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Valueflows

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Valueflows

Valueflows is an open-source vocabulary and protocol designed to describe and track the flow of resources, events, and agents in economic and social ecosystems. It builds on the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) accounting model and provides a standardized way to represent economic activities—such as production, consumption, transfer, or sharing—in a way that’s interoperable across different platforms and applications. It’s not a standalone software but a framework that other systems, like hREA on Holochain or Bonfire, can implement to enable decentralized coordination and transparency.

Core Concepts

Valueflows is rooted in the REA model, which breaks economic activity into three main components:

  • Resources: Things of value that can be tracked, like goods (e.g., apples), services (e.g., repair work), or intangible assets (e.g., knowledge). These are called “economic resources.”
  • Events: Actions that affect resources, such as creating, consuming, transferring, or transforming them. These are “economic events.”
  • Agents: The individuals, organizations, or groups that participate in these events by providing or receiving resources.

Valueflows extends this model by adding a focus on flows—the movement of resources between agents over time—and by supporting a broader definition of value, beyond just money. It aims to capture not only financial transactions but also social, environmental, and other forms of value that are often ignored in traditional accounting.

Key Features

  1. Standardized Vocabulary: Valueflows provides a common language (ontology) to describe economic processes. For example, it defines terms like “transfer,” “produce,” or “commitment” consistently, so different systems can understand and share data seamlessly.

  2. Process-Oriented: It models economic activity as a series of processes (e.g., making a product) that involve inputs (resources used) and outputs (resources created), linked by events and agents.

  3. Planning and Observation: It distinguishes between:

    • Intent: Plans or commitments for future actions (e.g., “I intend to deliver 10 chairs next week”).
    • Event: What actually happens (e.g., “I delivered 8 chairs today”).
    • This supports both planning and real-time tracking.

  4. Flexibility: It can handle traditional monetary economies as well as alternative models like barter, gift economies, or commons-based sharing.

  5. Interoperability: By using a shared protocol, Valueflows enables different software platforms to exchange data, fostering collaboration across networks.

Structure of Valueflows

Valueflows organizes economic activity into three main layers:

  • Knowledge Layer: Defines the types of resources, processes, and roles (e.g., a recipe for making bread or a specification for a service).
  • Plan Layer: Outlines intentions, commitments, or schedules (e.g., agreeing to trade 5 apples for 3 oranges next Tuesday).
  • Observation Layer: Records what actually happens (e.g., the apples and oranges were exchanged).

These layers connect through “flows,” which describe how resources move or transform as a result of events between agents.

Examples

  • Supply Chain: A farmer (agent) grows wheat (resource) in a production event, transfers it to a miller (another agent), who processes it into flour (another event), and so on. Valueflows tracks each step, including quantities, dates, and impacts.

  • Community Sharing: A group shares a lawnmower (resource). Valueflows logs who borrows it (event) and who maintains it, ensuring fair use without money changing hands.

  • Environmental Impact: A company tracks not just profit but also carbon emissions (a resource) generated or offset during production, making “externalities” visible.

Purpose and Vision

Valueflows was created to support next-generation economic systems that are decentralized, collaborative, and holistic. Traditional accounting focuses narrowly on financial profit, often overlooking social or ecological costs. Valueflows aims to:

  • Make all forms of value (e.g., time, care, sustainability) measurable and trackable.
  • Enable peer-to-peer networks to coordinate without central authorities.
  • Support transparency and trust in distributed economies, from local cooperatives to global supply chains.

Technical Implementation

Valueflows is primarily a specification, not an application. It’s expressed as:

  • A data model (often in JSON or RDF formats) for developers to integrate into software.
  • A protocol for systems to communicate economic data.

Projects like hREA (on Holochain) and Bonfire use Valueflows as their backbone, implementing it in real-world applications. It’s designed to be platform-agnostic, so it can work with blockchain, Holochain, or even centralized databases.

Semantic Web Integration

Valueflows is fundamentally built on semantic web technologies, making it a perfect example of Semantic Web principles in action:

RDF Foundation

Valueflows uses Resource Description Framework (RDF) as its core data model, representing economic data as interconnected triples:

# Valueflows economic event in RDF
@prefix vf: <http://www.valueflows.org/ontologies/vf#> .
 
ex:HarvestEvent a vf:EconomicEvent ;
    vf:action vf:produce ;
    vf:resourceInventoriedAs ex:OrganicTomatoes ;
    vf:provider ex:FarmerBob ;
    vf:resourceQuantity [
        vf:hasNumericalValue "50.0" ;
        vf:hasUnit ex:Kilogram
    ] ;
    vf:hasPointInTime "2025-11-28T10:00:00Z" .

JSON-LD Serialization

Valueflows data can be serialized in JSON-LD for web-friendly APIs:

{
  "@context": {
    "@vocab": "http://www.valueflows.org/ontologies/vf#",
    "schema": "http://schema.org/"
  },
  "@type": "EconomicEvent",
  "action": "produce",
  "resourceInventoriedAs": "http://example.org/resources/organic-tomatoes",
  "provider": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Bob Farmer"
  },
  "resourceQuantity": {
    "hasNumericalValue": 50.0,
    "hasUnit": "http://example.org/units/kilogram"
  }
}

SPARQL Query Capabilities

The RDF format enables powerful SPARQL queries for economic analysis:

  • Supply Chain Tracing: Query complete resource flows from producer to consumer
  • Network Analysis: Identify key economic relationships and network centrality
  • Impact Assessment: Calculate environmental and social impacts across supply chains
  • Compliance Checking: Validate adherence to economic agreements and commitments

Data Validation with SHACL

SHACL constraints ensure economic data integrity:

  • Business Rule Validation: Ensure economic transactions follow defined rules
  • Quantity Conservation: Verify resource conservation in transfers and transformations
  • Agent Capability Validation: Confirm agents have required capabilities for economic activities
  • Regulatory Compliance: Check adherence to organic, fair trade, or other certifications

Benefits of Semantic Web Approach

Interoperability: RDF’s universal identifiers enable seamless data exchange between different economic platforms and tools.

Reasoning and Inference: Semantic web technologies allow automatic discovery of implicit economic relationships and patterns.

Extensibility: New economic concepts and relationships can be added without breaking existing systems.

Transparency: The graph nature of RDF makes economic flows and relationships visible and traceable.

Cross-Platform Integration: Different systems using Valueflows can automatically understand and process each other’s economic data.

Integration with Garden Systems

The semantic web foundation enables deep integration with other garden components:

Why It Matters

Valueflows empowers communities, businesses, and developers to build economic systems that reflect their values—whether that’s profit, mutual aid, or planetary health. By providing a flexible, interoperable framework, it’s a stepping stone toward more equitable and sustainable ways of organizing resources and relationships.

In short, Valueflows is a universal language for describing how value moves through a network, making it a key enabler for decentralized and regenerative economies.

Semantic Web Technologies

  • Semantic Web Overview - Foundation for economic data representation
  • RDF - Core data model for Valueflows
  • SPARQL - Economic data analysis and querying
  • SHACL - Economic transaction validation

Backlinks

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