usama9500
commented
2 years ago The issue has been closed as the first round has concluded! 🙌
Closed usama9500 closed 2 years ago
usama9500
commented
2 years ago The issue has been closed as the first round has concluded! 🙌
Tell us about the community that you are nominating
It's called the Center for Collaborative Economics. In its initial phase, it is dedicated to facilitating crypto donations to registered nonprofits aligned with the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. To that end, we have developed an app called Give XRP for the XRP Ledger. The eventual (more complicated) goal is to build a DeFi-enabled DAO which provides liquidity for banks and corporations using Ripple's Liquidity Hub project (and in doing so benefits individual users as well as the system as a whole). Our models for this project are the Mutualism of Pierre Proudhon, the Buddhist Economics of EF Schumacher and the co-operative industries of Mondragon. Amusingly, the name we chose to describe this project when it was started in October 2021 is "Collaborative Economics." From your article "Collaborative Economics: A Non-Violent Revolution Against Technocracy," I see that you guys are on the same page. Great minds think alike!
What public goods does this community support or will they support in the future?
In the initial stages, this project provides benefits to individuals, nonprofits and the populations they serve (and therefore the wider system). Briefly: a) by making crypto donations to registered nonprofits, donors can reduce their tax obligations without incurring capital gains taxes and exchange fees by "cashing out" into fiat b) nonprofits gain access to the quickly-growing field of cryptocurrency donations (which grew from roughly $30 million in 2020 to $300 million in 2021 and continues to grow) c) the nonprofits are able to expand the breadth and depth of their work with their new funds- our initial projects are re-forestation, youth literacy, overdose prevention and indigenous rights. Later areas of emphasis include mutual aid organizations, local economies (for example, craft industry and farmer's markets/CSAs), scientific and medical research, and the creation of a decentralized Community Land Trust.
Who are the people, DAOs and other organizations already part of this community?
My name is Evan Hudson and I'm the founder. My lead developer is named Julian Kingman, who has experience on both UI and backend development. Nicole Rains is helping design and program the generative art for our NFTs (when users donate through our app, they receive an XRP Ledger NFT representing their donation) and Will Mekemson is helping with web design and social media. Keri Jean Schwanekamp and Cory Krieger are assisting with business development, nonprofit outreach and customer experience. We also have a number of expert advisors with decades of experience in nonprofit organization and donations. This project received a grant from Ripple's subsidiary XRPL Grants in their second wave of grants, and applied for the third wave as well.
Why do you think this community needs a Commons?
The idea behind collaborative economics (our version anyway, lol) is that by pooling our efforts we might achieve greater benefits not only for the ecosystem at large but for ourselves as well. To put it more concretely, if many users pool their cryptocurrency in order to lend it out using decentralized finance, then they might be able to secure more favorable terms from institutional customers such as fintech companies, corporations, banks, central banks and governments. So that's the business side of things.
On a human level, we aim to use cryptocurrency to basically fund locally-focused projects and community-led nonprofits. (Part of the fees from donations will be directed to participating users). Creating a DAO to decide how/where to allocate funds (for example, choosing new projects) and working together on common goals (for example, funding the purchase of property for an intentional community) would benefit from the creation of a Commons.
What other resources do you have that will make your Commons deployment a success?
We already have funding and hope to secure more in the coming wave of XRPL Grants. If that doesn't work out, then we'll be funding this out of pocket until we get our Give XRP xApp to market and start accepting donations for our nonprofit partners, at which point the project will become self-sustaining by taking a small cut of the fees (in line with crypto industry practices we are looking at 2-3% donation fees).
Here is an overview of our Give XRP app prototype, which we submitted to the Hack to the Future 4 hackathon and were selected as finalists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKoZfHDblKo
Thank you for your consideration!
Do you have an idea for the name of this Commons?
"The Infinite Game"
Submitted by [Discord handle or Twitter handle]
Discord: Center4CollabEcon#1426 Twitter: @C4CollabEcon