Should GnosisDAO fund Circles UBI R&D work? A Web of Trust DApp for Gnosis Safe & UBI as Public Goods

Governance
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Dear Gnosis Community,

My name is Julio. I am an economic anthropologist from Guatemala & I represent the Circles UBI Coop & the Circles DAO. Since we launched CirclesUBI in late 2020, Circles has gathered significant attention world-wide, with more than 100,000 Gnosis safes deployed to date and communities joining every month in different parts of the world. Since launch, we have been tirelessly working to bring Unconditional Basic Income to the world, starting with the Berlin Open Pilot, holding monthly international assemblies & participating in the wider UBI debates world-wide.

As I am sure many of you know, the CirclesUBI protocol relies on a very interesting technology called the Web of Trust (or WoT, for short), which basically sets the basis for a robust and non-bureaucratic decentralised identity system, whereby people are able to verify and trust that other people are who they say they are without the need for a central authority and creepy biometrics. We at Circles think it’s time to bring this gift to Gnosis as a whole and strengthen the social relations within our ecosystem in order to ignite more collaboration between the projects running on Gnosis Chain. Leveraging CirclesUBI’s WoT as a basis, we would like to propose the creation a Gnosis-safe WoT dapp and create the necessary tooling so that other Dapps, DAOs and projects using other WoT networks can integrate with the existing Circles WoT and use it for their own specific purposes. We think the Circles WoT holds immeasurable value and we would like to take concrete steps in order to share it with others and do the necessary R&D in order to bring this into being.

Furthermore, in order to achieve our mission of bringing UBI to the world and making Circles a global monetary system, we would like to request funding from the GnosisDAO in order to expand the current Berlin pilot and create new ones in different parts of the world within the next 18 months. We believe UBI should be seen as a Public Good for the 21st century economy. Gnosis is well positioned to provide the infrastructural backbone in order to make UBI happen. To support our efforts we are planning to build a fully open-source Payment API so that people everywhere can plug Circles into their existing preferred payment methods and co-pay using their UBI and significantly increase adoption. Lastly, we are also planning to add Group Currencies to the Circles ecosystem. To support this and start accruing revenues, the Circles team wants to develop a social DEX, whereby businesses, cooperatives, farms and any other groups that issue their own currency can create markets to sell them for DAI and other digital assets, allowing investors to support the development of decentralised basic income economies.

We think the time is ripe to create more formal synergies between CirclesUBI and GnosisDAO and begin to transition into a more decentralised and ecological economy. Gnosis currently provides the backbone infrastructure for this transition to take place and our mission is to improve it through everyday usage with a wide range of people. In order to fulfil this, this proposal would fund the Circles Coop e.G. and the Bitspossessed developer collective via the CirclesDAO to support the team’s operational costs for a period of one and a half years plus the expansion and creation of new Basic Income Open Pilots for a total of $3.571 Million, given 50% in GNO and 50% in DAI.

To recap: we are promising development of a WoT dapp for Gnosis-safe, expanding the Circles UBI pilots as Public Goods to increase uptake of Gnosis technologies, improving our core infrastructure and creating a social DEX as an investment vehicle.

Do you think this is something that the GnosisDAO community would support? We look forward to your thoughts and show you our fully fledged-out proposal!

Unconditionally,

Julio

Circles UBI

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Hi, I’m Blanka Vay, working on Circles UBI three years long with Julio, and I do support the proposal.

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And a short explanation:
Julio is the theoretical-political-scientific mind, I am organising the work.
What I would add / highlight from this perspective:
It’s a very exciting experience, how people, who are far from the crypto space, start to use a crypto currency, for daily use. People order food and pay the delivery costs with CRC. Our business partners pay their suppliers, partners with CRC, so a real business circles (Wirtschaftskreis) with real economical value in exchange, is running.
Meanwhile people have a real basic “pocket money”. They learn, what does it mean, that by Circles UBI communities indeed give each other basic income, it’s not just a fancy phrase, we are doing it, without waiting for the state.
We have in Berlin around 700 active users, and there are many communities around the world, who waiting for building the same, in Vancouver, in Vietnam, in Chile.
We achieved this in the last two years with almost permanent financial insecurity, we never had more than a three month runway.
We build pretty strong fundamentals for bringing this story to a real higher.
By the shifting the xDai chain into Gnosis chain we had the goal (GIP 16 - Gnosis Chain - xDAI/Gnosis merge)
“GnosisDAO will reserve 400k GNO to develop the Gnosis Chain ecosystem and incentivize usage. Applications native to the Gnosis Chain (e.g. Circles and DappNode) will be prioritized to create a unique value proposition.”
So I think this proposal could give the resources what the next level of growing needs of Circles UBI, and would be a very reasonably and essential use of the Gnosis resources.

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Mustardseed Trust supported Circles UBI last year with seed funding to move forward with this revolutionary idea: that the community can lead with an alternative currency UBI instead of waiting for the state and the fiat currency to implement. We are very happy with the progress so far and the collaboration with Circles. We look forward to seeing the years ahead as it grows in users and possibilities. This will be possible with support from this space.

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When I heard about Circles: I thought it too good to be true. A UBI without the state? I have been waiting years, decades for a workable solution to the malaise of central government. It is the right thing to choose as a policymaker but still because of short term politics, it is not investigated or discussed as a policy solution.
So - we have a community driven UBI on a digital platformin Circles UBI Berlin. To have a functioning digital UBI, it is crucial to have the technology of course but working with the community is messy. Especially if working with a part of the community that are vulnerable or less well served. This is a new method of payment, and whilst people are still understanding the technology, they will need hand holding. So the Berlin example is a perfect amalgamation of tech and community. When Circles Berlin receives the financial backing it deserves, it can then show all the cities, towns and villages around the world that the community can offer UBI, without needing the go ahead or support of the national government. This is true democracy at work.

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If the Gnosis Dao is financing it, I think it would be reasonable if the DAO members would get access to the tests/pilots (if they match the criteria).

For example: If you search a 30 year old woman from Argentina, why not pick a member from the DAO (if she exists in the DAO)

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That’s a great idea. I guess what would be interesting is to explore ways in which the Circles DAO could assign where the pilots happen based on the existing community members within the DAO.

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I do support the proposal，GnosisDAO needs constant exploration。

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Yes - I fully support the proposal!

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I fully support the proposal.
Circles allows communities to create UBI for each other via creating strong local economy. It’s a tool that can be used anywhere which gives people the power. What convinces me is that CRC is already being used in Berlin. A big variety of products and services is being offered for CRC. Berlin Pilot program is running with more than 20 businesses. Here is an article on the Berlin Pilot progress, with REAL testimonies from the businesses: Circular Berlin. Circles is a community currency which… | by Circles UBI Project | Medium

Nothing convinces me more than the real stories. The huge potential of the collaboration with GnosisDAO community is exciting.

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long-time fan of Circles checking in with support for this initiative <3

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This would be a great use of the GnosisDAO funds! I fully support this proposal.

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Yes, please do this…would be a big benefit for the ecosystem.

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Support. I can only provide a little money to support you every month. Come on

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support. i hope better

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Hi! Thanks for the proposal!
I understand your operational costs would be $3.571 millions, are you planning to sell half of that in GNO to cover your expenses?

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Generally, I do like the idea of UBI and WoT. However, I would appreciate if the team could provide some support for the financial request of $3.571M. There is no support for that number.

Appreciate if the team could outline:

  1. Who is the team behind project?
  2. How the budget is by “product” / protocol (salary costs, # of people involved by position, operational costs)
  3. How does that project generate profit / new users for Gnosis (benefit for Gnosis)?

I also don’t fully understand why we would require an additional DEX. Wouldn’t it work to utilize existing ones for market making between pairs?

Thanks in advance

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Dear claberus,

Thanks for your important question! We are closely monitoring the market situation and trying to manage a sustainable, long-term perspective that suits Circles, GnosisChain and the entire ecosystem, so let me explain how we plan to utilize the funds.

First of all, only about 55 % of the budget we plan with are operational costs addressing salaries of the two teams, Circles Coop and Bitspossessed collective, and respectively for ambassador positions within the Circles UBI DAO to be created for the Circles Movement as a whole. The other almost 45 % of the budget is considered as the treasury of the Circles UBI DAO, which will support a subsidy program we run here in Berlin with a selected group of business partners and incentivize future Circles Hubs in other regions. Additionally to the latter category, we also budgeted some smaller infrastructure costs (e.g. gas fees for our transaction: testing and live purpose). In the second round of the proposal making we will gladly share the finance plan explaining our cost centers in more depth. Secondly, we will ask for a 50/50 distribution of the budget in DAI and GNO.

The salary part of the budget will be utilized over a time frame of 12 month. Our experience of keeping liquidity for about 3 months seems to suit us quite well, so we do not intend to cash-out the higher amounts of tokens right at the beginning but over time (strategy: average-out, month-by-month). It’s also relevant to say that we will use the DAI part of the funds for the salaries particularly, not the GNO funds. Funds which will not be in the process of being cashed-out, will be applied in a yield farming strategy (e.g. DAI lending pools preferably in the GnosisChain ecosystem).

With the budget for the Circles UBI DAO, that is calculated for a period of 18 months, it is very similar: no need to sell huge parts of the GNO holdings planned for the DAO activities at a single point in time. Instead we plan to support the GnosisChain ecosystem by staking those funds, exclusively working with the yield and maintain a strong financial position for the DAO in the long run. Within the Circles Coop we have tested and implemented a couple of DappNodes already to gain knowledge about GNO staking and we’re experimenting in ways to improve overall infrastructure and user experience.

We are here to stay and would like to create the best possible bonds within the GnosisChain ecosystem, thus we will gladly consider any suggestions for handling the funds. Don’t hesitate to ask any further questions you may have.

Best regards in behalf of the entire Circles Coop,

Andreas (Circles Marketplace lead, member of the Circles Finance and Strategy group)

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Dear 0xSined,

Thanks for your important question! Always glad to hear feedback on how to improve the proposal.

Generally, in this phase 1 of the proposal making we’ve just summarized our work scope and intended to pitch a more detailed proposal including a finance plan in phase 2 & 3. Due to the work regarding the economic transition (more details here: https://joincircles.net/) we are facilitating right now, we were hoping to update the proposal with all the details you ask for after we transition successfully.

Parts of your budget related questions I answered for the comment above. The finance plan to come will give more details on the 24,2 full-time positions for the course of 12 - 18 month.

For your first question, you can get a good insight into the Circles Coop team and it’s structure, who is behind this proposal, by browsing our coop website: https://circles.coop/

Your two latter questions regarding benefits for Gnosis and an additional DEX should be answered within the longer proposal we drafted, where we indepth on these topics. For now we can say that we expect to continue driving mass adoption of Gnosis-safe infrastructure (we’re at 140k successfully deployed safes so far) via Circles for non-crypto natives. Revenue wise we expect to accrue it via the social DEX as a larger collaborative effort with other community-driven projects within GC and a potential WoT dapp token. We are super open to leverage existing DEXs, for us it is more a design question for us about the types of exchanges that the projects would need.

Best regards in behalf of the entire Circles Coop,

Andreas (Circles Marketplace lead, member of the Circles Finance and Strategy group)

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Hi Claberus! We’re looking to move this to Phase 2 given the response so far from the community. Do you know who to contact so we can have the permission to edit the post and share our full proposal? Can you help us? Thanks!! :slight_smile:

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