It is very probable that alternative civilizations are based on DNA very similar to ours. DNA IS INFINITELY RECYCLABLE, and even as we have arms and legs, our DNA allows us to develop all kinds of flexibility.

chemistry, the foundation of DNA will be the same on which ever planet any civilization evolved on, and the flexibility of DNA makes it likely our DNA will be compatible with theirs.

Although the flexibility of DNA is nothing compared to how flexible we are in terms of our microbioheme, socialization and our brain.

In our ecosystem many creatures have evolved in all kinds of ways to allow them to survive on our planet within our current ecosystem.

But it is very evident that we, the principle inhabitants of this planet, have very utilitarian hands, and mobility.

Many inhabitants on our planet have very specialized appendages, snakes, have no appendages, birds 'arms' have specialized into wings, and while it gives them much mobility, it makes the use of tools difficult. And while many birds use their beaks to hold and use thing, it is not a convenient way to carry heavy objects.

We sometimes might use our mouths to hold things, it is not ideal, because it is dangerous (germs or the items themselves might be dangerous, needles etc...) birds using their beaks, the bird equivalent of a human mouth, has only one option, to drop the object the beak was holding. and while some birds have dexterous feet, eagles and other raptors, fashioning tools is not easy when your only options of securing tools is with feet and a beak.

Our hands allow us to use tools to create tools and then those tools can create other tools.

The Drake equation famously asked where are all the aliens given the number of worlds we've found since the first exoplanet was found in 1992. Since then we've found something of the order of 4000 other worlds. But I often wonder where we are looking for those alien civilizations.

If we're looking towards the center of the galaxy, a reasonable choice given that where the stars are located, we're more than likely to find more planets there and thus more potential places for those civilizations to flourish, but the big problem with the density of stars is the possibility of supernova and other cosmic weather, in the form of various radiation. Our planet has it's ozone layer to protect us from the sun's radiation. And given the billions of years it's taken for our ecosystem to evolve to the point where it can sustain us, one supernova would set the earth's ecosystem back to the beginning (probably), stripping out the ozone layer, removing our atmosphere, destroying all the bacteria and plankton, because a supernova close enough to us probably would make all our water evaporate too.

We know fungus loves a good radiation bath, but can fungus evolve into a civilization that can traverse space? Funghi spores probably can survive space, but we are talking about an essentially cooperative species which cooperated sufficiently to produce spacecraft, develop the engineering to allow the spacecraft to function, the science to allow it to traverse space, an education system to support the training of the crew, the technicians that constructed the spacecraft and the scientists to develop the technology to create it in the first place. And no doubt they needed farmers to produce the food to fed all those people in the first place, just like we have.

Even if they have advanced education, farming, engineering... they still need 'entities' aka 'people' to curate, manufacture and maintain those systems.

Tardigrades and fungi might survive space but it's because their species evolved to the point to allow them to do so. And while we look for living tardigrades, fungi and bacteria on other planets, comets and asteroids in our solarsystem, what the drake equation is really about is finding civilizations like ours.

So if we have our telescopes pointing to the interior of our galaxy or more densely populated parts of the galaxy, we should really have them pointed towards the outer edges of milky way instead, because it takes billions of years to construct an ecosystem that will sustain us, and one badly placed supernova will set our planet back to the beginning.

We cant of course be sure of what kind of economy aliens have, we do know we, in our society, are basically a number of experts who communicate to achieve certain goals. often our society has evolved slavery so those incharge can reap the profits of others labour, which is what many still attempt today by keeping people in-debt, paying one gender less than the other, or not at all for giving birth and raising children, work that is hugely of benefit to society.
But one hallmark is our intercommunication between members, vital to achieve common goals. So if there are more than one member in a society, which is highly probable, then they must be able to communicate, whether it is by some kind of mental link or audibly or...
Whether they use money depends on their society.