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 of a valuable activity 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