Pyramid schemes could be viewed as a voluntary and decentralized wealth transfer system, where each person that joins is driven by the promise of profit. Nathan Waters coined the idea that a form of decentralized basic income system could be achieved through a “positive pyramid scheme” (video). I took this idea to me, because it seemed to be describe a system I had been working on that I called swarm-redistribution.

In a recent article on Basic Income Earth Network (basicincome.org), I described the system that I call Resilience as that

Those who pay forward a Taxeme will get rewards from future people and companies whose transactions and business grow outwards from where the Taxeme originated, forming a perpetual wealth redistribution cycle that is driven not by violence, but by something similar to the golden rule.

Nathan Waters said in a chat we had that

I’ve got this image in my head of branching fractal pyramid+networks pulsing out every time I buy something and then pulsing back money.

So, I’ve recently come to look at my idea as a form of “positive pyramid scheme”. Every single transaction you make will grow into a new pyramid, and you are incentivized to join for similar reasons that people have joined pyramid schemes in the past: The promise of profit.

You are only part of a pyramid for a short time. If we look at a standard pyramid scheme like the one on ethereumpyramid.com, each level in it would only be able to receive a limited amount, and it would then decay, leaving the next level as the major winner.

Each level would also be constantly branching into new pyramids. The swarm-redistribution system is based on what I’ve called dividend pathways, inspired originally by the trust-lines in Ryan Fugger’s Ripple framework (2003).