🧭 Start Here

IOUNet replaces money with mutual cooperation — and proves mathematically that all debt can be eliminated. Six steps take you from first principles to a living global system. Start anywhere.

The ⊙ — pronounced “you”
One ⊙ = one minute of human time given to another person.
That is the only unit in the IOUNet economy.

When Alice cooks dinner for Bob (60 minutes), she records an IOU: Bob owes Alice 60⊙. Bob tutors Carol. Carol fixes Dan’s bike. Dan babysits for Alice. The IOUs form a network of mutual cooperation. The key insight: the sum of everyone’s net positions is always exactly zero. Debt is not a thing that accumulates — it is a circular pattern that cancels by construction. The Jubilee proves it: with N users, at most N−1 settlement IOUs bring everyone to ⊙0.


Six steps to see it work

Each step builds a different kind of conviction. Four are simulations that let you explore the idea. One is a hands-on tutorial. The last is the real thing.


🔒 What IOUNet does not store

No individual transaction history. Once an IOU is processed, only two numbers change: the net positions of sender and receiver. There is no ledger of past transactions. There is no history to leak, subpoena, or sell. The privacy story is not “we protect your data” — it is “there is no data.”


Go deeper

📖
The Principle
Why money is debt. Why debt is circular. Why net positions are all that matter.
📜
History
4,000 years of jubilees, usury bans, tally sticks, and the burning of Parliament.
📄
Manifesto
The definitive statement — mathematics, four contexts, privacy, governance, moral case.
FAQ
52 questions answered — from the practical to the philosophical.
📢
Jubilee 2026
The campaign to bring back the oldest economic institution in civilisation.
📋
Roadmap
Where IOUNet is going. Technical milestones and the path to a billion users.
🎥
Talks
The Fez plenary lecture and the IOUNet deep-dive — watch Simon present the project.

Ready?

The best way to understand IOUNet is to see it work.

📝 Open the IOU Demo ⭐ Join as Founding Member