How we relate to local or regional nodes.

I'm not sure what P&L stands for. Is it something about pitching to investors? So the concern is that our turnover is reduced if we give all our members to other more devolved groups?
Let us consider that members for the foreseeable future are an expense. They are expensive to recruit and then it can require a lot of effort to get the first transactions happening. We should be very glad if other people are willing and able to do that work because it allows us to focus on joining them all together.
Is there a decision about making separate pitches to investors? One to build a trading a platform and one to build interoperability?
In terms of software strategy we may want to encourage the new schemes to build credit commons compliance to their software from the start, perhaps by offering them a starter implementation.

P&L = Profit and Loss: the practical sustainability of the org.

This whole idea of Memos of Understanding (MOU) about 'not poaching' members is frankly puerile.
If the Credit Commons is to grow, it is A FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT that anyone, anywhere, can join any trading network, anywhere - on the simple basis of willingness to join, and of meeting that network's criteria.
It is simply ridiculous to imagine that a Credit Commons network can grow at the rate required for it to have systemic impact in the next decade or two without this condition.
Further, it is ludicrous for two pissant startups with close-to-zero traction (OCN and Eifionn) to be starting their conversation on the basis of turf wars.
To illustrate this, try to imagine the growth of the Mastodon network (imho the best exemplar for thinking about how Credit Commons might grow) if node founders had tried to negotiate territorial settlements with each other. It's a silly joke. Let's stop talking nonsense - there are a thousand important things to be talking about.

The key phrase in the above is "willingness to join, and of meeting that network's criteria".
It will be for each network to set its own criteria for membership. If these are well adapted to the target niche - whether it be physically local or global; location-based or domain-based - then it may be able to build a viable network of trust between its members, and thrive.
The spirit Credit Commons must engender is on in which ALL network launches are welcome, on the basis of a protocol design which rewards rich interconnectivity, and disincentivises attempts to build 'walled gardens'.
This is fundamental 'Wealth of Networks' theory - not opinion.
We CAN NOT design a new economy - just as you CAN NOT design a living ecosystem.
All we can rationally do is our best shot at implementing the conditions within which an economy that is more effective for producing human wellbeing than the existing one might grow.
If we succeed at all, it will be on the basis of accepting wild complexity - in fact wild complexity is our only success marker - because an economy without complexity is one which has insufficient variety to support human society.

So, to come right to the 'relationship to local and regional nodes' question, we need to emphasise and encourage diversity ("Yes, please! Just meet our simple minimal requirements and become a node on the network! Do it today! Just get started! Here's our best set of tools and advice, and a great list of other nodes!"), and at the same time get good at 'gardening' ("Hi! We've noticed there are two other nodes in the same space as yours, all with similar approaches - we think it's worth talking. Here's why it makes economic sense for you to consider merging.").

OCN is , from the get-go, a UK network. The (discussed and agreed - in outline at least) plan is to:

• accept individual business members from anywhere in the UK (and probably intensely relaxed about Eire, Guernsey, Brittany, too...) and grow rapidly.
• identify developing local 'clusters' early and develop a strategy for incentivising these to become affiliated 'nodes' - the local individual members becoming a local network, which is a node on OCN.
• possible incentives include economic ones (higher share of transaction fees and/or ability to increase local transaction fees to suit node purposes - including making node management rich, if that's what the members vote for) and governance ones - giving nodes stronger voting rights than individual members.
• OCN to develop into a UK-wide network-of-networks, with few individual org members (large companies, large municipalities perhaps) - eventually to become a network of bio-region-scale networks, each with their own network of sub-networks.

But for now, OCN has its work cut out with the first of these.

What we have to do with people like Eifionn and Simon Carter is talk to them, try and set this vision out, see if they have a theory of change that makes sense, see if they can understand the argument I make above. If they can, then we propose federating with them, having no issues at all about businesses being members of both (while making the point that if we are federated, members are likely to choose the one that works best for them - encouraging us to serve real member needs, not ideology), emphasising the benefits of co-operation and interoperability.
If they don't get it, then we wish them well and step back from active talks, without animosity, and with an explicit open-door to re-engagement when they come to their senses (or it turns out we are wrong).

I think the sensible strategy is to start as one organisation in the early days, when you are small and want everyone to learn directly from each other, but split into collaborating groups when you are large enough so that the benefits of easier communication within the smaller groups becomes significant.

Our reality, though, is that there exist many small groups who have started their own projects already - each with slight variations in terms of business model/currency design/personal ambitions. Our challenge is to build good interactions with as many of these as possible in the hope of building a network-of-networks with / for them in the future.

Thanks for this Dil.

I think you are right that the MOU isn't very meaningful for two pissant startups, and yet, it can be one way for projects to assure one another of friendship and shared goals.