Enabling financial sovereignty via crypto payroll
Growing up in post-soviet Ukraine, one of my early childhood memories and an introduction to the concept of a financial system was witnessing my parents’ deep sense of financial anxiety and betrayal by the “banking system.” Their savings were wiped out as a result of the collapse of soviet banks after the cold war. We had an intense distrust of financial institutions and tried to spread out our savings between different banks so that if one collapsed again, at least we would not lose everything.
In 2008 it happened again but differently. There were weeks of headlines that created uncertainty. Companies started laying workers off en masse, and people who kept their jobs had their salaries cut. Mortgages and personal loans were often made by international banks in USD while we were paid in Ukrainian Hryvnia. As our currency devalued by 35%+, banks stopped allowing us to convert to USD. This meant that ordinary families were paying so much more to be able to make their mortgage payments each month. As it looked like the banking system was going to collapse as it had after the fall of the soviet union, we tried transferring money between family members so multiple people could wait in line at different banks to be able to make withdrawals. The Ukrainian government came out with mixed messages about what they were going to do to help. It was all for naught. My family and I had just experienced a second time in my young life when our life savings had been wiped out.
I was enraged. How could my family, who were normal, hardworking people, get so completely screwed multiple times? I learned about blockchains in 2014 while studying human-centered design. I thought it was the most exciting confluence of technology and human-made systems of my generation. While the raw technology was clearly powerful to me then and now, the crypto reality distortion field is strong.
Centralizers entering this field and attempting to co-opt it for the sake of profit remind us of the need to not rely on blockchain technologies alone, but the common purpose those of us working on decentralized technologies share. Innovation and change do not happen purely because new technology is invented but rather because it finds its purpose and place within a system. Finding such a purpose takes effort and time. So, innovation is, more often than not, a process of evolution rather than revolution.
In a rush to replace the traditional financial system and the lack of a clear vision for better alternatives, we seem to have simply replicated all the same existing structures into their crypto counterparts. Thus, cryptocurrencies have come to be known as speculative assets rather than a tool for progress and innovation. Combined with human greed and stupidity, we now have such gems as FTX, Terra Luna, and Three Arrows Capital. To a regular person, what was once promised as a solution for their monetary frustrations, is now an even more anxiety-inducing alternative to an existing system. One thing the majority of people do not need is another speculative asset they do not understand how to manage that is promoted to them on social media by out-of-touch CEOs. What they need is a piece of mind when it comes to saving and investing their earnings.
Freedom is not replacing one option with another, it is having the ability to choose freely and an abundance of options to choose from. That is exactly what DeFi and crypto at large can offer. Freedom to choose how to transfer, where to store or invest your funds.
As I build products in crypto, I do not think too much about huge funds that lost their money during the fall of crypto giants. I think about the regular people who surround me. People like the staff tending to the building I live in, petting my doge for good luck so that the price of their Dogecoin soars to the moon. I think about my family in war-torn Ukraine, holding on to their jobs to not lose income but keeping their savings in cash under their pillows because, yet again no one knows what will happen to the banking system.
Those are the people who can benefit the most from what crypto has to offer. A week before the invasion, my family asked me about how to secure their savings, and I answered: stablecoins. The first donation I made to support Ukrainian forces was in bitcoin. The best crypto-native products are useful, accessible, and seamless. They offer a safe alternative, help participate and diversify. They remove unnecessary complexity and educate to empower. They are the best that crypto has to offer and are human-centered at their core.
This is why I am on the team building Franklin. Non-custodial payroll is a totally new concept — allowing employers and employees to have a direct financial relationship without many of the intermediaries that exist in traditional payroll. Through the innovation of smart contracts paired with streamlined user experience design, we enable both companies and workers to maintain greater financial sovereignty. Now, with intense global unrest and daily headlines of an impending economic recession in the west, it is more important than ever to ensure that hardworking people can rely on their money.
