Let's see how Zero Exchange can help its users to achieve their goals. Suppose you want to build a spaceship. You will not be able to build it alone, but any interesting idea bound to attract like-minded people from around the world, so you will not be alone. Someone of interested persons can be a physicist, another may be an engineer, the third can help you with components. Thus, your task is reduced to manage of people with the appropriate capabilities which is necessary to achieve the objectives of the project.

Zero Exchange community will grow, so one day you will find all needed partners. In order to attract people to your project, you must create a contract. This can be done on the page 'Exchange / Your Contract'. Then add your offer about building a spaceship. To do this, select the class of your offer. Each class has a set of properties which can be used while searching of the supplies or demands of this class.

Fill in all the properties of your offer. You have to estimate roughly how many of your personal time you expect to spend on the project. In other words, you have to perform a temporary planning. Divide large projects into smaller subprojects and estimate each of them separately. You are implicitly involved in planning every day - from the moment you wake up till the bedtime. Any reasonable activity requires planning. So, you have to create a draft plan for the construction of the spaceship. Most likely he will not be very detailed at first - it's okay. It will be updated during discussions with partners and during the execution of the project. Let's say you're willing to spend three hours every working day of the week for this project. Then the preliminary plan could be similar to:

So total worktime is 10296 hours or 14,3 years. Put this value into the appropriate field on the properties screen:

Then add the necessary requirements to complete the project. Suppose you have a general idea of how to build a prototype. It would be feasible to begin from consultations with the physicists about the optimal technologies, ask the engineers to create model specifications and find the necessary details supplier. Click on the "Add" button to save the contract.

Now other users will see your offer on the 'Available Offers' page.

Engineer, dreamed of seeing the earth from space, may accede to the contract by offering their professional services:

You can relatively easily understand whether it reasonable to deal with a new participant in the project by looking at his reputation values.

The initial contract is duplicated before each introduction of a new participant. This provides flexibility in the process of the contract creation. The first version of the contract, in which all participants agree with the details of that contract, will win.

Once all the consumers have got the suppliers, the contract goes to the Ready state. After that each participant can accept the contract.

Before accepting the contract, the participant should be sure that he clearly understands his responsibilities that should be performed according the contract. Since the adoption of the contract by all parties, it goes into a state of 'Performed', and all participants begin to fulfill their obligations.

When one participant delivers goods or provides services to another participant under the contract, the last one must evaluate the quality of the provided goods and services. This evaluation will affect reputation of the supplier.

The project is completed when each partner fulfills its obligations.

The mechanism described above can be extended to create a continuously functioning dynamic social structures. The last one can be used, for example, for the production of some things.

Participant who successfully acts as a service provider or manufacturer of the goods, is able to borrow a certain number of conventional units - to simplify receiving of the goods and services.