FAIR as an Alternative Economic Architecture: Evidence from BangNano Socio-Economic Movement in Indonesia

Purpose — Despite the major progress achieved by modern economic systems, people still face structural problems such as financial fragility, financial exclusion and declining trust, especially in deprived areas. These challenges prompt questions regarding the viability of debt-based and leverage-driven financial institutions in providing shared prosperity. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine if FAIR economic framework can be an alternative to the traditional economic framework. FAIR is a full-reserve, asset-based, resilience-first, interest-free economic system. FAIR four core principles are (i) full-reserve financial integrity, (ii) real asset anchoring, (iii) no interest-based extraction and (iv) systemic and community resilience over short-term growth maximization.

Method — The social and economic impacts of a FAIR-based economy are examined through descriptive data on the user behaviors of BangNano. This includes financial connections, real asset price anchoring and voluntary participation patterns consistent with resilience-oriented economic activities.

Results — The results suggest that FAIR provides a promising way to reframe economic architecture such that transparent, inclusive and ethically sound economic systems promote shared prosperity.

Practical Implication — BankNano designs features operationalize trust and accountability through auditable ledgers and risk-sharing through programmable financial limits, in accordance with the four primary pillars of the FAIR architecture.

Originality — BangNano's system architecture is pioneering in the digital era. It is made up of asset tokenization, transparent transaction chains and community-based crowdfunding.