Project Spotlight: impactMarket (PACT)- Decentralized poverty alleviation protocol
Visit Ubeswap to checkout the new PACT-CELO pool going live on 12/23/21! Note the ‘Project Spotlight’ is an Ubeswap community initiative and the impactMarket team is primarily responsible for the information contained in this article. The information in this post is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as financial advice.
impactMarket is an application-layer protocol designed to fight extreme poverty quickly and effectively, while empowering local & social change, bottom-up economic development, and prosperity.
It operates as a DAO, on top of the Celo network, uses cUSD (Celo Dollar) as the main digital currency and $PACT as its governance token, while running autonomously through smart contracts.
Beyond UBI, impactMarket is working on providing free access to more financial services. Given the Celo network design and its current DeFi ecosystem, impactMarket is uniquely positioned to drive DeFi adoption and retention by integrating & offering DeFi solutions directly on mobile to those who need them the most.
Highlights
- After 1 year, the protocol distributed $1.6M+ cUSD as UBI to almost 30 thousand beneficiaries living in the most vulnerable communities in 25+ developing countries.
- impactMarket has raised $1.6M+ from mission-aligned investors, including Celo Foundation, Davoa Capital, Flori Ventures, Eutopia Foundation, and more.
Q&A w/ impactMarket:
What’s the goal of this project?
impactMarket has been a catalyst to unlock human potential by effectively fighting poverty. We believe this infrastructure can reach 1B+ people by 2030 and become a significant contributor to eradicate extreme poverty.
Why did you decide to build on Celo?
Celo’s mission is very aligned with ours, it’s technology is ideal for what our protocol needs, meaning, fast and cheap transactions, mobile-friendly, and has already decentralized stable coins. Also, we’re very grateful for all the support we’ve been receiving from the amazing Celo community.
How is the protocol designed?
impactMarket is a poverty alleviation protocol that enables any vulnerable community to implement financial inclusive mechanisms, like Unconditional Basic Income (UBI). It is designed to be open, free and accessible to anyone in the world. The UBI smart contract can be deployed by any community to connect supporters with beneficiaries directly. Then, beneficiaries can claim funds from the contract on a regular basis with no middleman or hurdles.
How can the community help or join?
Any community can start a UBI smart contract and add beneficiaries. Supporters can visit http://impactmarket.com and consider contributing to communities in need. With PACT, the DAO and governance token, it adds donations’ incentives and decision making from the participants.
Roadmap
We’re committed to keep improving the protocol and expanding impactMarket’s tools offering by unlocking access to open and decentralized finance while measuring impact and economic development towards prosperity.
Protocol development & scalability
Aligned with the protocol’s mission and vision, we’re working on developing the right infrastructure to allow impactMarket to be very scalable and self-sustaining. Currently scoped, our core deliverables will be:
- Deployment + audits of the DAO + $PACT governance token.
- Integration with existing DeFi protocols on Celo to provide open, free & easy access to Mobile Finance (MoFi), focused on beneficiaries.
- Self-governed communities through social consensus, where beneficiaries vouch for who they believe should/need access to a basic income while building reputation, identity, & trust indicators.
- Develop a low volatility currency, not pegged to anything, minted by beneficiaries, and backed by a reserve of different assets deposited by contributors to help absorb volatility. This can unlock orders of magnitude improvements in scalability and reachability.
MoFi integration & expansion
As the world of DeFi keeps growing and experimenting, impactMarket will pursue the existing and forthcoming opportunities of this sector. Given the Celo network design and its current DeFi solutions, impactMarket is uniquely positioned to integrate & offer those DeFi solutions directly on mobile to those who need them the most.
Impact measurement framework
In order for impactMarket to monitor and provide transparency and analytics about its impact to its stakeholders, the team is developing an impact measurement framework, made available via different aggregated sources, including on-chain data analysis performed on the Celo network.
Team
The impactMarket team has a strong background on philanthropy, web3 and social impact, with experience on working in organizations like Uphold, eSolidar, Microsoft, WEF, Facebook, Unicef, Human Rights Watch and WHO.
- Marco Barbosa (Co-founder & CEO): Forbes 30 under 30 for Social Entrepreneurship. Co-founder (2013) eSolidar. Master’s Degree in Computer Science.
- Bernardo Vieira (Co-founder & CTO): Blockchain developer. Won multiple blockchain hackathons. Bachelor in Computer Science.
- Afonso Barbosa (Co-founder & CPO): Worked at Facebook, Quanta, Vyu Labs, eSolidar and Edigma/Displax. Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.
Introducing $PACT — the governance token for the impactMarket DAO
$PACT tokens will act as a global medium of governance that empowers participants through decision-making and comprehensive incentive mechanisms. Token holders will be granted the ability to influence the future health, direction, growth, and impact of the protocol.
As soon as the DAO and tokens are deployed on the Celo network, 10% of the total supply will be immediately available to be grabbed/claimed, through an airgrab* mechanism, by past protocol participants (1B max initial circulating supply). 20% will be deposited and held on the DAO as a reserve. The remaining 70% will be available to claim by the Community (40% for protocol participants) and impactLabs (30% for the company), on a regular basis for several years (until 2030+), both at a similar exponentially reducing release rate.
Token Allocation
- Token Symbol: PACT
- Total Supply: 10B PACT
- Contract Address (Celo): 0x46c9757C5497c5B1f2eb73aE79b6B67D119B0B58
- IDO: https://polkastarter.com/projects/impactmarket
Liquidity Mining
To kickstart liquidity, 8M PACT/week will be rewarded to the CELO-PACT Ubeswap pool.
Disclaimer
$PACT has no economic value or claim on financial rights. It is a governance token used to oversee the impactMarket ecosystem.
