40 καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρεῖ αὐτοῖς, Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐφ' ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε.
The King will answer them, ‘Most certainly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
- Matthew 25:40
Adelphos (from the ancient Greek word for "brother") is a system that enables users across regions or countries to exchange goods and services using a hybrid of real currency (cash or deferred payments) and virtual credit. It builds on natural human trust starting from small groups like families, scaling fractally to larger structures like neighborhoods or communities.
This creates a self-organizing network where trust grows organically but when each user is able to control how much trust give to his direct connections.
The primary goal of adelphos is facilitate exchanges, but the ultimate goal is to scale the trust to a partner or a son to a trust to a large group, potentially thousands or millions without losing sight of the neighbour next-door.
Since ancient times humans have invented ways to amplify their powers; fire, weapons, levers, machines, cars, planes, and now computers and A.I. are all tools to enhance various human capabilities, like the ability to lift weights, to travel, to kill, to store and process information.
But no significant steps have made to amplify theri capacity to love and to care for other people in a objectively way. Religions, spiritual teaching have done a great deal of work in educating people to care for people far from our perceived reality.
Exiting the family borders trust drops drastically, like the bottom of an ocean; sometimes in small groups trust survives, or, ironically, in "mafia" style families united by crime.
In the 'civil' world little has been achieved; wars, oppressions and inequality are still present; we do not fall into the trap of saying that "the past was better", but certainly it was not "worse".
Sometimes we are still as we were in the tribes, closed and wary.
But how would it be if we created a system that helped humans to trust each other? We should design a system that is able to mimic the way in which humans care for each other.
This is the core of adelphos, We can define it a trust amplifier.
As a phone is able to carry our voice to the other part of the globe, adelphos is able to uplevel our natural trust in the closest circle (the family) to bigger and bigger groups.
This is done by the user themselves who organize themselves (hence the word self-organizing) into bigger structures which are similar to the ones at the lower levels (hence the word fractal).
Based on my research two systems are similar to adelphos: the Credit Commons and Ripple.
Credit commons (https://creditcommons.net/) is an evolution of the LETS system which has been present since many years.
The LETS system enables a group of people to exchange goods and services without using money.
The credit Commons expands this view using a tree of accounts which grows fractally. The system is open source with a published API and groups can potentially integrate larger groups using a predefined rate of exchange between the credits.
Ripple is a form of monetary exchange between individuals where users transform the real currency in a digital token which is stored forever in an immutable blockchain and then it is converted again in currency maybe in another part of the world, without intermediates.
It issues also StableCoin, a virtual currency backed by StableCoin.
LETS is based on a total virtual currency while Ripple uses a real currency, or, better, a virtual digital token which is convertible in real money.
Adelphos wants to fill the niche between the two giving users the possibility to choose the amount of trust to give into the system which translates into the amount of credit.
Here we have the first axiom of adelphos: trust and credit are linked (see trust-in-adelphos);
Another difference is that adelphos' first line of trust is not the group, but the family, because this is where trust is found. Like gold, trust is scarce and limited.
Another difference is that adelphos wants to be a closed ecosystem; trust is so fragile that needs to be cultivated from the bottom up.
If Alice sells a used phone and Bob wants to buy it, we need also to build a trust to send this phone from Alice to Bob and to exchange real money, this is used creating credit-lines, adelphos creates also carrier lines between groups that exploits the natural way in which people move around, see carrier-lines
Adelphos can later also move people people-lines, or giving them shelter shelter-points or store goods waiting to be collected collect-points
The difference with Ripple is that in adelphos the credit lines are fractal and hybrid. They contain a part in cash and a part in virtual credit and a part in real.
Of course we need trust to carry cash or items without relying on external systems like banks and carriers, but this, in my opinion, is the wall which has become an obstacle for systems like LETS and Credit Commons to grow.
Adelphos will be successful if a child in Australia will be able to send an action figure to a child in Italy without using an external carrier like FedEx or similar, because the system will exploit carrier lines of people who voluntary act as couriers of goods in the system based on trust.
Families form the core of human trust and economy, regardless of culture. Key traits include:
Examples:
These principles underpin Adelphos' Level Zero (L0) Trust.
In Adelphos, an L0 group isn't limited to biological families—it's any small unit acting as one economically.
Characteristics:
Each group enters with a fixed equity (risk limit), capping total debt to prevent overextension.
L1 groups represent close friends or trusted allies—people you trust deeply but don't share daily finances with.
Key differences from L0:
Example:
Alice and Lucy are close friends. They exchange small gifts without tracking debts. But if Lucy sells school books to Alice for $200, she expects cash or a formal IOU.
In Adelphos, L1 cohorts pool equities from L0 groups, exposing a portion (e.g., 50%) externally while maintaining internal trust.
Adelphos grows fractally: Higher levels (e.g., L2 neighborhoods) mimic lower ones, with admins, pooled equities, and shared responsibilities. This allows organic expansion from families to communities, using routing like DNS for efficient credit paths (O(log n) complexity in balanced trees).
Adelphos is the opposite of a Ponzi scheme. In Ponzi models, the top exploits the bottom without responsibility. Here, higher levels are liable for lower ones' debts, distributing risk upward and encouraging accountability.
Trust defies simple definition but, in Adelphos, it's the credit you're willing to extend—quantified by amount and time.
If Alice sells Bob a $300 phone and accepts a 30-day IOU, she's trusting him for $300 over that period. Longer delays may include interest (e.g., $310 after a year for 3%).
Trust is the delayed payment you're willing to accept. Example:
Selling a €4,000 car to a friend for €3,500 cash + €500 IOU yields a 12.5% trust ratio.
Adelphos records IOUs, making trust quantifiable and relational.
Adelphos shifts from scarcity-based money to credit-based exchange without fully replacing currencies. Users set personal trust thresholds to limit risk.
One unit of trust equals one unit of currency exchanged. We denote currency as τ (Tao).
Currencies vary; the "human unit" (τ_HV) is the smallest meaningful amount (e.g., $1 in the US, 1,000 pre-Euro Lire in Italy).
Trust is measured in trust-bel (tb):
trust-bel = 10 * log10(τ / τ_HV)Where τ is postponed currency, τ_HV is the human unit.
Example 1 (USA):
Alice lends Bob $100 (τ_HV = $1).
tb = 10 * log10(100 / 1) = 20 tb.
Example 2 (pre-Euro Italy):
Anna lends Bruno 1,000,000 Lire (τ_HV = 1,000 Lire).
tb = 10 * log10(1,000,000 / 1,000) = 30 tb.
The logarithmic scale reflects how trust grows non-linearly.
Trust-bel standardizes comparisons across currencies (e.g., using USD exchange rates for Yen). It's used for credit limits and routing.
Money is either real (external cash) or deferred (internal credit).
Deferred types:
Users set RM trust levels, limiting acceptance.
Example:
Alice buys a $300 phone from Bob (20 tb trust).
RM_max = 10^(20 / 10) * $1 = $100.
She pays $200 cash + $100 RM IOU.
RM is spendable within limits.
Further Example:
Bob uses $60 RM for Lucy's lessons (she accepts up to $100). He has $40 left.
Observations:
Similar to RM but indefinite. Users set separate (often lower) trust levels.
Key Differences:
Of course a trust amplifier needs to be trusted: the trust begins from the system. This is why I have decided to license it under the GPL license. In this way the system will remain free and each modification on it must have the same freedom as the initial one.
Copyright (c) Lino Ferrentino 2025. This project is licensed under the GPLv3 License.