WHIRL is building a socially driven, transparent platform with a pay it forward economy that’s engineered to inspire a whirlwind of good around the globe. In this document we discuss some of the steps we’re taking to ensure that our platform holds itself up to the highest ethical standards.

Legally-vetted

Straight away, you should know that WHIRL has worked closely with expert legal counsel at every phase of our development. Our legal team has informed, reviewed, and signed off on our fundamental business and economic model, our token sale issuance, and all of our key documentation to ensure that the platform we’re building is beyond legal reproach.

You can see evidence of that with how we handle KYC (know your customer) regulation. KYC is an integral part of our platform, not only for token investors, but for anyone who uses WHIRL to raise money. It would be much easier for our growth to allow people to create campaigns anonymously, but we require KYC to ensure that WHIRL isn’t used for illegal activity, like money laundering or the funding of criminal enterprises.

Beyond strict legal compliance, we also set a high bar for the types of campaigns that are allowed to raise money on WHIRL. For example, we don’t allow campaigns with pornographic content or campaigns that involve hate speech. Instead, we work hard to recruit and promote partners for campaigns that will raise money for urgent humanitarian causes.

A team with a track record of integrity

When you’re evaluating the ethics of a startup, pay close attention to the people at the helm. Are they first-time founders or do they have a track record? What companies were they involved with previously? What do they have to lose? Every member of WHIRL’s leadership team has built a name for themselves over the last decade or longer by either founding a successful company or by leading a world-changing nonprofit organization. To learn more about our team, read our blog post on the topic!

Bringing transparency to crowdfunding

Transparency is at the heart of WHIRL. We only list a limited number of campaigns at once, so we ensure that the process for how a campaign launches is both fair and fully inspectable. At any time, you can browse WHIRL’s campaign queue and confirm that it’s working as promised. We founded WHIRL in part because we didn’t like the backroom deals that decided which campaigns got featured on other platforms. We want everyone, rich or poor, Asian or European, crypto enthusiast or fiat devotee to benefit from our platform equally.

Our pay it forward model

At the heart of WHIRL is our pay it forward economic model, which we designed to create a positive feedback loop of generosity and giving. Here’s a quick refresher on how our model works. You back projects, earning 7–20 Karma for every dollar you contribute. When you’ve earned enough Karma, you can create a fundraising campaign, which enters our queue. Eventually, your campaign goes live and you can raise money that’s capped by the amount of Karma you’ve earned. Then your Karma resets and you start again. You’re delighted by the results and, using a portion of what you’ve raised, you restart your journey, contributing to others.

WHIRL’s model is new when applied to digital crowdfunding, but it’s been around for ages in other forms. Immigrant and ethnic communities around the world have leaned on community giving pools to help their members fund their most pressing needs. Members give today, so they can receive tomorrow. It’s a proven model that works and prevents members of the community from losing face begging for donations, resorting to theft, or having to take out crippling bank loans.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of scammers in blockchain. Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes proliferate and projects like Bitconnect have swindled investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, so it’s important to quickly touch on why we’re in a different category. The schemes we mentioned earlier all share a few characteristics: they don’t have real business models, the people at the top always stay at the top, they rely on exponentially increasing membership to fund old members, and when they get to a certain size, they vanish. In contrast, WHIRL has a sustainable business model driven by a 5% platform commission; it resets people’s Karma back to zero when they finish fundraising and those people will re-enter the pool at the bottom again to pay forward what they’ve raised; it doesn’t need infinite, exponential growth to survive; and its foundations actually strengthen, not wobble, as more people join and help one another in an infinite feedback loop.

In conclusion

As you’ve seen, ethics is one of WHIRL’s core values. We’re legally vetted, helmed by one of the most trustworthy teams in blockchain, socially driven and committed to transparency, and are building a sustainable business that can last for the long haul. Join us on our mission to inspire a whirlwind of good that will echo around the globe.