Matt Ridley famously said in a TED talk that has been said that “innovation happens when ideas have sex”.

Bonnum Network got insights by other blockchain initiatives and we are applying those concepts to the problem of cash based assistance and Universal Basic Income. The projects which inspired us are a) Building Blocks from the UNFP, b) Democracy Earth and c) Aragon.

Biometrics + Blockchain from “Building Blocks” project by the UNFP

The building blocks project is an United Nation Food Program initiative to distribute cash assistance using Ethereum´s network so individuals in a refugee camp can purchase goods in a supermarket using biometrics inputs.

Before the creation of the Building Blocks project, in order to distribute cash based assistance to the refugees, the UNFP had to rely on financial intermediaries, such as Banks, Mobile Money companies and cash agents. Those intermediaries provided services such as account creations, resources distribution, transaction authorization and reporting. However, relying on traditional financial intermediaries implied in significant costs per transaction and delays for reconciliation.

The Building Blocks creators, then created a private fork of Ethereum´s network and customized it to its needs. They also created a user subscription and authentication mechanism that uses the biometrics of the Iris to validate the user.

According to this video published on youtube on November 2017, the project had been online for only 5 months, serves 10,500 beneficiaries, distributed $1.6 Million cash assistance and saved 98% in fees and transaction costs. All of that with speed, flexibility and privacy for the users´ data.

The insight: What if we could make this logic to work in a regular smartphones/tablets, and make vendors all over the world to accept payments for goods and services from individuals receiving cash based assistance? All of that using regular smartphones or tablet, registered on the Blockchain and with a cost of < 1% of the transaction?

Liquid Democracy from Democracy.Earth

Democracy.Earth is an awesome open source project being developed by a US non profit with the same name. They are proponents of what they call “liquid democracy”, which is the ability for you to delegate your vote to an individual or organization you trust on a particular issue and, at any time, you can withdraw your vote from individual A and delegate that vote to individual B. This is very different to representative democracy in which we cast votes every four years and that “political intermediary” will then represent us in all important issues.

The insight: The Liquid democracy concept can be incorporated in Bonnum to allow donors to choose who are the organizations or individual they will delegate the power to choose the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries, then, can vote on how satisfied they are with the services provided by their “Oracle”. The oracle can either be a for profit or a non profit, and would be paid to provide liquidity services for merchants, exchanging crypto for cash.

DAOs/DACs from Aragon

Don Tapscott said that “the firms are being reinvented” thanks to the blockchain. Instead of vertically integrated companies, blockchains allow the creation of DAO (Decentralized and Autonomous Organizations), which are the evolution of the firms.

Decentralized and Autonomous Organizations are controlled by the sum of the will of the individuals that are part of it, with little space for hierarchy and with a lower cost of coordination and transactions.

Aragon Network is an open source project that makes the creation of Decentralized and Autonomous Organization easy and cheap, by providing a “virtual jurisdiction”, “an online decentralized court system”, to allow the peers to resolve disputes and coordinate the fundraising and application of resources.

Insight: Instead of DAOs, I think the best term for what we want to create is DAC (Decentralized and Autonomous Communities). That is because the members that join together to help the individuals or reduce poverty in a particular region are not necessarily members of an organization, but are a communities made of donors, fund managers, oracles (last mile aid organizations), merchants and beneficiaries that coordinate and transact among each other providing full transparency and accountability to all members of the community.

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Can you see the vision of what we are trying to create?

We want to allow the distribution of basic income and humanitarian aid with a cost of < 1% of the value transferred, anywhere in the world.

We want to allow the poorest individuals in the world to have access to cryptocurrencies to HODL, buy or sell with just a smile.

We want to allow the easy creation of Decentralized and Autonomous communities made of donors, fund managers, oracles (last mile aid organizations), merchants and beneficiaries that coordinate and transact among each other providing full transparency and accountability to everyone.

We want each member of those Decentralized Communities to have a voice and to vote on each other´s performance based on Liquid Democracy. Therefore, the members´ social graph will delegate the authority and trust in the network to the best members to accomplish its mission.

We want to create a safety net system for humanity that allow us to take care of each other independently of Governments. A system that acknowledges our interdependency and make capitalism to work for all of us.

This is Bonnum Network.

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