Recently I have the opportunity to join one of the latest (now kind of crashing xDai chain due to FOMO DDos attack) Blockchain Universal Basic Income “Trust” system, called “Circles”, which is supposed to be a marketplace in the making with their own trusted wallet with an extra perk of a Universal basic income (a.k.a Air Drop) that is ONLY usable in their own ecosystem (in the making).
This actually reminds me of the now steadily growing online e-commerce stores that are mushrooming everywhere in South East Asia such as Lazada, Shopee, Boost and even other in-store apps like Watsons and Tesco are catching up.
The whole idea is to have their “centralised” marketplace for registered vendors to offer their product to masses who joined into the same “centralised” market, and in order to have patrons stay on and use the “centralised” marketplace, incentives are given out when they spend.
I personally believe platforms like Circles would have the same idea to have a “centralised environment” to spend their tokens “within” their environment, while offering vendors to promote their products there at a discounted price. So instead of mechanisms like online shopping sites where customers redeemed the points into discounts and vendors have to pay the discounted price to the Marketplace developer, (currently bare bone structure) Circles would be issuing “daily airdrops” for early adopters while verified members of their own circles would work alongside developers to create marketplace that could be similar to the current “rewards redemption points” applications.
In the case of Circles if the blockchain developers thinks its system ONLY should be using their tokens (and may / may not have intention to list their tokens in the market), at this point of time on the xDai blockchain, which is about 0.1 xDai = 50 Circle tokens (Circa) which is about 2.5 cents USD per Circle token (if those verified their accounts with xDai payment instead of getting the account trusted for free by other validated accounts), then in future it might have a problem when vendors who received Circle tokens were not able to exchange / spend off their tokens for other means, and this can become a flop; because how many vendors out there will keep this “charitable absorption” from users of the blockchain that receives monthly air drops to spend on their products and services?
What can be a solution? Would blockchain tokens such as this one be evolved from a reward system, instead of just using 100% of centralised reward tokens, where the token continues to circulate within the “environment”, bridge with fiat while it benefits both customers’ and vendors’ needs in day-to-day buy and sell?
I think it can, as having fiat as part of the payment process, while getting more people onboard into the environment.
The only thing we will realise is that, it is not a decentralised chain; nor would it ever be.
Not when fiat is still predominately the medium of exchange for goods and services.
At least this is my feeling.
