What are ⿻ credits (Plural credits)?

Points given to people who contributed to making the book *Plurality*, designed not to be bought or sold for money. They are a record of who made how much of the book, and also a "community currency" used in votes to set the priority of tasks and decide whether contributions are accepted.

When many people write one book together, how do you record who contributed how much? And who decides which chapter to fix next? The book Plurality ran an experiment that handled both with a single kind of "points". These are ⿻ credits (Plural credits).

In short

⿻ credits are points received by people who contributed to making the book Plurality. They were designed so that they cannot be exchanged for money or sold to others [1].

The points have two roles. One is the official record of who made how much of the book. The other is votes, used to decide the priority of the book's tasks and whether to accept contributions [1][2].

For example

The "Credits" page at the front of the book. The book's list of contributors was made from the ledger of these points. The list's introduction describes "⿻ credits in the project" as "a community currency we used to track contributions". The order within each category and the font size "indicate quantitative holdings of ⿻ as of early April, 2024", and the same weights were used for the composite image of contributors used on the cover [3]. In the data, 66 people are listed across nine categories, including writing, editing, technology and translation [4].

An issuance to Nishio (March 2, 2024). Hirokazu Nishio, a participant from Japan, recorded how the author E. Glen Weyl wrote on GitHub that he would issue Nishio 160,000 credits, and a bot (an automated program) recorded it. Nishio wrote that it felt something like a company's capital increase, receiving a stake in exchange for contributions rather than money (in Japanese) [5].

How to hand them out to translators (April 2024). In the translation community, a proposal was made to distribute 9.5% of the total points to translators. For the Japanese team, Nishio proposed allocating 90% to the dedicated translator (Hiroo Yamagata) and 10% to the community leader, who would then pass points on to people who had been helpful. This resembles liquid democracy (a system in which you can entrust your vote to someone you trust). Weyl replied that points could be moved with the community's approval; what he wanted to avoid, in substance, was something like a hostile party paying a large sum to buy up points (in Japanese) [6].

How it works

What kind of points are they?

According to the explanation of how the book was run (February 26, 2024, GitHub issue #333), ⿻ credits are a mark formally recognizing contributions. They are quantitative and divisible, but cannot be transferred between individuals, and so cannot be sold. They have no direct monetary value [1].

One of the design goals was to avoid the points becoming an object of speculation or financial dealing, exchangeable for things outside the project [1]. There were also plans to add marks showing the type of contribution, such as writing, design or technical work [1].

What can you do with them?

The same explanation lists three things that holding points gives you [1]:

Recognition: the ledger of holdings becomes the definitive record of who contributed how much to the book.
Governance rights: they can be used in votes to decide the priority of work on the book and which contributions to accept. Acceptance also decides who receives points next.
Resources: such as an email address on the book's domain, and coupons for a paid version of GitHub.

How they grow, and how they are used

Under the book's operating rules, the PMP, you earn points as a reward, in proportion to its priority, when you complete a high-priority task. You also earn them when your prediction of whether a contribution will be accepted turns out right [1][7].

There are two uses. Votes to raise the priority of a task use a method of the Quadratic Funding type. Votes on whether to accept a contribution use a method of the Quadratic Voting type, in which casting v votes costs points proportional to the square of v [1][7]. For example, if the constant of proportionality is 1, one vote costs 1 point, two votes cost 4 points and three votes cost 9 points. You can show strong feeling, but piling up votes becomes more and more expensive for one person.

The ledger was to be published at first as a spreadsheet, and eventually kept in the records of Gov4Git [1].

Many names

At the front of the book they are "⿻ credits" [3]. In the Gov4Git announcement email they are called "voting credits" [8], and in the Japanese community they were also called "Voice Credit" and "PMP tokens". In December 2024, Nishio explained PMP tokens as, in substance, points for running a project that use GitHub, rather than Web3 (internet systems built on blockchains), as their home (in Japanese) [9].

The actual distribution

According to the all-time tally on the Gov4Git dashboard in the book's repository, as of October 24, 2025, about 47.87 million credits had been issued in total, about 12.13 million transferred, and 0 burned (deleted). The largest holders were Weyl (about 14.14 million) and Audrey Tang's account (about 11.62 million); together the two hold more than half of all credits issued [10].

What is debated

How true is the non-transferability? Issue #333 says transfers between individuals are not allowed [1]. Yet the October 2025 tally includes records of transfers [10]. The documentation for Waimea, the successor mechanism, states plainly that administrators can move points between accounts, and that members can voluntarily receive points from other members [11]. Weyl himself had explained that points could be moved with approval [6].
Aren't they close to shares? The Waimea documentation treats the total amount of points as a measure by which participants value the project for one another, and describes it as a "stake" like the shares a startup gives its employees. It also says that if a project connects with real money, such as through grants, holders should be rewarded in proportion to their holdings [11]. The emphasis differs from issue #333, which says the credits have no direct monetary value [1].
A voice that shrinks as you use it. In a March 2024 note, Nishio raised the question, in substance, of whether this is an aristocracy: since voting uses up points, only people who keep contributing and have points to spare can remain full participants (in Japanese) [8].
Is the ledger accurate? The book's own front matter warns, apologizing, that the ledger may contain errors "due to the experimental nature of the technology we used to track it" [3].

Where it fits in Plurality

Chapter 5-0 of the book, "Collaborative Technology and Democracy", writes that contributors were recognized with the community currencies and group identity tokens described in chapters 4-1 and 4-3, which were used to vote on and prioritize tasks [2]. In other words, the book tested in its own making the ideas of Commerce and Trust and identity that it proposes.

In an August 2024 essay, Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, described ⿻ credits as a non-monetary implementation of Quadratic Funding [12]. The ledger is explained in the article on Gov4Git, and the rules for using the points in the article on the PMP.

Sources

pluralitybook issue #333 (2024-02-26) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/issues/333 ［CC0］
Plurality, 5-0 "Collaborative Technology and Democracy" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-0/eng/ ［CC0］
Plurality, 0-3 "Credits" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/0-3/eng/ ［CC0］
credits.json (in the book's repository) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/blob/86158859464aee75633acd854c656928121a7fd8/scripts/credits.json ［CC0］
plurality-japanese, "Voice Creditが発行された" (in Japanese) — https://scrapbox.io/plurality-japanese/Voice_Credit%E3%81%8C%E7%99%BA%E8%A1%8C%E3%81%95%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F
plurality-japanese, "翻訳者のためのトークン配布プランV2" (Token distribution plan for translators, V2) (2024-04, in Japanese) — https://scrapbox.io/plurality-japanese/%E7%BF%BB%E8%A8%B3%E8%80%85%E3%81%AE%E3%81%9F%E3%82%81%E3%81%AE%E3%83%88%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF%E3%83%B3%E9%85%8D%E5%B8%83%E3%83%97%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3V2
Gov4Git's PMP specification — https://github.com/gov4git/gov4git/blob/9d680797696ac662a9515f1e33272ccdf55848c7/doc/MECHANISM.md ［MIT / Apache-2.0］
plurality-japanese, "The public launch of the Plurality Book Project -- using Gov4git" — https://scrapbox.io/plurality-japanese/The_public_launch_of_the_Plurality_Book_Project_--_using_Gov4git
plurality-japanese, "Plurality本に貢献するには" (How to contribute to the Plurality book) (2024-12, in Japanese) — https://scrapbox.io/plurality-japanese/Plurality%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AB%E8%B2%A2%E7%8C%AE%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AF
pluralitybook issue #1094 (Gov4Git community dashboard, snapshot of 2025-10-24) — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/issues/1094
Waimea — https://github.com/gov4git/gov4git/blob/9d680797696ac662a9515f1e33272ccdf55848c7/doc/WAIMEA.md ［MIT / Apache-2.0］
Vitalik Buterin, "Plurality philosophy in an incredibly oversized nutshell" (2024-08-21) — https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/08/21/plurality.html

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