DappCon 2023: Circlesubi.Id: Blockchain-Based Ubi For Bali, Indonesia, And Beyond - Shaunda Brown

Transcript

good morning beautiful people my name is Shonda Brown I'm the CEO of circles Indonesia and I am thrilled to be here in Berlin today to talk to you about what we're doing in circles Indonesia in Bali where I'm based to provide a universal basic income on the blockchain to all balones and Beyond to help meet basic needs so I think a lot of us are here are familiar with what circles is but circles is an application built on the nosis chain that aims to distribute a fair Global resource called circles based on the principle of universal basic income Ubi that circulate through mutual

trust so what does that actually mean what we found in Indonesia was that there was an abundance of resources but there was a a scarce and a lack of being able to meet those resources because of a lack of rupia rupia is the Fiat Indonesian government currency um so if we were able to determine a way to exchange those resources based on a fair Global resource such as circles that every individual could be able to meet their basic needs on a daily basis so what could that solution be what we found is that if we had a community-driven initiative so for the People by the people implemented in a proper way so that there's ownership and

people actually buy into what that value is is that we could help meet those be needs so we're currently experimenting this whole process in Bali right now with circles by providing one Circle per hour that's 24 circles per day to each participant to help them meet their daily needs and really improve livelihood opportunities so what we really believe is that as a complimentary cashless solution circles can really Advance Humanity into this era that we all want to see of mutual support abundance and sustainable growth so why uba on the blockchain so UBI has had a Resurgence in really

redistributing that wealth we saw that during the pandemic with the stimulus checks and as you all very well know AI is creating job disparity and income loss for countless number of people it's no coincidence that uh chat gtp's Creator Sam mman it has also Al created worldcoin which is poised to distribute Ubi in the blockchain um and also blockchain is just really an incredible Tech solution uh that we really believe can have a convergence for all of these points to position Ubi on the blockchain such as circles as more relevant and important than ever so that's why circles uh aims to put wealth in the hands of those who need it most by using this transparent

decentralized and Community trust-based system but what really matters are these people that you see here in these pictures this is the community that we're serving we really want to see this for the People by the people so why why Bali why did we choose this little island in Indonesia to test this Theory out first of all there's a social structure in Bali called the bonjar and the boner is basically uh a neighborhood it's a collection of 50 to20 50 family family leaders that form the lowest form of government and so this is where a lot of of government decisions are actually made on that

localized level and there's this financial system of debt that synergizes very well with the decentralized trust system that we have of circles we also wanted to prove the concept in developing countries and remove the barriers to mass adoption it for these target market of Entre micro entrepreneurs and you'll I'll tell you later about our total addressable Market of 500 million that we're looking to remove those barriers for to have this easily accessible and really help meet those B basic needs we also chose a location such as Bali where Ubi can have an extreme life altering impact to really Empower people so one example of that is how we decided

to Value one circle's point so again you receive one Circle per hour and we valued that at one banana so something very very understandable for individuals to to comprehend in their daily lives so one banana is the equivalent of 1,000 rupia and rupia is that fi currency for Indonesia so 24 circles daily is equivalent to 24,000 rupia or about one and a half EUR so this is 27% of minimum wage in Bali so just imagine this you you are a a banese citizen living at the poverty line and you have 27% of disposable income that you are earning that can

make a huge difference in your life another aspect is that we have an incredible team um that is very experienced in Bali not only our impact team that is doing the implementation but also our nosis partners noi shout out to you um to but we really have Prime that social capital for adoption and here they are here's our team this is actually our team uh in the black shirts that you can see here uh this is our first product testing event that we had during our initial beta launch in May and um they're just incredible humans so first of all there's Alum Santi there are implementation Partners

who have been able to help expedite this initiative light years ahead like there's no way that we would be able to do this by walking into a village and saying try this blockchain technology that you've never heard of about in this isolated Village that's very remote so we've built relationships over decades through these Partners to be able to go in and be able to offer circles Ubi and actually have it be adopted into these environments so we partner with organizations such as khanjari and Kali Bia who are Outreach teams so how the implementation works is really we have Outreach team officers that go out to the Villages have gotten all the approvals through the government system up from the bonjar up through the Desa

and Village level and be able to have field officers who they recruit who are local circles Champions who represent this and are that local point of contact for any questions on boarding how to deal with technology and they're just incredible so those are a lot of the individuals doing the the circle sign here in the the fields um let's see most importantly we have our nosis partners so I want to give a shout out again to our Noki team that's here this is circles and Noki and nosis Noki so they're developing all of our Tech um and they have funded this

product testing through the nosis da um one big partnership that we have is the Indo big Network and the Ubi Labs so that's the Indonesia basic income group network this are our government Partners as well they're Associated we align our our values and our mission with the Indonesian government and this has been able to help us get the research permits to operate in Bali and be able to provide uh Universal basic income without threatening the Indonesian rupia so part of the the legal landscape that we have in Bali is that it is illegal to buy goods and services with anything else other than the Indonesian

rupia so we are not considered a crypto we it's it's a circle point that we're using to supplement the the daily income of individuals so we've been able to work some magic with aligning those goals and with these Partnerships which give us credibility um we also work with memory which has helped us with our governance system so it's democratically based and uh very transparent one thing that I want to clarify is the two separate entities that are working on circles so we have the circles Co-op that is based in Berlin that's running the flagship pilot that's how I first heard about circles

in 2020 through the amazing work that they're doing um their website is circles. Coop and their product is circles. Garden so very separate markets that we're serving very different approaches different product and app completely but today we're talking about circles Indonesia and we are testing that product and concept in Bali with no subsidy program our aim and intention is to be able to have sustainable transactions that can grow organically without the the constant need of being able to uh subsidize any sort of payments uh we're also have the vision to be a coordination hub for the global expansion in developing countries and we're doing that by all the extensive

research that we're doing tracking all this information and having these documents and handbooks for individuals to start their uh own Global uh circles Hub highly suggest checking out our website circles u. tons of information on there all of our past research all of the the stories from the field which I want to share some with you about and our product is app circles. and here is our beautiful beta web app that we are using in the field currently to our 1500 participants in our research beta pilot so when you come

to landing page you have this beautiful photo of this Bolognese woman who's asking you to support your community Through Universal basic income you go to your profile very easy pulls up a QR code you scan that and you're able to trust and exchange circles with one another you can see on the right here there's your your balance where you get 24 circles per day and on the right you see the Marketplace which is a key aspect for people to be able to understand how they can spend their circles across Bali so there's a geolocation service that says exactly where like I want to find a dentist I'm based in Den basar where's the closest dentist that I can use

circles to meet my basic needs then you physically go to that location ensure that that's a person by trusting them and you're able to exchange circles so we kept it pretty basic pretty easy for individuals to use and pretty easy to replicate not only in Bali and across Indonesia but across the world in all these developing companies so this I'm very excited about this has been a a work of art to be able to create these real-time reports and be able to get information from the field so we can adapt and be able to implement in a more effective way so as you can see from the map of Bali there are three main areas that we're testing circles in right now one

is a rural area in Jana very remote takes 4 hours to get to from any other city that we're based in inab um so wanted to see what that environment is like we had 97% approval rating before we went in there so it's pretty cool to see that it's actually working in these areas uh we also tested in Denpasar which is a very urban area and then a semi-urban area you can see from the user growth that this is just incredible that we've been able to onboard so many people in such short period period of time uh we did have some tech issues as you can see from the graph going down of the days that the that we were working out the bugs but I just want to give a shout out again that we're much more stable now being able to implement a technology

such as blockchain in Bali and it's being adopted by these communities I think this is the key to what we're seeing in the initial success in this pilot so far and it's the the healthy ecosystem that we've created for continuous exchanges so users have created shops in various basic needs categories so we did a lot of research in 20121 to be able to understand what people want collaborated with them to understand what is needed and how can what what where can they spend their circles to really help meet the basic needs so we as you can see from this graph about 25% of that is food and beverage there's also utilities grocery

shops ceremony supplies or a big expense in Bali uh tools and equipment garden and farm products laundry education Transportation Construction Services health services and salon and Barbers so the most exciting aspect of this is that we're really seeing this healthy exchange and dynamic because 97% of participants who are receiving their basic income are also vendors that are listing their goods and services in exchange for for circles so we have about 1.5 thousand shops in just 10 weeks of after launching this this app you can see the marketplace where some of these are listed they create their shop you have images you can

contact that person and um it's actually working so uh these graphs I just I just want to give a round of applause also to our teams can we do this can I can I get some Applause here this is really really cool to see these kind of graphs this is exactly what we want to be seeing um in this this experiment to see how this actually works in the field so we've had 750,000 circles points exchanged already um after just 10 weeks of being able to on board go through getting the tech set up properly in these communities and we're seeing the the graphs go exactly what we want to the top one is the daily exchanges that we're seeing and the

bottom is the weekly active users so we want to see these sustained transactions and we're seeing that so I can tell you all about the impact that it's making in Bali but I think it's best to hear this from elu one of our users in Den basar so let's go ahead and play the music can we turn the volume up a little bit please I want you to hear the gamon music so you can actually understand and see what this is like in Bali this is very very different than the communities in Berlin that you're that you're involved with so El was asked like what the benefits are that she's seeing from

circles and she's based in denar uh this is her home in her bonjar um so she's saying that exchanging circles points for the the things that she really needs help helps her and her children to be able to meet their daily needs she said the biggest benefit is that it's so easy to use they can get all the things they want in the marketplace for circles for example she got ceremonial needs for gagon holiday gagon is like Christmas it's a twoe holiday biggest holiday in Bali and a huge expense is the the ceremonial supplies that are required by your bonjar to participate in this community her biggest suggestion is to continue exchanging circles to build your trust Network so that you can use

the network of friends to exchange these points to make your life much easier she says it's very exciting and she wants to do more exchanges and get more points so that's a little snapshot into what life is like in Bali uh check out our website if you want to see more we have a 10-minute video on our homepage which specifically goes into the different regions goes into the Shops and and shows what people want and what life is like with using circles there our vision going forward so right now our main goal is to be able to show these sustained transactions um and

really how circles Works in communities in places like Bali so it can be easily replicable and have that mass adoption that we're looking for so once we do this in our current pilot plan our plan is to expand to new areas of Indonesia from our research we found that it is one of the world's most ripe regions for the use of circles uh and so with that we're going to build a Global Network of community organizers through the global GL Grant strategy program so this is what we're we're launching at the end of this year or at the beginning next year to empower circles hubs around the world we have two main targets with that the first one is micro entrepreneurs that just like you saw with elu so elu is running of a business out of her home

and a small Rong um so these micro entrepreneurs in the top 22 developing countries have a total addressable Market of 366 million people facing job disparity particularly from AI also have a total addressment Market of 177 million so there's a a big goal for us and we have an incredible team to make this happen uh so in order to do that we do need to get the tech to a place where it is extremely easy to use adapt and be able to expand so our next goal is to be able to develop and launch a native circles app there's so much that I can discuss about what that implementation strategy

is but just to give you a timeline of how we've operated in Bali we started that research in June of uh 21 so we spent a good six months of doing this market research understanding these communities needs and in June 22 that's when we partnered with the nosis team Noki to do the product design development we got funding in April of this year for from the nosis Dow to um do the product testing that we're currently doing so in may we did that uh product test that you saw the beautiful picture of of everyone doing the Circle sign uh so we've done some product F fixes there bug fixes and really gotten that technology um ready to where it is

now with our field testing and marked activation and so in December we'll produce our annual report of the research findings you can find all of this on our website um and we're looking forward to scaling and going global so I would like to invite you to join the circles movement uh you can contact me at Shonda circles.org um you can also go on to our website and have any contact there uh so sign up and receive our monthly newsletter this is where we produce stories from the field uh you know last month I shared about one of the women uh we did a a a contest on a Facebook group about what are the most impactful stories that that you have about your use of circles and this

little girl collected her entire community and had her send them all of her circles so she could gain enough circles to buy her mom a cell phone for her birthday and so her mom this family is below the poverty line and so the ability for her to do a gift like this for her mom it's it's so meaningful to me that's what really matters so um get more stories like that in our newsletter um if you are coming to Bali please reach out we'll hook you up with a a cires account right now it's invite only so invite links and we also allow vendors to invite their own individuals so we have that organic growth going too if you want to start a circles Hub in your area let's chat I'll be around for the rest of the week and thank you very

much thank you very much sha we have around three minute for questions hello uh great presentation thank you a quick question how do you plan to sort of scale the funding to support more and more places for for being able to open circles can show your great question um so we have done a lot of uh AB testing throughout the different stimulous activities that we've done and really tried to reduce costs for these circles hubs that we're planning on expanding so right now we're working with the nosis da and we're putting a new proposal together in November that we would like to have

approved for that Expansion Project um and we are looking to reduce those costs significantly for those other markets since we'll have already developed the the best strategies that we found for implementing and engaging these communities as well thank you for the presentation uh technically this is all running on XI right so um if I with my circle's Garden wallet trust somebody with a circle Indonesia wallet would that work or not right now the back end is compatible but there are some differences where you're not showing up as the same contact if you were able to engage with that Bali

Community but if you came to Bali you would be able to exchange your your circles in Bali as well and that valuation for that one Circle for one banana thank you very much for the great presentation and those for answering that question I had the same um but I have another one uh with regards to how you are able to onboard shop owners and micro entrepreneurs maybe you can share a little bit about the strategy you imp how you can reward no how you onboard it how onboard yes you you you showed that um almost I think 97% also offers services and products in circles yeah I think and I think this is

the key to why we're seeing more sustained growth in Bali is that we are rewarding the vendors so one of the simple things that we're doing is offering little perks like as a vendor if you sign up and and create that shop on the marketplace you're able to invite other people to receive a basic income too um and so I the whole intention is if you're a vendor and someone comes to buy your shop you want to allow them to be able to use circles to buy those goods and services and so it is a big perk to be able to invite the rest of your friends and family to join and receive a basic income so so that's one of the aspects but we've also relied heavily on our field officers and our Outreach teams to be able to understand who was being selected for this 1500

person pilot and say okay we need to have individuals in each of these categories to ensure that basic needs can be met and you can spend your circles no matter where you are and so these individuals were selected because they were able to offer shops in these different categories and then that has grown organically where they've chosen individuals to to be invited as well and so that's why we've seen such growth outside of those those main clusters of those three areas that's organic and now all around Bali thank you very much it's beautiful to actually see it working so thank you very much