Back to this information about upcoming Bonfire capability: https://bonfirenetworks.org/docs/boundaries/ In the "circles" diagram, there is a circle of relationship "exchange" where we have a paid relationship. An example IRL exchange could be someone with which I have a handy-person relationship. I want someone who is IRL near me. With this particular iteration of Bonfire, I would have to identify all the handy-people who meet my requirement of "near" IRL and place them in my exchange circle.

Here are the two use cases I know of:

• on NextDoor (ND) app, I have a neighborhood, so I know (sort of) that putting out a "need IRL help" to my neighborhood is supposed to result in "near" IRL people seeing my help request. This assumes ND is properly not over-distributing my posts beyond my declared neighborhood.

• a Unitarian church near me offers a service to connect less-abled members of that particular church to more-abled members for getting needs met. Again, the church "instance" provides the IRL "near enough" element for connecting those with needs to those with offers.

Both of these use cases are examples where ValueFlows (VF) are intended to service (AFAICT). Seems that the Circles function in the Boundaries description are trying to set up, maybe, a future entry of ValueFlows enablement-- maybe? Or maybe, the Circles function is supposed to help set the IRL parts of VF implementation? Here's the example I'm thinking of wrt VF: https://www.valueflo.ws/assets/ValueFlows-Story.pdf In this story, since apples, pies, and truck sharing are physcially exchanged, they need to be IRL near.

Protecting oneself online is an important aspect of the boundaries (and circles) function described. IMO, it needs to go the other way, too.

For thoroughness (and to allow me to find this again later...) here is some additional connection:
The boundaries feature is explored more here: https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/how_to_boundaries/
My take on the boundaries section of this page is boundaries are how the Fediverse environment affects the user who sets the boundaries. Another take on boundaries would include how I, as a user posting, affects the ecological environment in the sense of computational heat generation in the service of transporting posts beyond my screen and cost of services to do so. This is along the lines of https://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/the-carbon-footprint-of-everything. Me as a user might want to trade my use of email's eco-environmental cost vs using the Fediverse. I want to limit the potential reach, so I know I'm trading to my eco-environmental goals.

It looks like I can use Circles as a way to limit the eco-environmental cost of communicating (nts: see the How-to boundaries link above)

https://nlnet.nl/project/Bonfire/ Some thoughts after reading this:

• it spends more time dissing extractive social systems than describing a use case I might build by assembling pieces of Bonfire code. So, still not getting what a use case for Bonfire vs any other dialect of ActivityPub (AP) -- from a user perspective-- might be.
• good point about extractive networks being a "regression toward the payout" wrt content density
• "Switching from closed social networks to the fediverse contributes to privacy and trust, by enabling users to understand and control who sees their data." This seems like an important point. Seems to relate to the Bonfire idea of boundaries as described here: https://bonfirenetworks.org/docs/boundaries/
• one thing I wonder in regard to limiting the reach of an individual post is whether I might be able to choose the extent of environmental impact. Not that I, personally, ever write something that would get a super-bloom of boosts, but should I want to know my particular post won't do that, could the boundaries function be used to limit that by my choice? A use case might be: limit my post to only my instance or only my followers plus one boost only from my followers and no other could boost that post. Is Bonfire protocol (an AP dialect) intended to be different from other AP dialects in providing this specificity?

Noodling on use cases for a person like me wrt Bonfire. Guess that starts with trying to figure out the bits and how they might fit together. I'll toss some ideas here to try out what's there and how it feels.

There's this, of course, very oriented to dev rather than user: https://bonfirenetworks.org/

Also, there's this: https://nlnet.nl/project/Bonfire/ which feels a bit more oriented to informing users of Bonfire. Still thinking about that.

btw... couldn't find the nlnet.nl link through g**gle search but could on Duckduckgo. Interesting.