Trust, like love, escapes a formal definition. However, in ἀδελφός, trust is measured as the amount of money we are willing to postpone for a person or group.
If Alice sells a used phone to Bob for $300 and Bob promises to pay in a month, Alice is trusting Bob for $300 over 30 days.
Thus, trust is a function of two variables:
In real life, longer delays often require interest to compensate for risk. For example:
Bob promises Alice that if she waits one year, he will pay her $310 — a 3% interest.
In ἀδελφός, trust is defined as the amount of delayed money we are willing to sacrifice in the present.
When I receive a payment from someone, I give trust to them, and that trust is proportional to the credit I extend.
Suppose we sell a used car to our wife’s best friend, Lucy.
The market price is €4,000. Lucy has only €3,500.
We accept €3,500 in cash and €500 as an IOU.
The trust ratio is:
500 / 4000 = 12.5%
This 12.5% represents the trust we place in Lucy. The system records this IOU, and the trust becomes quantifiable.
Trust is the amount of credit I’m willing to accept from another party. ἀδελφός does not aim to replace national currencies entirely — it encourages a gradual shift from scarcity-based money to credit-based exchange.
Each participant defines their own trust threshold when joining the system, limiting their exposure and risk.
We use a logarithmic scale to model trust, because doubling the amount of credit doesn’t necessarily double the trust.
One unit of trust equals one unit of currency exchanged.
To represent currency generically, we use the Greek letter Tao (τ).
Currencies vary widely in value. The human unit is the smallest amount of money that can buy something meaningful in a given country.
Examples:
We use the human unit to compute trust as a dimensionless value.
Trust is measured using the trust-bel (tb), defined as:
trust-bel = 10 * log10(τ / τ_HV)Where:
τ = amount of postponed currencyτ_HV = human value of currencyAlice lends Bob $100.
Human value in the US = $1
trust-bel = 10 log10(100 / 1) = 10 2 = 20 tb
Anna lends Bruno 1,000,000 Lire.
Human value = 1,000 Lire
trust-bel = 10 log10(1,000,000 / 1,000) = 10 3 = 30 tb
Even though the amount increased fivefold (from $100 to €500), the trust-bel only increased by 10 units — reflecting the logarithmic nature of trust.
In ἀδελφός, trust-bel will be used throughout the system. The human value is approximated using the average exchange rate between the local currency and the dollar.
Examples: