Hi Nathan
Thanks for the warm welcome!
To answer your questions respectively please see below:
If I understand correctly, it sounds like you are working on a program that would distribute ZEC to a set of recipients for them to use in any manner of their choosing, correct?
Yes this is correct, Beneficiaries can use ZEC in any manner they want… its “Unconditional”
- How would the recipients be selected?
Beneficiaries are selected through existing communities we care about, for example our 1st community we support is a community of vulnerable women with Endometriosis. The Community is called Zimbabwe Endometriosis Support Network (ZESN) This community has over 100 Women who are living with Endometriosis.
- How long would the program run?
The program typically runs continuously, this is because we leverage DeFi to generate funds to support these communities there is not really an end date , its more-so about adding more beneficiaries to the community as we compound the earnings from the Yield Farms and Liquidity Mining Pools.
- How will success or failure be evaluated throughout the program or upon completion?
We use a live page designed with to update the daily earnings from the Yield Farming / Liquidity Mining (See Below)
- What options would exist for those recipients to use their ZEC?
- Beneficiaries will be able to Swap their ZEC for USD Cash or Local Currency Mobile Money at a BitFlex CICO® Kiosk (See below)
- What other crypto assets would be distributed by this program, and how does the program select and acquire those assets?
As Zimbabwe uses the USD as a secondary currency, we would focus on USDT (on Polygon) and cUSD. We already Yield Farm UBE on Ubeswap which is Celo’s DEX and swap that for cUSD (Celo Dollar) which is then deposited into the UBI FUND® Wallet daily at 10:00am for distribution.
- Do recipients choose which assets to receive, or do they receive a bundle of many different assets, or do different groups of recipients receive different assets?
- Currently No, Beneficiaries receive cUSD which they can swap for USD Cash or Mobile Money. Most of our beneficiaries need to use the money to purchase goods, i.e Food etc, However we’re working on setting up a small Local Store that accepts crypto.
- Does the program train recipients about crypto custody, such as how to use a wallet, safely store their backup seeds, and so on?
- Yes, we have a live session with Beneficiaries before they start receiving their daily claim. And we emphasize the importance of storing your private key in a safe place. We actually just had a beneficiary who lost her phone and was able to restore her wallet successfully.
- We have also partnered with Shift Crypto - which offers tools to safely store account keys. you can read the article here: CRYPTO SECURITY: BitFlex FinTech X ShiftCrypto Security | by BitFlex FinTech | Medium
- How familiar are recipients with crypto already? What challenges exist for training recipients around usability and crypto concepts?
- Crypto is relatively new in Africa but is gaining traction due to the economical crisis on the continent and in the country. We run workshops which educate users on the benefits of crypto, however like anything else in its infancy, people want the easiest learn about crypto and we believe in practicality. i.e Host incentivized workshops. We just finished in partnership with Celo where we taught people how to use DeFi on Celo. That went pretty well and had a turn out of 500+ learners. These numbers are growing as crypto begins to be spoken about by mainstream media.
- Does this program integrate general financial concept and skills training, such as budget or investment training?
- Yes, we are working with financial advisors to come up with investment strategies that can help beneficiaries grow their portfolios. i.e keep 50% in crypto in a yield earning wallet like Nexo or YouHodler and swap 50% for Cash for daily expenses.
- Would this program engage specifically with merchants or service providers or would it focus solely on UBI recipients?
- We are working on partnering with Merchants & Service Providers as i mentioned earlier, we are working with a Service Provider to swap Crypto for Mobile Minutes. This is a work in progress as most service providers and merchants prefer stablecoins which can be swapped at 1:1.
- Would this program have any relationship or interaction with the government of Zimbabwe or local government bodies?
- This is an independent program however, it does have support from the ministry of education and financial institutions and the regulator such as the Securities & Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe (S.E.C.Z)
- Does the program have relationships with anyone in the field of developmental economics or general economics policy experts?
- We are working with Policy Experts from Celo as they are also focused on CBDCs
- Will the program use econometrics or any other kind of empirical evaluation methodologies?
- As we focus on DeFi, we use the same methodologies from the Yield Farms and break it down based on the number of beneficiaries.
- Would the program provide any direct technological services or products to users, or would it rely completely on pre-existing services and products? The reason I ask is from seeing the example of El Salvador government developing and distributed its own wallet.
- Yes We plan to Develop a Wallet specifically for Beneficiaries and/or use the existing wallets that accept Stablecoins we utilize.
- Beyond receiving assets like ZEC itself, what other help or needs does this program have from the broader crypto industry and/or the Zcash community?
- The program needs a unified support system push from leaders of all the Blockchain Protocols to come together As mentioned earlier, we’re already working with Polygon, Celo and GoodDollar on the same mission, however, the idea is to create a Universal Blockchain Social Responsibility | BSR® Group to develop a Universal Cross-Chain Fund + Wallet that leverages DeFi and distributes UBI to everyone around the world starting with emerging markets. (A mammoth of a Task i know) but i believe it can be done.