Towards an Off-Chain for Local Exchange Systems in Community Networks

The proper functioning of traditional local exchange systems (LETS) within a community relies on the trust that each member shares with another member or administrator of the LETS. However, once this trust is lost, it is not possible to establish an immutable traceability of the different exchanges, which causes the system to collapse. It will therefore be a question for us to establish new bases of operation with the objective of guaranteeing a certain security. This approach will be based on the structure of community networks and will allow us to integrate the local exchange service (LETS principle) involving a complementary local digital currency whose management and use will be more autonomous and secure. The security and the decentralized aspect of LETS will be ensured thanks to the implementation of a blockchain network operating in off-chain mode in order to limit the computational load within the network. We validated the choice of an off-chain by evaluating the problems of the current systems and by analyzing the needs which emerge from it. Thus, as part of this work, we set up an off-chain that uses the Ethereum blockchain development framework, the ERC-20 standard for building tokens on the Ethereum blockchain and providing liquidity. In addition, the Hardhat environment developer was used for the smart contract deployments that our network will rely on to operate. Finally, a mobile application has been developed to make the link between users and the deployed network. It is through this application that users will be able to join and create their user account, initiate transactions and check their balance in complementary local currency.