Artist Residency with Circles UBI

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#1

@rosano asks:

spoke to a friend from germany who encouraged me to do some kind of artist residency in berlin that’s designed to use https://circles.garden . i assume you know of them and would be curious to hear if you have any opinions on their tech.

It’s built on XDaiChain now GnosisChain, a Proof of Authority chain (so no massive energy usage) that is Ethereum compatible.

Circles gives everyone their “own” credit line / tokens underneath. The paper behind it is pretty readable.

I have an account on there, and some of the people were looking at using Fission’s stack to build with very early on. Here’s my link https://circles.garden/profile/0x51D9E1969202321BA0D7Bc9fFcc6327bB981AB93 — it’s all built on trust and directly knowing people “in real life”. Once you sign up, let me know your profile address and I’ll extend my trust to you.

The main usage is really in Berlin as I understand it. They’re looking to have little local usage groups all over.

The Problem With NFTs, Dan Olson
#2

@boris Thanks for writing all this! I’m getting a good feeling about it so i just signed up: https://circles.garden/profile/0x608b0eF047A5d4367Cb390B5Db0F77ef82A78d7b

I’ll check out their whitepaper and extensive FAQ and share thoughts here.

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#3

Thanks for adding those links!

#4

[Everyone has their own currency operating by a shared set of rules, culminating to form a kind of monetary fabric.]
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[Each personal currency mints new coins for the associated person every minute, and the quantity inflates each year.]
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[To mitigate the risk of any account turning into a sybil, trust can be revoked, which allows the revoker to continue spending the revokee’s coins but not receive new coins from them.]
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[If Carol and Bob are strangers (not yet established mutual trust) but both extend trust to Alice, they can send each other money by transacting in AliceCoin; through transitive chains of trust Carol and Bob receive BobCoin and CarolCoin, respectively.]
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[If a trusted person creates a Fake account, other people cannot receive FakeCoin until they trust it, and that person can only spend it if other people trust the account.]

#5

https://joincircles.net/faq/

[People receive CRC unconditionally and the supply is constantly increasing, which incentivises spending (flowing) over hoarding.]
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[The current dominant monetary system is like agricultural monoculture, which devitalizes the soil and requires pesticides to protect. Circles is more diverse:] if you lose your strawberry fields, you will still have your roses and potatoes and cannabis.
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[Being careless with trust in Circles mostly hurts you personally and not the whole system.]
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[Trust limits are the percentage of your Circles that you are willing to hold in a given person’s coin (50% by default, but may be lowered or cancelled eventually). They prevent you from losing all your tokens through transitive transactions.]
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[You can start your own local Circles community without three trust connections by sending 0.1–0.2 xDAI to your account, but this will only be useful if you invite your network to exchange products and services with you.]
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[“Shared wallets” do not issue UBI or receive trust, but they can be opened and shared by anyone in a group or organization. Businesses should not use personal wallets because taxes are complicated.]
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[UBI stops if you don’t log into your wallet for 90 days, thus incentivises meaningful usage. To receive UBI after that you need to create a new wallet and transfer over your old CRC.]
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[Circles is not on any crypto exchange as it is meant for spending, not for getting rich. You might convince someone to give you other currencies for your tokens, but the peer-to-peer nature of Circles makes it hard to give liquidity to the whole network.]
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[The co-op covers transaction costs on the xDAI chain so that buyers and sellers can use the marketplace for free.]

#6

Here’s a newsletter that talks about scaffolding local communities:

https://us10.campaign-archive.com/?u=ce7ac2789abf7ce01f739a2b6&id=778e87c297

Through Circles (CRC), we are building a nascent cooperative infrastructure that ensures more ecological driven production that is available for everyone at affordable prices, and paid for in CRCs. For example, small and medium farms in Brandenburg internalize the cost of distribution, which adds up a lot of labor hours and brings up prices. The Circles team has been connecting with small innovative ecological producers like Tiny Farms so that they can share costs, space, and information with other farms to organize a more cooperative distribution from Brandenburg to Berlin.

The second part of the economic circle brings us to our lovely friends at SuperCoop, the fastest growing cooperative supermarket in the city of Berlin. We have recently partnered up with them and are working towards allowing them to pay for food in CRCs from local farms, which they can also sell to their members and non-members for CRCs. Click here to watch a video of SuperCoop’s awesome new place and mission.

The other circles we are building involve lots of beer! Due to the COVID pandemic, last year many breweries in Germany overproduced beer and now have a surplus. Our buddies at Quartiermeister had a lot of 50lt barrels that could not be sold. They gave our partners at CoopSpace, Cafe Madame, Moos Fabrik and SuperCoop a taste of what a cooperative beer looks like. With Circles, we turn surpluses that would otherwise go to waste into flowing resources :beers:.

To create a long-lasting cooperative infrastructure, we are in the position to support the businesses who accept CRC by buying back their tokens and paying for them with Euros. In the long run we will take off the peg, but for the time being, this ensures full trust that people can cover their costs, and helps to accelerate the circulation of a more fair economy.