Transaction

Some key characteristics of transactions:

• Involves the transfer of valuables (ex. property rights) or decision rights between agents, or the act of contribution between agents and processes.
• Can occur in various settings, as market exchanges, within a any type of organizational setting (can be a firm/hierarchy, an OVN, etc.), between an authority to those who are subject to it (state, platform), etc.
• Entails costs, beyond just the price in a market economy, such as search costs, negotiation costs, monitoring costs etc. These are termed transaction costs.
• Transaction costs arise due to factors like asset specificity, uncertainty, frequency of exchange, bounded rationality, and opportunism.
• The governance structure (market, commons/communal, gift, hierarchy, stigmergy) chosen aims to minimize the transaction costs involved for that particular transaction.

So in essence, a transaction is the basic unit of economic activity involving the transfer of valuables between agents, with associated transaction costs that influence the optimal governance mode. Minimizing these transaction costs is a central focus of transaction cost economics.

Transaction and distribution

Some transaction types are involved in distribution systems and are represented as a transfer of rights and obligations from one agent to another, over a thing. As can be seen on the page about distribution, the notion ov value and property are essential to understand transactions.

Transactions and contributions

In OVN jargon, a contribution is an act of intervening in a process, in a constructive/productive manner, to increase the probability of success of this process. A log of activity related to the process is a record of what has happened, it is a type of transaction. A contribution is a log that has been judged valuable by peers (other agents involved in the process), it is another transaction type. In the OVN model, the contribution transaction type provides access to benefits through a benefit redistribution algorithm, which is a transfer of rights and obligations to the contributor. The log transaction type is only a contribution in potential, it is a unidirectional transaction that doesn't provide anything in return.

Transaction and the NRP-CAS

A transaction in NRP-CAS is treated as an event.

In the NRP-CAS we use the fallowing transaction types.

Transaction type	Expectation
gift	don't care, forget
contribute	growth, maturity
invest	returns, able to take risk
loan	want it back, +
exchange	equivalent return, the other thing