<P> Federation credits appear throughout Trek canon, yet are not cleanly defined . They may exist solely for financial transactions with races like the Ferengi that still use some form of currency . If so, the credit may hold its value primarily because the Federation says it does, and thereby be a kind of fiat money . In support of this view, Enterprise - D first officer Riker is seen bartering for information with Quark in the Next Generation episode "Firstborn" using vouchers won at a gambling table in Quark's bar . </P> <P> Riker claims the vouchers are good for twelve bars of latinum, a Ferengi currency which he asserts can be spent' almost anywhere', while the vouchers themselves were only good in Quark's establishment . This suggests that while the Federation may not use money, currencies other than the fed credit can be given, paid out, amassed, and spent within Federation space . </P> <P> In altcanon sources like the original 1975 Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual and Johnson's Worlds of the Federation, as well as the Next Generation Last Unicorn and original Fasa roleplaying games, the Federation's five founding members were Earth (or Terra), Vulcan, Tellar, Andor, and Alpha Centauri (known also as Al Rijil, or by the Terran astronomical abbreviation ACen). Fandom and various altcanon works assert that founding member Alpha Centauri is home to a human race (transplanted by the Preservers from classical third - century BC Greece) known as, variously, the Centaurans, the Centaurians, or the Centauri, a perspective supported by the description of Zefram Cochrane, in the classic episode "Metamorphosis", as' Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri' . Altcanon explanations hold that Cochrane was either a Centauri himself or, more likely, a resident (the novel Federation, for instance, sets his home on Alpha Centauri B II, the second planet orbiting the trinary's secondary star) of a Terran colony in the ACen system . The films have since cemented this in canonical truth, with Cochrane born on Earth but retiring to his final years on Alpha Centauri before his disappearance and presumed death . </P> <P> The once - official but now altcanon 1980 - to - 2188 historical guide Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology posits the UFP as being incorporated at' the first Babel Interplanetary Conference' in 2087 . </P>

Who were the founding members of the united federation of planets