A set of prescriptive design principles to support community currencies as commons

After the 2008 financial crisis, the role of money and the structure of modern monetary systems have become subject to renewed scrutiny. The existing system, marked by extensive financialisation, power concentration, and rising social inequality, is considered incompatible with social justice and ecological sustainability goals. Consequently, decentralised monetary initiatives have emerged as alternatives reshaping and rethinking the nature and governance of money. Of these initiatives, locally managed community currencies (CCs) have risen to prominence, as they view money as a commons designed to serve community needs rather than generate profit. However, the design and governance of CCs remain underdeveloped due to either too broad design principles or empirical insights lacking a theoretical foundation. This study proposes a structured set of design principles, which link theoretical insights to practical guidance. Drawing on a design science approach in a European project, we develop four actionable design principles that guide local communities in creating and adapting CCs to their respective socioeconomic contexts. By integrating insights from contemporary CC literature and practitioners' guidance research, this study offers a flexible yet structured toolkit for designing, deploying, and maintaining CCs. The framework emphasises the importance of balancing technological opportunities with community needs, ensuring the association of CCs with local realities and collective goals. This study helps redefine and design money as a democratic, socially embedded institution capable of fostering equity, resilience, and ecological transition. As such, it contributes to design science knowledge about solving the problem of societal and ecological transformation.