Martin Köppelmann: Circles – Creating Universal Basic Income Economies for Everyone

Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

Circles UBI is a blockchain-based Universal Basic Income created to promote local economy within communities. It was recently launched on Ethereum’s POA network.

The idea is to create a parallel economy by forming trust lines within Circles. Anyone who joins Circles receives a basic income regularly, without conditions. And the more connected your community is, the more valuable your Circles become. Also it is fully decentralized. What makes Circles special is that it doesn't market itself to anyone specific in crypto. It positions itself as an ecosystem and protocol that can help anyone create and promote a local economy within their local community. In the current economic crisis, this is a hugely powerful tool for societies to utilise.

Martin Köppelmann, CEO of Gnosis, joins us for his third appearance on the show. He is also the creator of Circles and chats to us about why he believes the world needs this, and how the project works.

Topics covered in this episode:

• What Universal Basic Income (UBI) is and Martin’s interest and support of it
• Pros and cons of funding UBI through taxation
• Explaining Circles’ decentralized UBI
• How ‘personal tokens’ work in Circles
• Issuance and trust connections
• Dealing with sybil attacks
• On throughput limits
• Conditions attached to your account
• How UBI keeps up with inflation
• Getting started with Circles
• Attracting non crypto users and driving demand
• Can Circles move onto Layer-2 - UX Design choices
• Learn more about Circles and get involved

Episode links:

• Circles UBI website
• Circles Whitepaper
• Martin on Epicenter - Episode 271, How the dxDAO could become the world’s largest organization
• Martin on Epicenter - Episode 139, Gnosis – The Ethereum Prediction Market
• Find Circles on Meetup
• Circles Twitter
• Martin Twitter

Sponsors:

• Algorand: Learn how to start building on Algorand – Free webinar on November 17th - https://algorand.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/365