Contribution–Access Network (CAN)¶
Gaming as a Civilisational Testbed for Post-Monetary Coordination¶
Working Paper WP-003
Status: Conceptual & Methodological Framework
Version: 1.0
Date: 2026
Abstract¶
This working paper proposes large-scale gaming platforms as a critical experimental environment for developing, testing, and validating post-monetary coordination systems such as the Contribution–Access Network (CAN).
Over the past three decades, humanity has invested unprecedented amounts of time, attention, and collective behaviour into simulated environments. These environments already model scarcity, cooperation, conflict, logistics, reputation, rule enforcement, and incentive design at population scale.
By integrating CAN into selected gaming platforms and agent-based game environments, it becomes possible to test coordination mechanisms under realistic human conditions before deploying them in physical and institutional contexts.
1. Introduction¶
Designing new systems for human coordination is not primarily a theoretical challenge.
It is an empirical one.
Historically, most economic and monetary systems were deployed directly into society with limited prior testing, relying on abstraction, ideology, or small-scale pilots.
CAN adopts a different approach: coordination systems should be tested in environments where human behaviour is already richly expressed, repeatedly exercised, and observable at scale.
2. The Scale of Simulated Human Behaviour¶
Global gaming engagement is measured in trillions of hours per year, corresponding to millions of years of simulated human decision-making.
This is not marginal behaviour. It is a dominant behavioural substrate.
3. Games as Coordination Laboratories¶
Games simulate scarcity, cooperation, reputation, incentives, enforcement, and governance at population scale, making them ideal environments for testing non-monetary coordination systems.
4. CAN Integrations with Gaming Platforms¶
CAN supports agent-based testbeds (Mindcraft), large-scale multiplayer environments, and strategy games for evaluating coordination rules.
5. Governance and Safeguards¶
Gaming integrations are voluntary, transparent, purpose-limited, and ethically constrained.
6. Conclusion¶
The future of money should not be guessed.
It should be tested.