GoodDollar's Inaugural AMA Session Hosted On Telegram Helped Community Members Better Understand Our Blockchain-Backed UBI

As we race towards the live launch of live GoodDollar in the next few weeks, we caught up with the G$ team and our active community to ask us their questions directly. We hosted GoodDollar's inaugural AMA (ask me anything) on the GoodDollar Telegram Channel with our product team all-stars, Tomer and Hadar, with moderation from our marketing team (Anna and Jessica) and project director Tal. As a refresher, we kicked off the chat with our basic income economic model video.  

We have included some links so you can find more information, and have re-ordered some questions to group together relevant information. A big thank you to all of our supporters!

Questions & Answers

Q: When will GoodDollar be going live?

A: By the end of the month, our basic income protocol will be live and open to the public

Q: Really excited about your upcoming launch, been following your progress for a while now. Can you tell me more about the blockchain tech behind the G$ basic income model?

A: This is unbiasedly one of our favorite topics. We are using Fuse - you can read more about our choice here. Fuse is a POS blockchain, and we are also a validator node. The GoodDollar smart contracts are deployed both to Ethereum mainnet and to Fuse. All the DEFI stuff and minting of G$ is done over Ethereum. The G$ are then transferred over the Fuse bridge, which Fuse and its validators run. Everyone that launches a token on Fuse can enjoy this bridge auto-magically.

Q: What Exchanges will G$ be available on?

A: There are actually three parts to this answer:

• Because G$ is a reserve-based token it will be instantly liquid to smart contract.
• As we are in De-Fi I think initially we will see permission-less listing on DEXes.
• Bigger exchanges like eToro, Coinbase, etc. will come further down the line with maturity

Q: So if I want to back everyone's UBI (including my own), I can just park whatever savings I have into a financial application of some sort, and the interest it generates is donated to the UBI system?

A: Yes! but not only that: you'll get to enjoy interest in form of G$ at the value of the interest. So, you are supporting the G$ UBI system, but it's not a donation - you are a node of the system, supporting G$. Initially you could only donate your interest, in the future we will add the option of getting back your interest in G$ currency.

Q: Why are you trying to give G$ for only borrowing, and how will this help in generating basic income?

A: The project is not based on borrowing. People can put their funds in interest-earning DEFI protocols, that earned interest is what backs up the G$ token value. The reserve automatically mints more G$ based on the earned interest. Then those G$s are distributed as basic income.

Q: What are you going to do about accessibility of G$ for the non-blockchain crowd? Or are you just trying to onboard as many people as possible?

A: We love this topic, because it's also at the heart of why we created GoodDollar. Most DeFi and blockchain protocols are made for the crypto-savvy, but we wanted an intuitive product that anyone and everyone can use.

So, there are two things.

• Just like in our Demo, users using the G$ product don't need any knowledge in crytpo. We take care of the gas fees, signup with your facebook/google/phone number/ and you can pay without ever using a blockchain address.
• For users who don't even have a smart phone - we added the option to sign up with your phone number. Since we use phone number as your unique identity to sign up, and face recognition to claim G$, in theory just 1 smart phone could serve 100-200 people with Nokia phones to claim G$ UBI if they are living close enough to each other.

Q: What if you don't have a smartphone? Can multiply people sign up using the same smartphone/chip/number? Let's say, for example, a family household.

A: Simple. Just log-out and log-in with a different account, either a social log-in or phone number. And then just pass the face verification. That's why we've added the phone number as an option for unique identity, to serve the basic Nokia-type phone users of the world, of which there are still millions.

And at the moment, there are no social passwords (Facebook or Google) login for our friends over in China, just email and phone login.

"Shared it with a few family members who signed up, easy-peasy. They're not in-the-know enough to appreciate what's happening here, but the UX was smooth as silk for them."

- Community Member

Q: For now, how is the value of G$ supported?

A: We will have an initial generous stake that will bear interest which will go to the reserve to back the value of G$. The initial value and stake is provided by the foundation; and then we will announce our first "Stake for Good" partner (which we hope will change corporate impact forever!)

Q: Tell us more about staking for good. What purpose does it serve?

A: Essentially, by "staking for good" you are contributing to the success and scalability of a people-powered, decentralized basic income. How? The higher the value staked for good, the more G$ coins minted to distribute as basic income. So the first (institutional) stake-for-good partner will allow us to generate a significant amount of basic income a day (probably around $30 worth), while proving out the concept to inspire others.

Ultimately, we would love to see everyday people (like you and me) and institutions "staking for good" to fuel the global basic income machine.

G$ staking will happen in phases: as soon as we launch smart contracts (within the month), anyone can interact with the smart contracts and stake, but the interest in G$ will be donated to the reserve. We made this video to explain the staking function (receiving interest rate payments in G$), which is the feature we will release over next few months...

Q: I would like to support the G$ staking with some crypto I have. How do you put money into GoodDollar?

A: In addition to claiming G$, there are two other ways you can get G$. Supporters who "stake for good" receive their interest rate payments in G$; and one day in the future you might be able get G$ from a secondary market (for example, if you are a vendor whose customers use G$) so you have it to transact in.Important to note! The staking feature will only be available in the future, we hope to roll it out within the next few months. The protocol at launch supports staking through donations.

Q: So is this dependent on other lending protocols or you’re going to have your own pools where makers and takers can lend and borrow assets?

A: Yes, it will depend on other DEFI protocols. Hopefully the ecosystem will grow past "lending/borrowing" and will mature into investment protocols that will invest in real brick and mortar businesses.

"I really enjoy how the web app is designed. It's really user-friendly and there's almost a gamification-like element to the collection."

- Community Member

Q: OK, I'm ready to claim some live G$s. But why is the release still weeks away?

A: Well, it's an effort by a lot of distributed teams and a small core team. The initial DAO and core blockchain protocol has been developed by the etoroX team in Denmark. We have a team in Ukraine working on the wallet and also a team in Uruguay working on a mobile version. The audit has been recently done by Somish in India We are rapidly prototyping, iterating and learning from your feedback through Phase Zero so that we launch Phase One with a bang.

Q from G$: Do you have any advice on how to bring more people to GoodDollar?

Community A: I am going to personally fund the sign up of every resident of the Quatinga Velho Basic Income Pilot into GoodDollar. I am absolutely blown away by what you're doing.

And, I am going to bully random people on the street until they sign up to GoodDollar.