Block.one speaks to KARMA’s Dallas Rushing

How would you describe your DAPP?

Dallas Rushing: KARMA App, built on EOSIO, incentivizes users to have beneficial interactions in the world, post them and receive KARMA by other users upvoting their posts. KARMA creates a positive feedback loop between beneficial human interactions and tokenized incentives. The actions KARMA incentivizes will create an exponential effect of good in the world amongst individuals living in communities. Every single day, billions of humans interact with one another. Broadly speaking, the majority of these interactions are positive. Creating a reward system for these actions through tokenization will be the fuel needed for the exponential growth of human good towards one another. Beyond that, we really envision KARMA having the ability to change the way that charity is done and organized around the world.

Where did your initial idea come from?

Dallas Rushing: Both my co-founder and I live in Medellin, Colombia. Our apartment is centered between the more industrial business area and the rest of the city. This city has such an energy to it despite the fact that many people living in the most parts of the city don’t have much. We came up with the idea while thinking about how to incentivize individuals in wealthier areas to help those in need, while simultaneously empowering those living in less fortunate areas to help their communities and be able to earn something of value for themselves in the process.

Can you introduce your team and tell us what makes it special?

I’m Dallas Rushing. I’m a YouTuber who teaches audiences about blockchain technologies and an entrepreneur. I have a digital marketing business, MegaTakeoff.com. Matthew Spataro is the founder of multiple software projects and a blockchain enthusiast. He focuses mainly on marketing and partnerships for KARMA. Leo Ribeiro is the creator of one of the first EOS DAPPs, MonsterEOS. He is an experienced fintech software engineer focused on everything blockchain and smart contract-related. Dallas Johnson is focused on building KARMA for IOS users and is a developer with extensive experience working in the tech hubs of London and Melbourne. His focus has been in mobile banking — particularly in reducing the friction between security and usability on the iOS platform. He also currently works with eosDAC. John Williamson is focused on building KARMA for Android users. He is experienced in React and Node.JS, with a focus on EOSIO smart contract development and integration. And Corvin Meyer auf der Heide is focused on the backend and the Web Client for KARMA. He is an experienced developer at a European data privacy consultancy and has more than five years’ experience as a Full-Stack-Developer.

What stage is the project at and what are your plans for scaling up?

Dallas Rushing: The KARMA airdrop is set to begin on July 1. After the airdrop, the focus will be completely on development of the KARMA application for iOS and Android, and on securing other partners for the KARMA movement. As far as scaling up, the plan is to secure partnerships with large socially conscious businesses and work with influencers across multiple platforms. People can access our white paper here.

Why did you decide to use blockchain technology, and specifically on EOSIO?

Dallas Rushing: We feel that a project like KARMA needs to be on a blockchain for several reasons. Transparency goes hand-in-hand with the KARMA project and will be essential both initially and for some of the features to come. Transparency and accountability are key ingredients missing from the majority of charities in the world today. We felt that this was a perfect project for the EOS Community. EOSIO gives us the ability to provide our users with instant and fee-less transactions. In our view, it’s the only blockchain protocol that enables us to provide a great user experience for our users and can support KARMA as the project scales up to millions of users.

How has the EOS Community responded to your project?

Dallas Rushing: The community has been amazing. We’ve had countless people in the community offering ideas to the project, and offering help in connecting us with the right people in the space. People like Nathan James, Michael Yeates, Sam Kazemian, Luke Stokes and Denis Carriere have been extremely supportive. We were invited to present at the Tulip Conference in San Francisco, and the other day I did a Skype interview to present KARMA to EOS Israel. There’s no shortage of intelligent people willing to help out within the community.

Dallas Rushing speaking at Tulip Conference 2018 in San Francisco

More information on the Karma App available on www.karmaapp.io