GoodDollar’s Basic Income Wallet And Coin Launched In September – Nearly 40,000 Users And Four Million G$ Later, See What’s Currently In Development for the Next Release

After almost two years working away behind the scenes, testing and tweaking our product, the GoodDollar team was delighted to launch our digital, basic income wallet and protocol in early September. The enthusiastic global reaction and the rapid growth of the community have been awesome and beyond our expectations. 

The latest data, which can be viewed on our live dashboard, show there have been some 575,640 total successful claims across 173 countries – 89 per cent of the world's nations.

These results have been generated using the initial US$56,000 worth of DAI “staked for good” by eToro, our main sponsor, whose initial stake initiated the economy. 

So, What Did We Just Launch?

Our goal was to a) launch a system that creates and distributes digital basic income with modest monetary value to users, via G$ – a reserve-backed crypto-asset – and generate the value flow through use of decentralized blockchain networks (smart contracts); and b) do so in a financially sustainable and fully permissionless way, where the value that backs G$ is generated using decentralized finance protocols and public blockchain networks. For a more detailed answer on where the money is generated, please read our relevant “money flow” blog here.

To kickstart the system, eToro played the role as our first supporter: they “staked for good” 56,000 DAI (which is valued at US$56,000). That 56,000 DAI was locked to GoodDollar’s staking contract (“GoodStaking”), which was then staked to Compound and, in turn, resulted in basic income distribution in G$. The below diagram helps explain the process. 

1. Our first supporter, eToro, locked 56,000 DAI in Compound.
2. Compound generates interest (rates on DAI averaged 2.87 per cent during the past five weeks).
3. Interest generated is moved into the GoodReserve.
4. Every day reserve-backed G$ coins are minted through two mechanisms:

• Daily deposit to the GoodReserve.
• The decline in the reserve ratio. (Note that the reserve ratio started at 100 per cent on the day of launch and declines at a rate of 20 per cent per year.)

5. Supporters receive market rate interest payment in G$ coins. (eToro has donated all interest payments in G$ back to basic income pool.)
6. G$ coins minted are distributed as basic income to Claimers.

Many members of our burgeoning community are eager to know where we are going in our journey, so this serves as a roadmap – for both us and you. We are thankful, as always, for your support. 

Immediate Goals We Are Working Towards 

To provide a bit of context, I’ll explain the goals I believe we must achieve for the GoodDollar ecosystem to thrive. Then, I’ll go over the specifics of our immediate development iteration. 

1 Score Quick Wins 
When building any economy or ecosystem there is a chicken-and-egg problem. “If we don’t get the sellers the buyers won’t come ... and if we don’t have the buyers why would the sellers come?” That’s the challenge, and it is especially tricky to solve when you think about a complex ecosystem, as ours is, which includes Claimers, Supporters, vendors – and very soon voters, too. Quick wins are important to attract other players to the ecosystem. 

2 Lose All Single Points of Failure 
To create a resilient ecosystem we can’t have single points of failure; every function must have multiple alternatives in case the existing solution collapses. For example, for now you can claim G$ through one wallet; there’s only one reserve currency (cDAI): Compound is our sole permissionless protocol. This needs to change, and will. 

3 Empower The Community
The ultimate aim for GoodDollar is to become a decentralized autonomous organization that self manages its own economy: the GoodDAO. It’s not a straightforward process. We are well aware that the problem of creating a truly global basic income economy is too big to be solved in a single room and requires a collaborative effort and swarm intelligence, so great minds can help us all succeed.

What’s Next? Over To You

With our third and final goal above in mind, we welcome discussion about what you want to see to make GoodDollar as robust, useful and awesome as possible – contact us via our Telegram channel, or other methods listed on the website.

In our next development stage, we are working on releasing the following features over the coming three months: 

1 Sustainable Donation Mechanism
The more money “Staked for Good” to GoodDollar, the higher the daily interest payments to the GoodReserve, the larger the value of basic income distributed to Claimers. How to incentivize more value staked to GoodDollar? Release staking, of course! However, while we work on building out our staking capabilities, we still want to scale the amount of basic income generated and distributed on a daily basis. To this end, we are working on a feature that will enable people to make a “sustainable donation” to the system. A sustainable donation will generate basic income for users for forever, in perpetuity. Technically, it means that people will donate their funds directly into the GoodStaking contract. This will enable people to donate in varied crypto-currencies they already hold directly to GoodStaking. This also will enable people who hold ETH on the most popular centralized exchanges (Coinbase, Binance, eToro, etc.) to donate to the system sustainably and help break down barriers to entry.

2 Referral Bonuses 
As addressed above, quick wins are important to keep the momentum up. What better way to create momentum then encouraging our awesome users to receive bonus G$ for inviting people to join GoodDollar? Hence, we will be releasing a marketing referral programme in due course. When developing any startup there’s a simple rule: achieve engagement and the rest will follow.

Besides acting as a welcome reward for users who grow the GoodDollar community, referral bonuses serve another purpose critical to scaling the system. G$ is to be used when you are trading, bartering, collaborating with other users of the system. Your friends, family, and local merchants must hold G$ to be able to use it for goods and services. The referral bonus offers an incentive for you to invite your friends, family and local merchants to start claiming G$, and use it as an accepted form of payment.

3 Marketplace Experiments 
“Where can I use my G$?” We have heard this question more times than we can count. But the point is: we do hear you! We are working on a number of experiments that focus on connecting people and encouraging them to use G$ as a medium of exchange.

For speed and efficiency, we believe GoodDollar marketplaces should be established on external platforms. Whether that is best accomplished through existing platforms or on an open-source system is open to debate. For the moment we have opted to encourage GoodDollar community members to help set up marketplaces on WhatsApp, Facebook and Telegram. The reasoning behind this approach is as follows: 

a) GoodDollar is fully global and will require markets that serve multiple regions – on a global and local level – that offer nuanced capabilities (languages, or for instance, purchasing of physical objects). 

b) We want to meet the users where they are. Rather than re-inventing the wheel and crafting our own marketplace, we want users to find deals and offers in G$ where they already congregate: Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, and so on. 

c) Supporting and endorsing community-run marketplaces (and other new initiatives that strengthen GoodDollar) enables the core team to focus on making GoodDollar useful across a range of marketplaces and use-cases, enabling the core team to focus on executing its global vision. 

The first GoodDollar Facebook Marketplace, started by community member Travis Wade Miller, was launched a couple of weeks ago and has already seen over 6,300 people join the group and hundreds of digital services and digital items posted for sale.

4 Enhanced Statistics Dashboard
We have received many questions from users about the reach and impact of GoodDollar, and we are re-working our dashboard accordingly. Transparency is important to us, and we will be updating our current dashboard to include new data on the value of basic income distributed, amount staked for good, returning users and engagement, popular geographies and markets, links to blockchain explorer data, and more. We are listening to your feedback, and we are taking action.

5 GoodDAO And Decentralization
Monetary decisions are baked into the design of any financial protocol; at GoodDollar, we believe key monetary decisions should be moved to the hands of the community of users (an idea introduced in our White Paper). Examples of monetary tools in the GoodDollar system that we see being determined by the community are parameters such as the exit contribution (the fee taken when a Claimer swaps their G$ for another crypto-asset, currently 3 per cent); or the expansion rate (20 per cent currently). 

The central question at the top of our minds as we advance in our governance research is focused around who should have the greatest impact on G$ monetary policy? Options include: 

The Supporters. The people who commit capital to fund basic income play a critical role in the system, but should those who already hold a relative degree of wealth gain additional privileges as a result? 

The Holders. Does the fact someone holds a lot of G$ mean that he or she should have an outsized effect on its governance? If so: what’s the difference between G$ and our existing fiat economy? 

A full democracy. While one person, one vote might seem fair, what incentive does this provide to early adopters of the system who build its utility? Security challenges also arise. Who could stop one million people from uniting and just draining the system in such a case?  

Governance is a complex topic central to how the economy will work in the long term and who it will serve. Your feedback matters. Have thoughts on governance? Please write to us here. You also will hear from us in the form of questionnaires, surveys, and webinars to share your thoughts on governance.

So, thanks for sticking with us to learn what we are working on – and rest assured, in the short term, there is a looooooooooot more going on behind the scenes. 

We appreciate you and all your support in bringing GoodDollar alive!

How To Get Involved

• Sign up to begin to claim G$
• Follow GoodDollar on Twitter and Facebook
• Join our Telegram group
• Sign up to receive the weekly GoodNews on basic income and open finance