Opening the Market

Public Library and Market

Fecit has a Public Library. Anyone can browse the Overviews someone else has put together, and if they like one, add it to their own library. Free to publish, free to download. The publisher gets 100 dana for posting.

The Public Library is a place for sharing. The tone is “this flow worked for me — take it.” The fact that downloads cost zero matters. The reward goes only to the maker; nothing is asked of the person picking it up.

But some Templates carry a different weight. A learning curriculum that took weeks to refine. A weeklong meal routine planned by time of day. An operations checklist polished after a season ended. For these, “just take it” feels off — “I’d like to put a price on this” feels right.

So we opened a Market.

One Thing Is Different

The Market looks almost the same as the Public Library. Someone publishes, someone picks up. One thing differs.

To pick something up, you spend dana.

The seller sets the price. 1 dana or 1,000 dana, their call. The buyer’s balance is debited; the same amount lands in the seller’s. No fees. At least not yet.

When the trade goes through, the Template is cloned into the buyer’s library as PRIVATE. The original stays with the seller. If the same Template sells to several people, each ends up with their own copy. Since they’re copies, buyers can edit them however they want afterwards.

Why Templates Only

Right now only Templates go on the Market. Overviews don’t.

Overviews lean closer to recommendations — “this flow was good.” The natural pickup happens through the attached Template, and pricing the Overview itself feels fuzzy. Templates are different. They’re concrete work units, with the time-cost of crafting them visible in their structure. They suit pricing, and they suit a buyer trying to gauge value.

Splitting them this way keeps the tone of each space clear. Public Library: light sharing. Market: explicit trade.

What Dana Means Now

The moment the Market opens, dana’s meaning shifts.

Until now, dana was closer to a score showing “how much have I contributed to the Public Library.” 100 dana is one publish. 1,000 dana is ten. End of story.

Now you can buy someone’s Template with dana. 100 dana can get you an hour of someone else’s work. It’s no longer a score — it’s actually a unit that exchanges for something.

For a currency to work like one, both an inflow and an outflow have to exist. Inflow: publishing Overviews (+100). Outflow has been empty until now. The Market is that outflow.

A Small Economy

A small economy starts moving inside Fecit.

A publishes Overviews steadily and accumulates dana. B carefully refines a learning Template and lists it on the Market. A spends accumulated dana on B’s Template; B can then spend received dana on someone else’s Template.

None of this is required. Public Library only is fine. Market only is fine. Ignoring dana entirely is fine. But for those who pay attention, the experience of someone putting a price on what you made gives the act of making a different kind of meaning.

What Was Deliberately Left Out

Some things were left out of the first version on purpose.

• Categories, sorts, search. Just a single reverse-chronological list at first. Sorting tools come when there’s enough volume to need them.
• Platform fees. No cut taken from transactions. That’s a tool that makes sense after trade volume builds, not before.
• Refunds, dispute resolution. Refunds for digital copies aren’t clean. We’d rather encourage thoughtful listing first; concrete claim handling can come once cases accumulate.
• Ratings, reviews. Useful signal, but also noisy. Better to decide the right form after some trades are on the books.
• Discounts, bundles, season events. Releasing pricing variants before the currency itself is steady muddies the signal.

All deliberate holds. Ship it, watch it, add what’s missing.

The Name

“Market” is a plain name. On purpose. The currency name “dana” gets shown sparingly in small spots, but the place name needs to be instantly clear about what happens there. No ambiguity at first contact.

What’s Next

With the Market open, the next questions follow naturally.

• User-to-user transfers, for when you just want to send dana, not buy something.
• Buying dana with payment, for when there’s something to buy and the balance is short.
• Seller payouts, trust signals.

Right now we’re watching how the Market itself moves without any of those. Releasing everything at once means you can’t see what causes what.

If 100 dana was where dana started, the Market is where dana’s meaning changes. Small, but a clear shift.