martin circles post from 2015
Introducing Circles â Universal Basic Income
âCirclesâ will be a currency created from basic incomes only. In the system outlined in the following, new money is constantly distributed to every account participating in the system. The money in every individual account are uniquely identifiable and only gain in value if the account connects to other accounts and joins groups. This incentivizes every user to limit themselves to one account.
Everyone can create a new account
An account will constantly generate an income (1000 units per week)
The rate at which the income is generated will increase by g=5% per year
A new account starts with the income that will be generated in the next 3 months
One month of income is for the account owner â the other two are reserved for people who trust this account, it is called the trustee reward.
Accounts can trust one  another. This will allow both accounts holders to exchange their coins 1:1.
Trust can be revoked by both parties.
If an account trusts another account it is credited with half of the remaining trustee reward.
Arbitrary groups can be created.
Groups can verify accounts as members.
Groups can exclude accounts as members.
All members can convert their private money into group money (1:1 exchange rate). This exchange is irreversible.
The main purpose of this project is to establish a world wide basic income.
A world wide basic income is something so powerful that no single entity in the world should have control over it in order to preclude manipulation. Particularly, there should be no central authority that decides which person can get a basic income and which person cannot.
The solution should support a smooth growth. If the only two equilibria are âno one participatesâ or âall people participateâ then it is nearly impossible to change to the âallâ equilibrium, especially if no central entity is involved. In the approach presented here, groups can grow locally, even starting at a single family level. However, there are no constraints on subsystem growth. All subsystems can  merge into a global system at any time.
The system can support something like a world currency. However â if this currency fails at some point, it is not the whole system that would collapse. Instead, the system would fall back on the group level underneath, for instance a country group. Even if the group currencies should fail at one point (because they accepted too many members that just consume their income and donât provide any goods or services for their income) it can still fall back on the personal level where the value of a currency is closely related to the personal relationship with the other person.
d. Incentives for organic growth
The trust reward should help to give a strong incentive to bring new people to the system. Adding new accounts to your circle is to some degree a risk. To balance the incentives and enable growth we introduced the trust reward. It creates common incentives for both the newcomer and the people already established in the network: Through the acknowledgment of the trust relationship, the newcomer gains network credibility and the first people to place their trust in the newcomer benefit financially. The risk inherent to trusting a newcomer are only out-weight by the benefits if the newcomer is be-known to the people who place their trust in them. If the newcomer does not turn into a viable member of the network the trust placed in the newcomer was misguided and the trust results in a financial loss.
Some people argue that Bitcoin was a one time shot. A currency has to be scarce to some degree to function as such. A single digital currency can have features that ensures the scarcity of this currency â however, if other digital currencies become successful, scarcity as a characteristic of digital currencies overall becomes questionable. This is especially true for a basic income. We strongly believe that a basic income currency can only be successful if it is the only one that is commonly used. This is why we keep this proposal as general as possible. The only free parameter crucial to the system is the growth rate g and needs to be discussed carefully. The trust reward is not strictly necessary, however, it does not affect the long term equilibria of this approach.
If A and B trust each other, and B and C trust each other, then A and C can pay each other as long as B is liquid. If A is a customer and C is a merchant, A could send money to C. The network will automatically send a-coins from A to B and b-coins in exchange for the a-coins from B to C.
The growth rate g determines
the ratio between the total coin supply and the income per month. This number is subject to discussion. It should be chosen to maximize the value of the income.
Note that a high growth rate (inflation rate) destroys the capability of the currency as a store of value. Consequently, the potential dollar market cap is a function of the growth rate: market cap = f(g). (The market cap of the currency is a function of g that most likely will decrease sharply for bigger g like 10% â 15%). g should be chosen to maximize g*f(g).
The growth rate can be seen as a capital tax that finances the basic income. People with exactly the average wealth would pay the same amount of money in fees as they would get from their UBI.
Groups are necessary to bring more stability into the system. Holding coins of a specific person always carries a certain risk. In some sense, the value of theses coins is always backed by the person. If the person dies or more broadly speaking the trust in this person sinks, these coins may become worthless. However, as long as a person is member of a group, the money can be converted irreversibly into group money. It is in the responsibility of the groups themselves to keep them tight on the one hand to not dilute the value, but on the other hand have a positive network effect. This makes it interesting for merchants to accept such group money.
Q: Can I create 100 fake accounts that all trust each other and abuse the system?
A: You can create them but this will not create value. As long as nobody else trusts these accounts they can only exchange money with each other, rendering all the money worthless.
Q: Why should I add someone else to my trust network?
A. Your trust network is what gives your personal currency value beyond what you are willing to provide for this currency. Lets say 100 people are in your trust network, that means that 100 people are accepting your currency. Even for those who do not accept your currency directly, may accept it indirectly since they know they can use it to get goods or services from 100 people. Accepting money is all about network effects.
However, on the other hand accepting a new person bears some risk. If this person turns out to be a fake account you will end up having his worthless money and the scammer can spend your money. To make the incentive higher to be among the first to accept an new account nevertheless, the trustee reward was introduced. However, accepting a completely new account will and should be backed by a personal relationship of the two participants that ensures that the new person participates honestly in the system. If they donât the only person who loses money is the person who wrongly trusted them.
Q: What is the money of an account worth?
A: In theory it should be max(value(group1), value(group2), value(group3), ⌠, value(connection1), value(connection2), âŚ). Note that only connections to liquid people count. As long as the memberships in the groups and the connections are stable (or expected to be stable) there should be no incentive to convert money into group money.This concludes in the assumption that it is not necessary to convert your money into group money or to exchange money with one of your trusted connections. Just having the ability to do so makes your money at least as worthy. This could stabilize the system and allow user A to connect to user B despite the fact that user Bâs coins are worth less. This connection could raise the value of user Bâs coins without changing the value of Aâs coins. However, this stops if B tries to abuse this connection, but in this case, A can cancel the trust relationship.
From time to time users could lose their connections because they create panic. This is the unlikelier the better the user is connected. This strengthens the incentive to concentrate all your social connections/ reputation into one account.
Q: How much of the group money is yours?
A: The amount that youâve converted. Only difference is that now itâs no longer tied to you as an individual. This means that if you do something bad, the group cannot do anything to revoke your group money. However, they can kick you out of the group.
With groups exchanges are mono directional with individuals. Only individual => group, NOT group => individual. However, exchanges are is bi-directional between groups. So Berlin <=> SF is OK.
The easiest way to implement Circles would be as contracts on Ethereum. Latest technical discussion here. We started a new forum all about basic income and circles here. Your are more than welcome to join!
The contracts would look similar to this:
accounts[owner] = Â (time_created, money_spent, trustee_reward)
groups[owner] = Â [member1, member2 ,..]
trustees[account] = [account1, account2, âŚ] // each relationship need only be saved once
Dictionary â > Dictionary -> int
balance[owner][foreign_account] = amount
  trustee_reward = (1000*12) * 1.02 ** years
  accounts[message.sender] = (block.time â 1month, 0, trustee_reward)
add_account(account1, account2):
  //somehow check that both accounts signed the message
  if int(account1) > int(acount2):
    trustees[account1].append(account2)
    trustees[account2].append(account1)
  //credit and update the trustee reward
  balance[account1][account2] = accounts[account2][3] / 2
  balance[account2][account1] = accounts[account1][3] / 2
  accounts[account2][3] /= 2
  accounts[account1][3] /= 2
  if int(message.sender) > account:
    trustees[message.sender].remove(account)
    trustees[account].remove(message.sender)
send_money(amount, currency, receiver):
  if balance[message.sender][currency] >= amount:
    balance[message.sender][currency] -= amount
    balance[receiver][currency] += amount
send_new_income(receiver, amount):
    //todo factor in 2% growth rate
    income_generated = (block.time â accounts[message.sender][0])/ weeks * 1000
    if income_generated â money_spent > amount:
      money_spent += amount
      balance[receiver][currency] += amount
exchange_money(account1, account2, amount)
  if message.sender == account1 or message.sender == account2:
    if account2 in trustees[account1]:
      if balance[account1][account1] >= amount:
        if balance[account2][account2] >= amount:
          balance[account1][account1] -= amount
          balance[account2][account2] -= amount
          balance[account1][account2] += amount
          balance[account2][account1] += amount
  groups[message.sender] = Set()
add_group_member(account)
  groups[message.sender].add(account)
remove_groupt_member(account)
  groups[message.sender].remove(account)
convert_into_group_money(group, amount)
  if message.sender in groups[group]:
    if amounts[message.sender][message.sender] >= amount:
     amounts[message.sender][message.sender] -= amount
     amounts[message.sender][group] += amount
19 thoughts on âIntroducing Circles â Universal Basic Incomeâ
arthurfallsJULY 26, 2015 AT 5:51 PMREPLY
Hendrik RichterNOVEMBER 20, 2015 AT 2:29 PMREPLY
ccerrato147FEBRUARY 5, 2016 AT 2:37 AMREPLY
GaluelMARCH 30, 2016 AT 12:36 PMREPLY
YvesMAY 9, 2016 AT 2:33 PMREPLY
YvesMAY 9, 2016 AT 2:42 PMREPLY
AlexJUNE 25, 2017 AT 1:58 AM
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This would work well in a closed economy with the prescribed best practices outlined above. Two independently established systems with identical rule sets could then choose to trust one another kind of like bubbles merging.
The 2% issuance rate mirrors the blanket 2% capital gains tax prescribed by Thomas Piketty in âCapital in the 21st Centuryâ writ inflation. The 2% annual devaluation pressure incentives investment and enables a financial industry to exist â some might like this. The Nu Shares project chose a 2% annual issuance as well, the sale of which was credited to token holders in the form of Nubits. Just some interesting 2% occurrences.
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Hi guys fantastic project.
Why is the Freigeld idea not included? It makes so much sense to implement it. Freicoin did it and now we are working on the Worldleadcurrency project. A Freicoin clone that is already paying the first Basic incomes.
Greetings Rik
Martin KĂśppelmannNOVEMBER 20, 2015 AT 5:16 PMREPLY
Hey Rik, always good to hear of similar projects. If they already pay a basic income, how do they tackle the sybil attack problem? Can you point me to some resources?
Very interesting concept. I can see several potential use cases.
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With a 5% / year rate, following Relative Theory of Money theorems, one new member will reach the average amount of money more than his own life later = 90 years later (life expectancy = 80 years in Europe). The rate to reach it in 80 years would be ln(80)/80 = 5,48% / year and to reach it in the 1/2 life = 40 years : ln(40)/40 = 9,22% / year
It is really an intriguing idea! It addresses partly the issue of web of trust, but I have the feeling that it could be vulnerable, if not to a simple sybil attack, probably to some con scheme. For example, creating a large pool of sybils that appear to behave properly for a while to build trust, then vacuuming value suddenly at a later point (probably some kind of variant of a pigeon drop scheme). Still the idea sounds really interesting. Maybe a possibility is to use this concept on top of multiple cryptocurrencies, although the
YvesMAY 9, 2016 AT 2:39 PMREPLY
1:1 exchange rate would not be feasible. It would be like a classical currency exchange, except that it would be fully automated so as to avoid the need for a party to play the role of the exchange (and thus charging for it). This would of course beg the question of what the price mechanism is to determine the exchange rateâŚ
Martin KĂśppelmannMAY 9, 2016 AT 2:46 PMREPLY
thanks for your comments! The best place to discuss circles deeper is out forum: aboutcircles.com
A short comment to the 1:1 exchange rate: this terminology might be misleading. The goal would be to have ONE currency for all people â however â to limit the damage a big group of sybils would do to the network this underlying mechanism of individual currencies is necessary. However, for a regular user connected to other regular users it should âfeelâ like one currency and they should NOT negotiate a price with each other peers (at least not for the currencies). On top of this of course person A can charge 100 Circles per hour while person B only charges 80 per/h â like in todays currencies.
I follow the reasoning of keeping the inflation rate not too high to protect the role of the currency as a store of value. Unfortunately, with a 5% inflation rate, the value redistributed as universal basic income is too low to be truly meaningfulâŚ
Martin KĂśppelmannMAY 9, 2016 AT 2:48 PMREPLY
lets continue here: http://aboutcircles.com/t/monetary-supply-of-circles/86/5
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You do not need to add inflation because every account created automatically gets an amount therefore inflates the overall amount of circles. In the early adoption stages inflation will be low but as it becomes mainstream it will suddenly spike and after mainstream adaption it will slow itself down again until it balances itself.
If you put a 2% inflation rate then you are constantly and systematically devaluing your currency.
The idea of circles is very intriguing if you can somehow tie a rate to the amount of people within a group and set an exchange rate from that along with the social utility of that group in correlation to there value then you have made a believer out of me.
Basically (amount of people divided by total currency in said group) later divided by output or total product sold(income) will give each group a multiplier for there coins exchange rate.
So groups will be rewarded for there total social utility through the exchange of there goods and ideas along with the value of there coin.
To take things one step further in order to integrate this in an existing economy a factor of (x) needs to be placed for late adopters depending on there current social standing and based on some inherent values and morals.
Additionally do not forget about the value and social services that are given for free (our privileges in a society)
Great idea !!!
P.S Wish you all the best of luck and yes the ethereum network and ether traded as a coin is a great platform to integrate. Canât wait to open my UBI account.
