Earned by contributing
You get credit for hosting, lending, relaying, cooking, fixing or cleaning: the work that keeps the shared thing going.
Nouns Money · Commons collection
Commons.
Forty currencies for the things a town shares: rooms and rides, radios and routers, pies and tool sheds, jars and fixes. Every note carries a different actual Noun.
40currencies
40actual Nouns
4systems
80print faces
Design concepts for community-credit systems. Not legal tender, not for sale, no cash value, no redemption and no investment rights. Nouns art is CC0; no Nouns DAO endorsement is implied.
Rental.
Rent it. Return it.
Credits for borrowing the expensive, occasional things a town only needs a few of: rooms, rides, gear, machines, time in a room.
R01 · Noun #95 · house
Porch Note
1 Porch Night
A night on a neighbor's spare bed, guest-room-swap style.
R02 · Noun #71 · road
Carpool Note
2 Seats
Carpool seats among neighbors to the airport, the game or the coast.
R03 · Noun #32 · skilift
Lift Note
3 Gear Days
Skis, boards and wetsuits from a shared gear shed, by the day.
R04 · Noun #37 · washingmachine
Spin Cycle
5 Loads
A load in the building's shared laundry room.
R05 · Noun #14 · camcorder
Camera Desk
1 Shoot Day
Cameras, mics and lights from a shared AV shelf.
R06 · Noun #45 · island
Island Week
1 Week
A week's home swap with another family.
R07 · Noun #51 · film 35mm
Screening Room
2 Reels
The community-room projector, booked for a movie night.
R08 · Noun #30 · laptop
Desk Day
5 Desk Days
A day at a volunteer-run neighborhood worktable.
R09 · Noun #89 · console handheld
Game Library
1 Weekend
A console or board game borrowed for the weekend.
R10 · Noun #87 · mixer
Commissary
10 Kitchen Hours
An hour in a member-run community kitchen.
Mesh.
Pass it along.
Credits for the people and machines that relay, route and keep a neighborhood connected: radios, wifi, power, ledgers.
M01 · Noun #82 · lightning bolt
Microgrid
10 Sparks
A tally of who hosted the block's charging table in an outage.
M02 · Noun #81 · bubble speech
Signal
10 Hops
Relay a message across a neighborhood radio mesh.
M03 · Noun #65 · maze
Router
5 Routes
Credit for the node that finds the way through.
M04 · Noun #27 · jellyfish
Tentacle Net
20 Strands
Share a strand of your connection with the block.
M05 · Noun #64 · moon
Moonbounce
1 Echo
A radio-club relay credit. Bounce it off the moon.
M06 · Noun #80 · earth
Planet Node
1 Node
Credit for adding your rooftop to the shared map.
M07 · Noun #18 · calculator
Ledger Node
50 Entries
Credit for checking the shared books.
M08 · Noun #26 · chart bars
Bars
5 Bars
Credit for carrying signal into a dead zone.
M09 · Noun #68 · saturn
Ring Network
10 Rings
A ring of neighbors passing along good introductions.
M10 · Noun #24 · squid
Ink Relay
2 Inks
A zine passed hand to hand; each reader adds a page.
Sharing.
Split it fairly.
Credits for pooling and splitting: a pie, a tool shelf, a garden, a coffee pot, the chores in a shared house.
S01 · Noun #55 · pizza
Slice
8 Slices
Split the pie at block parties.
S02 · Noun #57 · pie
Fair Wedge
4 Wedges
One fair wedge of whatever the group bought together.
S03 · Noun #19 · cookie
Cookie Jar
12 Cookies
The bake-swap table for the school garden.
S04 · Noun #58 · noodles
Long Table
12 Bowls
Cook once, feed twelve.
S05 · Noun #50 · dictionary
Little Library
3 Chapters
Take a book, leave a book.
S06 · Noun #5 · chainsaw
Tool Library
2 Tool Days
Borrow the big tool instead of buying one.
S07 · Noun #39 · mug
Coffee Pot
20 Cups
The office coffee pot, kept fair.
S08 · Noun #44 · volleyball
Court Time
3 Games
Share the club court and the net.
S09 · Noun #66 · fir
Garden Plot
4 Rows
Community garden plots and the harvest share.
S10 · Noun #76 · sponge
Dish Duty
1 Shift
The chores in a shared house, kept fair.
Barter.
Trade like for like.
Tickets that keep a swap honest when the trade is not simultaneous: jars, fruit, fixes, fish and favors.
B01 · Noun #8 · taco classic
Taco Trade
3 Tacos
A neighborhood taco night.
B02 · Noun #28 · garlic
Garlic Braid
1 Braid
Farmers-market swaps between stalls.
B03 · Noun #75 · coffeebean
Bean Barter
10 Beans
Home-roast coffee for bike fixes, neighbor to neighbor.
B04 · Noun #96 · oyster
Shell
5 Shells
The oldest money idea, at a beach trade-in day.
B05 · Noun #61 · pickle
Pickle Swap
6 Jars
A canning swap, jar for jar.
B06 · Noun #2 · pineapple
Pineapple Swap
1 Crate
Backyard fruit exchange: lemons for avocados.
B07 · Noun #34 · blueberry
Berry Pick
4 Pints
Backyard berry-patch trades.
B08 · Noun #11 · cash register
Swap Counter
20 Tickets
Bring an item, get a ticket.
B09 · Noun #3 · boot
Cobbler
1 Fix
A repair cafe: a fix for a fix.
B10 · Noun #36 · orca
Catch of the Day
2 Catches
Fishing-club crew credits at the dock.
How a Commons currency works
Spent on the shared thing
Credit buys a turn with the room, the ride, the tool, the court or the jar. It is a queue with manners, not a wallet.
Never sold, never cashed out
In these designs no one sells credit and no one redeems it for money. Any group that runs one should still check how local law treats community credit.
A ledger people can read
Balances are public to members, disputes go to a person at a table, and the rules fit on the back of the note.
Forty actual Nouns.
Each note's Noun is chosen for its head: a house for the Porch Note, a lightning bolt for the Microgrid, a pizza for the Slice, an oyster for the Shell. No Noun appears twice.
The pixels are drawn from the official CC0 Nouns trait data using each Noun's on-chain seed, as recorded from the Nouns subgraph in the Nouns #0–99 provenance file, where the renders are checked against the official trait data. Every note's reverse lists the traits and links to the Noun itself.
Built for currencybuilder.xyz.
- Machine editioncommons.json
- Print faces80 SVGs · front and back
- Trim150 × 75 mm · 2:1
- Art sourceOfficial CC0 trait data · recorded on-chain seeds
- StatusDesign concepts · no physical edition yet