LedgerLoops
History / a project with a long memory
It started
with an IOU.
A mailing-list idea, a few prototypes, and a persistent question: what can people coordinate through ledgers they control?
2011 / OpenTabs
Keep tabs with each other
An IOU-centered proposal on the Unhosted mailing list led to experiments in e-invoicing, exchange, and post-capitalist possibilities. The historical OpenTabs page preserves that starting point.
2016 / LedgerLoops
Promises, challenges, triggers
The project became LedgerLoops. Work on cycle detection, settlement, signatures, and browser demos gave the idea executable form. The Whispering Merchants story and a LaTeX whitepaper explained how hashlocked promises could coordinate a loop.
The local Git history records the rename in October and a split of the whitepaper and demo code into separate repositories in November. This was a programmer’s workbench: experiments, tests, refactors, and open problems.
2017–2019 / Connections and revisions
Follow the protocol
The history records a move to work on Ripple in 2017 and resumed LedgerLoops development in 2018. The site drew connections to circular Interledger payments, explored browser and Web Monetization experiments, and revised the whitepaper.
The September 2018 paper and browser demo remain in this repository. The whitepaper source returned here that year; a 2019 edit redirected its issue link to this website repository.
2018–2020 / Synchronized ledgers
Make the plumbing work
The organization’s repositories record another strand of work: SNAP, the Synchronized Network Accounting Protocol; Hubbie for messaging; and experiments with browser extensions and Solid. These explored the accounting and transport underneath a network of ledgers.
2021–2023 / Books and communities
Keep the question alive
The project’s history describes weekly Federated Bookkeeping discussions in 2021 and 2022, with a renewed focus on data portability. Ponder Source tried to bring Connect Your Books to market; the earlier site candidly records that this did not work out.
A 2023 gathering in Austria connected the work to Collaborative Finance, or CoFi: another way to think about exchange through networks of credit.
2024–2025 / Back to the algorithms
Find the loop. Test the assumptions.
The 2024 work separated detection, negotiation, and resolution; explored loop-search strategies using a debt graph derived from Sarafu transactions; and introduced the Jerboa prototype in October.
Transport experiments also explored Cabal, Earthstar, and Braid. A site redesign followed in October 2024. The latest commit in the checkout reviewed for this rewrite, dated March 2025, aligned the protocol explanation with the earlier Whispering Merchants text.
The wider project continued after that website update: June 2025 brought Jaribu and new Jerboa work on probes without a semaphore and randomized timers. These are visible experiments, not evidence of a completed production launch.
An unfinished project.
An open invitation.
Michiel de Jong’s writing and experiments run through this history, alongside contributions from others. The useful next chapter could be a test, an implementation, or a better question.
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