Not-For-Profit Payment Network GoodDollar Launches ‘Alpha’ Wallet App — And Is Looking For Road Testers

I’m incredibly proud and excited to reveal the ‘Alpha’ version of GoodDollar’s wallet app, which we launched today. Moreover, I urge you to take advantage of this unique invitation to be an early adopter and help us on our mission to reduce global wealth inequality through blockchain technology and universal basic income (UBI) principles.

GoodDollar is a not-for-profit project that intends to launch a payment network and this Alpha release is a key milestone in our development. Since November, when GoodDollar was officially announced at Web Summit 2018, the core team has been hard at work prototyping a super-rough version of our vision into code.

This Alpha version has been achieved thanks to the hard labour of a few engineers for more than four months. It’s an undesigned, wireframe wallet app and uses a rough blockchain code. We will develop this version in an iterative fashion, and right now it provides you with an idea of the look and feel of the GoodDollar wallet and payment network.

Ever since the inception of GoodDollar, we realised that in order to build a more equal economy, we need to come up with solutions to a number of challenges — and we can’t create these on our own. Here follow the key areas of product development for this Alpha version.

1. Wallet as an access point. The digital wallet, which is a web app that can be used via a smartphone or similar device, or a laptop connected to the internet, is the first basic access point to your future G$ network. It has what you’d typically find in a digital wallet: send and receive functions to trade money with friends and merchants, and a news feed, plus analytical information showing simple statistics of your account balance.
2. Daily UBI distribution. This is your daily dose of financial help. One very unique button on our future wallet will be “claim”. The claim function is the simplest way we could think of for a person to participate in our vision for a more just economy. In order to collect one GoodDollar per day, a user must press the claim button on a daily basis. Eventually, you will need to “claim” only once a week. Any person can join the GoodDollar network — no matter who you are, where you live, and what your work conditions are — as long that you are “real”. For the Alpha version, users will have the opportunity to accumulate fake GoodDollars and help road test all the features.
3. Identity verification. To give away GoodDollar tokens and ensure the cryptocurrency’s value grows in a stable way, it is critical to reducing the ability for cloned accounts and bots to participate in the network. In this Alpha version, we’ve decided to tackle the fraud prevention challenge using FaceTec’s patented, class-leading 3D face authentication software ZoOm. This provides basic fraud prevention, which we will need to evolve over time. If it works — or doesn’t work — let us know, please.
4. Blockchain prototype over Fuse. GoodDollar aims to scale to reach hundreds of millions of people. Each has to have a good, fast and cheap experience when transacting with the GoodDollar network. Right now, blockchain transactions take around 15 seconds using Ethereum and 10 minutes with bitcoin. They also cost between a few dimes to dollars, per transaction. Therefore, to have a product that is a payment network for the world, it has to be faster and cheaper than current solutions. Over time we hope that other networks would allow this “out of the box”. For the moment we’ve partnered with our friends at Colu to use their sidechain, Fuse, to provide just that. Fuse is a sidechain network that, until we find a better solution, will allow us to speed up the experience for users.

This is your chance to be one of the first people to register for and use the GoodDollar Alpha version of our digital wallet — to do so, please access the web app via our newly launched community website and apply. And, again, please let us know your thoughts.

GoodDollar Alpha Screenshot (by Liav Gutstein)

At this point, I’d like to invite you to our newly opened, community-led GoodDollar Forum, a central element of the developers’ microsite. Here you can write your comments and engage with us and other members of the growing GoodDollar community. Our super-small team is here to listen, respond and improve. (And if you wish to join our core team, please email me and/or Technical Lead Hadar Rottenberg)

Ultimately, your feedback will help shape our product, and together, with your guidance and input, we can establish a payment network that will help to reduce global wealth inequality.

GoodDollar: Change Wealth Inequality — For Good

Do you have the skills to help the GoodDollar project? We need builders, scientists and experts in identity, privacy, and financial governance, as well as philanthropists and ambassadors. Contact us athello@gooddollar.org, via our social media channels (Twitter, Telegram, or Facebook), join the OpenUBI movement, or visit our GitHub page. OurYouTube channel is worth checking out, too.