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Integration of Holochain, hREA/ValueFlows, ADano and Cardano in Open Value Networks

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Integration of Holochain, hREA/ValueFlows, ADAM and Cardano in Open Value Networks

Introduction

In this paper we explore a short list of p2p technologies carefully chosen to satisfy our needs in a specific material peer production context. We contribute to the p2p movement by bringing our 15 years of experience in open-source, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) hardware development, using an organizational model that we call Open Value Network (OVN).

The integration of Holochain (agent-centric p2p framework) and Cardano (data-centric blockchain), with the complementarity of hREA/Valueflows and ADAM, maps our needs for a groundbreaking hybrid infrastructure to support distributed fabrication and regulatory compliance for the PEP Master project, the context of our work.

Core Technologies Overview

Open Value Networks (OVNs)

Open Value Networks (OVNs) are decentralized, collaborative frameworks that facilitate peer production, where individuals and groups co-create value through shared resources and open processes. OVNs leverage p2p technologies to manage complex workflows, fairly reward contributors, and operate without reliance on traditional hierarchical structures, making them ideal for innovative, community-driven projects like PEP Master.

Holochain

Holochain is an agent-centric p2p framework that empowers participants with self-sovereignty and fosters direct collaboration. Unlike traditional blockchains, Holochain uses a distributed hash table (DHT) to enable scalable, serverless digital environments where each participant maintains their own data and interactions, aligning perfectly with the decentralized ethos of OVNs.

hREA/ValueFlows

hREA/ValueFlows provides a standardized vocabulary and framework for modeling economic and production activities within peer production networks. By capturing contributions, resource flows, and economic events, hREA/ValueFlows ensures transparency and auditability, allowing OVNs to track and reward individual efforts in a fair and verifiable manner.

ADAM

ADAM offers a meta-ontology that bridges diverse decentralized systems, enabling seamless interoperability while preserving the unique strengths of each technology. In the context of OVNs, ADAM facilitates integration between Holochain’s collaborative environments and Cardano’s blockchain, ensuring cohesive workflows across platforms.

Cardano

Cardano is a secure, data-centric blockchain platform that supports tokenization, smart contracts, and certification. It provides a robust layer for managing transactions, ownership models, and incentives, ensuring global accessibility and regulatory compliance for distributed production processes in OVNs.

This synergy enables OVNs to steward complex distributed workflows, reward contributors fairly, and ensure compliance with regulatory standards, a critical requirement for projects like PEP Master.

The PEP Master and Sensorica Context

PEP Master is an open-source DIY therapeutic hardware device and computer game (herein called Instrument) developed by a consortium involving:

  • Sensorica
  • Sainte Justine Hospital
  • Breathing Games
  • Ludociels

The project aims to increase accessibility to medical and therapeutic equipment by leveraging peer production.

Credit: A new economy documentary film

The PEP Master Instrument has reached a mature prototyping iteration, undergoing clinical studies at the Sainte Justine Hospital in Montreal, involving 40 patients. We are now focusing on two key scaling dimensions:

Scaling Wide

  • Stimulating adoption by replicating the Instrument’s use in multiple countries
  • Creating cocooned medical research environments based on our collaboration with Sainte Justine Hospital

Scaling Up

  • Establishing trust in the Instrument’s safety and security
  • Meeting regulatory requirements

Primary Objectives

  1. Achieve ISO standards for the PEP Master Instrument
  2. Validate clinical relevance through medical research
  3. Establish validation and certification methods for Instrument blueprints and fabrication processes
  4. Implement secure medical data storage and transfer mechanisms
  5. Engage with governmental agencies like Health Canada for regulatory approval

Once the conditions of trust are in place, we can address another type of scaling wide, which is dissemination of the Instrument and its associated medical practice to patients across the planet.

The PEP Master Economic Model

The PEP Master project operates within a niche where quality, safety, and regulatory compliance are paramount. Traditional economic models often fail to effectively address rare medical conditions due to lack of financial incentives. To overcome this limitation, the PEP Master project implements a trust-based economic model that incentivizes open innovation and distributed fabrication (in short, peer production). This approach reduces costs for users, increasing accessibility to medical devices, making it particularly valuable for addressing marginalized or niche rare medical conditions.

The Sensorica OVN

OVN is the organizational model used to organize the development and dissemination of the PEP Master Instrument, driven by the aforementioned trust-based economic model. Sensorica is the OVN that hosts the PEP Master project.

History and Evolution

  • 2011: Sensorica was officially launched as a for-benefit open and collaborative network
  • Initial Focus: Open source development of sensors and smart systems
  • Early Project: Development of the Mosquito sensor to demonstrate peer production of physical goods
  • 2011-2015: Focused on product development and building operational infrastructure
  • Post-2015: Shifted toward self-sustaining models that bypass traditional market mechanisms

Key Realizations

  • Peer production can exist outside traditional economic frameworks
  • New models are needed for sustainable development of solutions for rare conditions
  • Blockchain and decentralized technologies enable new economic paradigms

Learn More: OVN Wiki | Economic Model | Peer Production

Core OVN Principles and Compatible Technologies

Openness and Transparency

OVNs prioritize open access to information, processes, and decision-making, ensuring that all participants can audit and verify activities.

Technology Alignment:

  • Holochain’s DHT: Enables transparent, auditable records of all network interactions
  • hREA/ValueFlows: Provides transparent logging of economic events
  • Serverless Architecture: Eliminates gatekeeping and enables permissionless participation

Nondominium and Diverse Property Regimes

OVNs embrace various property regimes while introducing the concept of nondominium, assets that cannot be owned or controlled.

Examples:

  • Bitcoin Network: Operates as a nondominium
  • Mining Equipment: Privately owned
  • Open Source Code: Exists as a commons

Technology Implementation:

  • Cardano: Tokenizes assets (e.g., NFTs for certified designs) across different property regimes
  • Holochain: Ensures the network remains a nondominium

Meritocratic Governance

Decision-making is based on contributions rather than hierarchy.

Implementation:

  • Holochain + hREA/ValueFlows: Tracks individual contributions
  • Cardano Smart Contracts: Enable merit-based reward systems

Value as a Triadic Relation

Value in OVNs is defined by three interconnected elements:

  1. Valuable: The actual reality or resource
  2. Token: Symbolic representation (monetary or non-monetary)
  3. Valuation: Subjective/intersubjective experience

Technology Support:

  • hREA/ValueFlows: Models economic events as relational flows
  • Holochain: Implements various symbolic systems
  • Cardano: Provides flexible tokenization for value representation

Modularity and Interoperability

Holochain’s Architecture

  • Built on Zomes and DNA
  • Customizable application framework
  • Standard building blocks for collaboration

ADAM’s Role

  • Enables many-to-many mappings between interfaces
  • Establishes common language for OVN bridging

Cardano’s Contribution

  • Cross-chain interoperability
  • Secure global transaction network
  • EUTXO model and Inter-Blockchain-Protocol (IBP)

Glocal Accessibility

OVNs combine global reach with local context:

  • Local Context: Holochain’s agent-centric architecture
  • Global Interoperability:
    • ADAM for credential translation
    • Cardano’s smart contracts for cross-network transactions

Sustainability

Holochain’s Approach

  • No global consensus required
  • Local chain validation
  • Linear scaling with users

Cardano’s Ouroboros PoS

  • 99.99% more energy efficient than Bitcoin
  • Annual consumption: ~6 GWh (vs Bitcoin’s 110.53 TWh)

Efficiency Features:

  • Stake-based validator selection
  • Deterministic block creation
  • Optimized network protocols

Peer-to-Peer Collaboration

Core Principles

  • Direct interactions
  • Reduced reliance on intermediaries
  • Distributed influence based on merit

Technology Implementation

Continuous Innovation

OVNs evolve through:

  • Iterative improvement
  • Parallel experimentation
  • Flexible infrastructure

Technology Synergy:

  • Holochain: Flexible, consensus-free architecture
  • ADAM: Bridges different systems
  • Cardano: Provides secure transaction backbone

Self-Sovereignty

Identity Management

  • Midnight (Cardano sidechain):
    • Privacy-focused SSI
    • Zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-SNARKs)
    • Verifiable credentials
  • ADAM:
    • Bridges identity systems
    • Enables cross-platform identity

Implementation in PEP Master

  • Doctors validate designs with privacy
  • Fabricators prove certifications
  • All while maintaining data sovereignty

This comprehensive framework ensures that OVNs can operate efficiently, securely, and sustainably while maintaining their core principles of openness, fairness, and self-determination.

Processes in PEP Master Peer Production

hREA/Valueflows models the PEP Master workflow as interconnected processes:

1. Design Process

  • Agents: Designer Agents
  • Deliverable: Blueprint
    • Design files
    • Fabrication instructions
    • Manuals
    • Lab notes and reports
  • Access: Publicly available digital resources

2. Validation Process

  • Agents: Validator Agents (scientists, medical doctors)
  • Activities:
    • Testing material artifacts
    • Analyzing quality (safety, efficiency)
    • Scientific evaluation
  • Deliverable: Scientific Publication (digital asset)
    • References the Blueprint

3. Certification Process

  • Agents: Government Agencies
  • Purpose: Approve use of Material artifact
  • Basis: Scientific Publication
  • Output: Regulatory approval for production/use

4. Fabrication Process

  • Input: Certified Blueprint
  • Output: Physical Material artifact

5. Valuation Process

  • Purpose: Assign value to Validation/Certification
  • Mechanism: Social protocol
    • Analogous to market pricing in capitalist systems
    • Reflects collective assessment of valueconomy, informing users’ preferences for various Validations and Certifications, which are understood as tokens of trust for their respective Material artefacts. The Transaction process is carried out by Users and is mediated by a smart contract that automates distribution of currency and other types of transferable tokens, generating tangible incentives throughout the open innovation and production system. Thus, the Users who decide to use a Material artifact, which has been made from a particular Blueprint that has been Validated, Certified and Valuated, reward Designers, Verifiers and other important stakeholders in the peer production system. Note that in the previous diagram the Fabricator can be at the same time the User, respecting the prosumer possibility in peer production.

The diagram below presents the cryptographic methods used to establish the chain of trust, using existing DWeb / web3 primitives. Here we make an abstraction of the Enabler, the role of infrastructure provider. The Enabler is in fact absorbed into the DWeb / web3 aspect, as these platforms already provide reward mechanisms for agents involved in their reproduction, in the form of token minting, transaction fees, etc.

Design: Input: Engineering expertise, medical requirements Activities: Design creation, review, iteration Output: Instrument blueprints Verification: Input: Scientific and engineering expertise, medical requirements, blueprints and Instrument Activities: Testing, documentation Output: Peer reviewed scientific papers about verification of Instrument blueprints Certification: Input: Instrument blueprints, scientific papers validating Instrument blueprints, regulatory standards Activities: Minting of immutable Instrument certificate (NFT) Output: Certified designs, compliance records Fabrication: Input: Fabrication skills, certified blueprints, materials Activities: Instrument fabrication, testing Output: Functional PEP Master Instrument, Instrument passport (ex. NMKR and TrivolveTech) Dissemination: Input: Certified Instrument (Instrument certificate and passport) Activities: Transaction, training, support Output: Installed and operational Instrument Valuation: Input: Certified Instruments, usage data and experience Activities: Social reputation protocols (likes, endorsements, on-chain interactions) determine credibility. Output: Credibility, quality, efficiency score/ranking. Transaction Input: certified and valuated Instruments, tokens. Activities: choice of Instrument designs. Output: certified designs and certificates (NFT), and actual Instrument. Triggers fair revenue distribution among contributors.

Scaling up Scaling up is about providing the trust in the open source DIY PEP Master Instrument and its associated practices, turning it into a medical Instrument that can safely and securely be used by patients under medical supervision. The hybrid infrastructure that we propose in this paper provides affordances for verification or validation processes related to the blueprints (the design) of the Instrument and to its fabrication, and for certification. The infrastructure also provides the affordance for multiple stakeholders to coordinate and refine their practices, further increasing the efficiency and reliability of the Instrument. Details are presented in the Design Validation and Fabrication validation working documents. Scaling up is done in collaboration with medical and technical researchers, within health and academic institutions. Sound scientific methods, coupled to trust associated with accredited researchers operating within recognized institutions, anchors the trust in the Instrument’s design and fabrication protocols. Peer reviewed scientific papers characterizing the Instrument and its performance provide the validation, while the cryptographic certification (NFT) couples this validation to key economic processes that allow sustainable and scalable reproduction of the Instrument. To standardize the validation processes (science-based characterization of the instrument), affiliates of the Breathing Games OVN have produced a template: Games and hardware validation. Scaling wide One way to understand lateral scaling is to stimulate adoption and diffusion of the PEP Master Instrument and its associated medical practice. We are looking at 3 scaling dimensions: Replication of our collaboration with Sainte Justine Hospital where patients can use the Instrument in a cocooned medical research environment. This will provide new medical and technical feedback and will help adjust the medical practice associated with the Instrument to the local regulatory framework, medical culture and economic conditions. Dissemination of the Instrument and its associated medical practice to patients around the world. Expansion of our peer production approach into other cases of rare diseases.

Reference

Adoption of innovation as a multiphase, decision-making process, which individuals and organizations go through by using several mental steps. This involves knowledge of prior conditions, attitude and affection, decision-making capabilities, implementation, and confirmation [24]. In contrast to adoption, diffusion can be viewed as an enhanced process, by which an innovation is also communicated among the members of another social system. Diffusion considers the broader stakeholder environment, an ecosystem, in which members of a social system communicate via channels over time [24, 25]. Typically, this includes the regulatory and financing system, culture, as well as structures of organizations. Gaining insight into the determinants of innovation diffusion allows decision-makers to foster technology acceptance through the development of effective policy initiatives from a systems perspective [26, 27]. It is assumed that both adoption and diffusion can contain barriers and facilitators, contributing to or hindering the respective decision-making process.

The replication of use in a medical research environment can be facilitated by the infrastructure discussed here by implementing local OVNs, built on top of a locally adequate Holochain-based p2p infrastructure, which can easily network together, i.e. federate and enable the flow of information and resources among them. The scientific validation processes can be facilitated and standardized using the Games and hardware validation template. These local OVNs are expected to grow their local capacity to help fabricate, maintain and provide training for the PEP Master Instrument. The Cardano transactional rail can allow secure transfer of credentials and Certificates of verification or validation from a local context to another.

In the traditional world, solutions reach those in need through a market-based distribution. In this context, there is a clear separation between innovators, producers and users or consumers. The solution is provided as a product. In a p2p context, the mechanism for scaling widely relies on dissemination of validated, certified Designs and on distributed (DIY) Fabrication. The end user (the patient in our case) can be at the same time a producer. The solution is not packaged and transferred as a product. This type of lateral scaling is less reliant on the traditional financial system and bypasses the market, which are key factors that make possible addressing rare medical diseases, for which there is no market and no profit incentives for traditional approaches.

The hybrid infrastructure that we are proposing here allows the dissemination of the PEP Master Instrument by firstly incentivizing further innovation using the trust-based economy model. In other words, tangible rewards must flow from users to innovators. The Valuation of these rewards and their distribution can be based on past economic events for peer production (the aggregated effort of innovators), enabled by tools built on hREA/Valueflows and Holochain. Moreover, actual transfer of these tangible rewards requires a secure and global transaction system, which can be built using Cardano. The trust-based economy model rests on generation and transaction of trust. In the PEP Master case, this is trust in the safety and efficiency provided by a fabricated Instrument. Holochain and hREA/Valueflows can be used to build tools to support the process of generating trust, and Cardano can be used to create a certificate that represents the trust associated with a particular Instrument and to facilitate the transfer of this certificate.

Thirdly, scaling wide can also be understood as applying the same approach to other rare diseases. This is possible due to the high level of replicability of OVN infrastructure, its modularity and adaptability. As mentioned above, Holochain and hREA allow a dynamic composition of digital environments provided with tools for stewarding economic processes, while ADAM facilitates interoperability. Cardano constitutes a standard transaction rail across all different types of OVNs that address specific medical problems in various locations.

Scaling Deep

Scaling deep is about gaining more granularity or refinement for the practice associated with the PEP Master Instrument. The p2p nature of the project pushes exploration to the edge of the network, allowing the practice to closely match the actual context, to respond to granular requirements and needs in different locations. The open source license of the Instrument provides the legal affordance to fork, remix and adapt. The open source nature of the designs, which must be modular and well documented, eases adaptation. The collaboration infrastructure built on top of Holochain and hREA/Valueflows allows easy interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary expansion, recording of economic processes associated with new adaptations, good coordination among innovators world wide, while the Cardano-based transaction layer allows rewards to flow, generating incentives.

Conclusion

The OVN model has been refined since 2011 in real situations, iterating on the organizational design and the economic model one project after another. Sensorica has demonstrated that this new economic paradigm of peer production is capable of interfacing with legacy institutions and delivering valuable solutions in contexts as diverse as agriculture, industrial application, scientific instrumentation and medicine. Although material peer production is still in its infancy, suffering from lack of recognition and legitimacy, it remains very promising, constituting a possible future point of convergence of various developments in the sphere of p2p. We consider that the OVN model is prefigurative of a future p2p economy and in this paper we are trying to understand which existing p2p technologies (that have evolved independently) can cover the needs of the PEP Master project, which operates within the Sensorica OVN. As presented in the Core OVN principles section, our selection of p2p technologies is Holochain, hREA/Valueflows, ADAM and Cardano, together providing a technical foundation that not only supports but also amplifies OVNs’ core principles. Together, these technologies enable PEP Master to deliver open-source, DIY therapeutic instruments that meet stringent medical standards, addressing rare conditions underserved by traditional models.

Key components of our technical stack:

  • Holochain: Agent-centric for collaboration and peer production processes
  • Cardano: Data-centric, secure transaction layer
  • hREA/ValueFlows & ADAM: Modeling p2p economic processes and enabling interoperability between OVNs

By harmonizing Holochain’s agent-centric empowerment with Cardano’s data-centric integrity, this hybrid ecosystem ushers in a new era of decentralized production, where individuals and communities engage in peer production with trust, autonomy, and global impact.

As we navigate the blurred boundaries between Holochain’s flexible, organic networks and Cardano’s rigid, standardized blockchain, PEP Master’s exploration redefines decentralized collaboration, weaving a tapestry of innovation where agent-driven creativity and data-driven trust converge to shape a future of inclusive, impactful peer production.

Call to Action

The PEP Master project offers great potential for access to medical treatment. With great potential come great challenges: integration complexity, satisfying regulatory requirements, adoption barriers, and the immaturity of Holochain, hREA, ADAM, and Midnight.

We invite developers and enthusiasts of these technologies to help us overcome these barriers and contribute to this groundbreaking initiative in decentralized healthcare solutions.

References

[24] Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). Free Press. [25] Greenhalgh, T., Robert, G., Macfarlane, F., Bate, P., & Kyriakidou, O. (2004). Diffusion of innovations in service organizations: Systematic review and recommendations. The Milbank Quarterly, 82(4), 581-629. [26] Dearing, J. W. (2009). Applying diffusion of innovation theory to intervention development. Research on Social Work Practice, 19(5), 503-518. [27] Berwick, D. M. (2003). Disseminating innovations in health care. JAMA, 289(15), 1969-1975.

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