead of the banker is truly exciting. What if 10% of them are developing open-source software? What an amazing springboard to innovation that would be! Think of so many other value drivers currently stifled by innovation limited to the bounds of banks’ walled gardens.
I can’t foresee what use humans would make of a "libre" money because I don’t know what they want to do with it in the end. We each have our opinion on the question and that’s the very essence of a "libre" money; to make us realize that we’re not in any position to say what "production" is or isn’t because that’s making a relative statement, not an objective one. I view open-source as offering so much more than proprietary solutions. Not everyone agrees on that of course. So what happens when you cut the leash and let humans indulge some of their time in creating the values that they themselves consider to be "production", where would that take us?
Playing Ğeconomicus offers a glimpse into that. It lets players simulate a "libre" money ecosystem over a timeframe of 80 years, the average lifespan in Europe. I won’t spill out the beans here, I’d rather let those interested search for the results online or even play it themselves. All I’ll tell you is that playing is really eye-opening and I love the new horizon it offers us.
With only 73 members (now XXX) we still have a long way to go. But then again there were only 59 of us a month ago, so that’s a 23% growth. If it went on like this for three years we could reach the same number of wallets that bitcoin took 5 years to reach. I’m an optimist and like to think that we’ll get there. To the Moon!