Source: GoodDollar.
Summary
- GoodDollar is a Web3-based universal basic income (UBI) solution and anti-poverty protocol that connects people with money to people in need through DeFi.
- It offers a direct aid-disbursement mechanism that empowers people to easily onboard to Web3, obtain digital wallets, and either fund or claim GoodDollar (G$) tokens.
- Due to blockchain’s open infrastructure and the composable nature of DeFi, any individual or corporation can transparently and permissionlessly fund the GoodDollar UBI system; this challenges traditional models of corporate giving and philanthropic capital.
- Check out more examples of crypto in action.
Project Goals
The goal of GoodDollar is to combat global wealth inequality by lowering the barriers to entry to DeFi and providing access to free digital assets, distributed as UBI via the GoodDollar token (G$).
Additionally, the project empowers people to seek financial freedom through community grants managed by GoodDollar subDAOs.
Implementation Strategy
To build a UBI system fueled by social investment, GoodDollar needed to address two objectives: ensuring that funds reached the people who needed them, and ensuring the protocol never lacked funding by distributing only the interest earned on staked trust funds.
GoodDollar has kept the value of daily distributed G$ purposely low so that the majority of funds are available for people in less stable economies, and so people earning income in stronger economies are disincentivized from filing claims. Additionally, building the token based on holding U.S. dollar-pegged stable coins in reserve gives people all over the world the ability to claim cryptocurrency with limited volatility—every single day, if they choose. People get paid each time they claim UBI, and can claim once every 24 hours. Finally, the project designed a digital wallet with a simple onboarding process that allows sign-ins through Facebook or Google accounts, and can be accessed via the web or a smartphone app. This lowers barriers to entry for less tech-savvy users, and presents an opportunity for stable additional income for people who may struggle with financial stability.
To keep a steady stream of funding in the network, GoodDollar leverages two types of crypto-specific lending or staking: yield farming and liquidity mining. Both of these processes reward funders who add crypto to a communal liquidity pool. In essence, this means GoodDollar funders earn rewards on their crypto while simultaneously enabling the interest from the principal to fund free G$ for members who claim daily tokens as UBI. This enables the sustainable generation of UBI.
Community members can also buy and sell tokens directly in the GoodDollar Reserve, a feature that may facilitate the scaling of the product.
GoodDollar launched its wallet in 2019, the protocol in 2020, and its DAO in 2021, and now has a community of almost 500,000 members across 181 countries.
Policy & Industry Considerations
As GoodDollar expands, its performance may strengthen the case for UBI. Policymakers who are unfamiliar with UBI can monitor GoodDollar’s progress as a proof of concept. Additionally, the transparency of blockchain and the integration of GoodDollar into existing ecosystems create an open database cataloging the impacts and effects of UBI. Anyone eager to study the effect of UBI may use it.
Business Data
Status: Active – in-market
Technology: Celo, Fuse, and Ethereum
Location: Cayman Islands.
Constituency: Global. Present in 181 countries. Biggest presence in Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, and Brazil.
Entity: Good Dollar Ltd.
Business model: Distribution of endowment yield for universal basic income. Corporate social responsibility initiatives from eToro covered the initial founding and building of the protocol, as well as current operations. Plans for the cost of operations to be fully covered by the community over the long term.
Financing stage: Corporate Sponsorship
Funding sources: eToro
Resources and References: Website: https://www.gooddollar.org/
Additional references: Documentation.
GoodDollar Dashboard.
This article originally appeared in the January 2023 Income and Wealth Creation in Web3 Report by the Crypto Research and Design Lab (CRADL) – a research organization committed to objectively documenting people, organizations, and activities in the crypto ecosystem and their impact on the broader industry.
