ValueFlows/REA ontology — cooperative economic vocabulary for federation interop

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ValueFlows / REA Ontology — Cooperative Economic Vocabulary for Federation Interop

Project: ValueFlows | w3id.org/valueflows | Lynn Foster & Bob Haugen (Sensorica, Mikorizal) | MIT/CC0
REA origin: Bill McCarthy, 1982 — Resource–Event–Agent accounting ontology
Assessment status: Recommend adoption — lowest cost, highest federation leverage of the three frameworks reviewed

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What ValueFlows Is

ValueFlows is the cooperative-economy vocabulary built on the REA (Resource–Event–Agent) accounting standard. It defines approximately 20 core terms for describing economic activity:

• Agent — a person, cooperative, or network that participates in economic activity
• Economic Resource — something of value (labour hours, raw material, software, money)
• Economic Event — an action that changes resource quantities (work, transfer, consume, produce, use, cite)
• Commitment — a planned future event (intent + obligation)
• Process — a transformation turning inputs into outputs

The flow: Agent → does Economic Event → involving Economic Resource → as part of Process

The project is actively maintained by Lynn Foster and Bob Haugen, both long-term cooperative tech practitioners. The vocabulary is used by Sensorica (Montreal open-value network), hREA (holochain REA), Bonfire, Open Food Network (partially), and Regen Network — roughly 15–20 active cooperative projects.

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Iskander Already Implements ValueFlows Without Naming It

Iskander construct	ValueFlows term	Notes
labour_log.member_id	Agent.id	The person doing the work
labour_log.value_type (productive/care/commons)	resourceClassifiedAs	The category of the resource
labour_log.hours	effortQuantity	Numeric quantity with unit
labour_log.task_category	note + resourceClassifiedAs	Task classification
IskanderEscrow.sol trade proposals	Commitment	Planned future transfer
IskanderEscrow.sol trade execution	EconomicEvent (transfer)	The actual transfer
CoopFiatToken.sol internal payments	EconomicEvent (transfer)	Internal settlement
DisCO productive/reproductive/care/commons streams	work events by category	Already aligned

Translation: the schema already exists — adopting ValueFlows means renaming fields and adding a JSON-LD context, not redesigning.

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What Adoption Looks Like

Step 1: Schema alignment in ops-data service

Replace ad-hoc field names with ValueFlows equivalents in the labour_log table and event payloads:

# Current (ad-hoc)
{
  "member_id": "alice",
  "value_type": "care",
  "task_category": "governance.facilitation",
  "hours": 2.0
}

# ValueFlows-aligned
{
  "@context": "https://w3id.org/valueflows/",
  "@type": "EconomicEvent",
  "action": "work",
  "provider": {"@id": "did:ethr:alice"},
  "resourceClassifiedAs": "ov:care",
  "effortQuantity": {"numericValue": 2.0, "unitCode": "HUR"},
  "note": "governance.facilitation",
  "hasPointInTime": "2026-04-10T14:00:00Z",
  "inScopeOf": {"@id": "coop.example"}
}

Iskander-specific fields (scope_tags, accountability_status) are added alongside — ValueFlows explicitly supports extension.

Step 2: JSON-LD context file

docs/ontology/valueflows-context.jsonld — declares how Iskander's vocabulary maps to ValueFlows URIs. Any ValueFlows-speaking project can dereference this to understand Iskander's data.

Step 3: IPFS-anchored events

Economic events already go to IPFS (Decision Recorder, Glass Box). Adding @context to the JSON payload costs nothing — the IPFS CID changes, the infrastructure doesn't.

Step 4: Agent vocabulary alignment

Steward and Quartermaster agents learn to emit and consume vf:EconomicEvent payloads. This is a documentation change in SOUL.md and a schema change in tools.py — no new runtime.

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Federation Interoperability Benefit

Without ValueFlows, every federation partner who runs Bonfire/hREA/Sensorica needs a custom parser to understand Iskander's economic activity feed. With ValueFlows, they can consume it directly.

This matters for GTFT federation growth: if an Iskander-allied cooperative runs Open Food Network or hREA, they share a common economic event schema out of the box. The GTFT trust protocol doesn't currently include economic activity verification — ValueFlows events are the substrate that would eventually make cross-cooperative labour and trade claims verifiable.

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Assessment

Dimension	Rating	Notes
Implementation cost	Very low	Schema rename + JSON-LD context; ~1 week
Federation benefit	High	15–20 active cooperative projects share vocabulary
Risk of adopting	Very low	Vocabulary-only; Iskander-specific fields extend cleanly
Risk of skipping	Medium	Schema retrofit later, custom parsers at every federation boundary
Aligns with FOSS-first	Yes	MIT/CC0 licensed; no runtime dependency
Aligns with ADR 0001	Yes	No blockchain complexity added

Recommendation: Adopt. File as P1 — block on ops-data schema design.

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Related Issues Being Filed

• feat(ops-data): Adopt ValueFlows/REA field names in labour_log and economic event payloads
• feat(ontology): Create valueflows-context.jsonld for JSON-LD economic event anchoring

See also: Discussion #91 (DisCO three-value-stream labour tracking) | docs/reference/disco-learnings.md

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Phase C.5 coordination — 2026-04-11

Phase C.5 Q1 ops-data service (#135) is the implementation vehicle for this research: economic_events uses VF field names from day one, consumed through #118 (field renames) and #119 (valueflows-context.jsonld). Phase C.5 does not own the adoption decision — it consumes the output of #131 (pre-build gate) and advances the concrete breakouts (#118, #119) inside the Q1 PR.

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Update 2026-04-12: ValueFlows gate #131 is now linked to the federation substrate selection (M5) via research issue #183. Bonfire's Cooperation flavour has an existing VF implementation but per A10 it is watched-not-adopted. The gate cannot close without the federation ADR resolving first — see Discussion #191 for the coupled architectural questions. — Et

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ValueFlows in Iskander-Code: DisCO Labour Streams

The economic-participation agent (P3) tracks effort across DisCO's four labour streams, which align with ValueFlows/REA economic events:

• Productive — direct output (code, decisions facilitated)
• Reproductive — maintenance (refactoring, docs, reviews)
• Care — supporting others (onboarding, explanation, conflict resolution)
• Commons — contributions to shared knowledge

The effort.json skill in the knowledge commons implements this. Token usage (efficiency) is tracked separately from value (which stream, what outcome). The researcher agent uses BOTH signals: high tokens + low value = domain needs splitting; low tokens + high value = template for commons.

For inter-cooperative federation: each domain exposes ets own MCP endpoint. ValueFlows vocabulary would standardise the economic events flowing between cooperatives' Iskander instances. The integration-api crate already lists Valueflows/REA as an open standard for data interchange.