Hello Stephen! Thank you for coming on to Diversity in Blockchain’s ChainChat series, we are really excited to learn more about what you’ve been doing, especially because I’ve had a little look at your work, it looks super interesting. As you know, one of the things that we do on ChainChat is to ask each guest to leave a question for the next guest, and the question for you is a tricky one! What do you think some of the applications of Blockchain can be, aside from the financial ones?

Can I answer now?

Yes!

OK! So yes, there are a lot of things the blockchain can solve and improve. As I started to mention before we started recording, from a government point of view there are benefits, blockchain can bring more transparency to the way we do things. I’ll use my country as an example. If we want to collect results, it has to be manual, and sometimes using this method can be manipulated. With Blockchain technology, if someone votes, it's recorded and it’s going to have a transaction hash that everyone can see, so it will be very hard for someone to manipulate that result.

I see.

Let’s say there are two parties in an election, the masses are voting for Party B which blockchain will prove. Party A can’t try to manipulate because we are not using a manual system. There’s going to be a consensus about the result thanks to smart contracts. This helps to curb corruption, there’s been a lot of bribery and all that. So Blockchain can bring more transparency to governance.

It makes everything faster, too. To vote, everyone has to come from different states to the central offices, they can’t call the winner until all the votes have been counted manually. It would also reduce transportation expenses. Anybody can vote from anywhere, the result can be sent anywhere, immediately.

Then, for education too. Blockchain can really solve a lot of things there too. Collating students’ results and data online could protect them from even things such as a fire! This happened to one of the financial institutions in Nigeria actually. Imagine those documents gone forever. Now, Blockchain means we can trace those documents digitally and they can’t be destroyed.

Can’t be destroyed, can’t be manipulated, and everybody can access the information.

I had a personal experience where I paid for my house, unfortunately, I could not prove it, so I wish I had paid with Bitcoin or something! Then I could just go back to the Blockchain and search for the dates of the transaction without having me go back to the bank for that, it’s taking away extra stress. Blockchain can take away a lot of these hindrances. 

That’s a great answer! There are so many applications, we would be here until next week!

I’m a graphic designer. So blockchain can also solve issues of copyrights. Over the years, we’ve seen where people try to replicate what we have done, with blockchain, you can have your own unique work. As graphic designers, it gives us a wider range of opportunities.

What other things do you do? I know you have another interesting connection with Blockchain…

Before I joined this space I was doing graphics for smartphones, then a few things led me to where I am. I would have loved to get into code, but yeah, I found it too hard, so I stuck in the line of graphics. So around 2020 or 2021, I’d heard a lot about crypto and what it can do, and that’s where I got into GoodDollar (G$) and learned more about crypto and Blockchain online.

I noticed GoodDollar had an ambassador program, so I joined. Honestly, I was more interested in moderation at the time while I was trying to improve my skills. People notice you when you are working voluntarily. 

One moment, connection issue…

… because I’m into video design and graphics, I was doing explanatory videos on how to use G$ and other things, which got me deeper into crypto and blockchain. I’m still on the way! But that’s how you skill up. I’m working as a creative director for a startup here in Nigeria, too, as well as LBank as a campus ambassador, so lots of things I do in the space.

Tell us a bit more about The Good Dollar (G$), I find the concept intriguing.

Good Dollar is using DeFi to distribute Universal Basic Income (UBI) to people, whether they are working or not. Everybody is supposed to be entitled to those basic needs like food, school fees, water, etc.

So far, what I’ve noticed is the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, lots of people in the crypto space are looking to make quick money and we are trying to get everybody on the same level. 

Good Dollar is about solving societal problems by providing those basic needs with the Good Dollar token. For the past year and three months that I’ve been with Good Dollar, I’ve seen a lot of impact on people in the community, people taking the token daily. The project has two parts — the suppliers and the claimants. The claimants are the ones who are receiving this UBI in the form of G$, but it’s small. Since we try to cover globally, we need more funding for our protocol.

People can stake into the protocol which is goodswap.xyz.  For instance, if someone stakes X amount of DAI/USDC into goodswap, it will generate interest because the protocol is integrated into Aave and compound yield farms. So when someone stakes like $10,000, G$ is given back as a reward from the yield farms. The contract controls the interest. Imagine it’s 100% interest, divided by two, 50 goes back to the staker, and 50 goes back to the UBI contract known as the Distribution Contract, which distributes the G$ daily. That’s the mechanism. The amount entering the GoodReserve varies according to the number of stakers and the number of claimants, which vary. So sometimes it can be around US$0.03,(164.76G$). The token is also liquid, it can also be traded on goodswap.xyz and voltage.finance. That’s the background of G$. Would you like to know more about its social impact?

Yes, I’m curious because the technical side is not my forté, readers and listeners of ChainChat will for sure understand all this a little more! But yes, I’d like to know the pragmatic side of things. I can’t wrap my head around how the person providing clean water will accept G$ over traditional methods of payments. 

We are still in the adoption stage. You can exchange G$ for anything, agricultural products, etc, and these things have been achievable because GoodDollar is a community-driven project, so the utility of G$ is created by the community. Before I joined GoodDollar in 2021, there was a story of someone who sold a bicycle for G$. I myself in the summer of 2021 was crowdsourced by the GoodDollar community 200,000G$ ($43) for my IT fee in school. I received G$, and as I said, it’s liquid. I think last month, I got an artist to do some artwork for me, I paid in G$. There are a lot of things you can do with agricultural seedlings with G$, so it’s actually got a lot of utility, more than some of the high-profile projects out there!

I think this kind of project is what this technology is all about! Bridging the gap as you say between the rich and poor.

G$ can be exchanged for airtime, mobile minutes, data bundles, exchange of NFTs, and staking, so there are a lot of complex use cases for G$. In Kenya, we have somebody who is a farmer, he’s trying to bring adoption and encourage people to claim G$ and those people can use G$ to pay for his agricultural products. These are just some of the things we are currently doing. A token without that value is not a token, and that’s something we are currently witnessing in the blockchain space. Out of the hundreds and thousands of projects, I think only a handful have such utility, lots of them create projects just to hype the coin, to get it out there!

Super happy to learn about this. 

In July we sponsored four scholarships! I sponsored two while our Co-founder Anna Stone sponsored two making a total of 2.4Million GoodDollar tokens.  Outside of all this, we also do grassroots, with the few examples mentioned while claiming your GoodDollar token. 

Another question, in your professional career, what challenges have you faced?

I’ve seen improvements from a diversity perspective, unlike when I started when I was having quite a few challenges. 

But in general, the ability to talk to people, to get into the crypto and blockchain space, as many people just think about scams. Another challenge I find is that when you talk to people about crypto, they just want to know how to make money, which wasn’t my intention when I joined the community. My concept was patience, diligence, commitment, and all that. 

Another challenge is convincing people about this technology. In Africa there are high rates of poverty and people just want to see how they can eat. If you start talking to them about crypto without attaching something to eat, it makes no sense to them. 

Then I was at a conference last month where everybody was talking about crypto, crypto, crypto! They were just asking how they could make money trading crypto. It was a good opportunity for me to explain that it may be better to claim a token, so they can experience exactly how this technology works. 

The adoption rate is a challenge. Another thing is connecting with people and finding people who are willing to listen and learn with us who appreciate the value.

A lot of people don’t believe in the concept of UBI, so far, most people in the space are here for the profits, and as I said, the more the price of G$ goes up, the more we can distribute, but it’s hard when people don’t believe in the concept. In Nigeria people don’t talk about UBI, so we need more marketing in that aspect maybe.

How did you come about this job? Is G$ based in Nigeria?

GoodDollar is an Israeli company with headquarters in London. I got my job via Telegram. I wanted to work for a tech company so I applied through the website, but I did not get a response. But through Telegram, Anna Stone sent me more information on a link on how to become an ambassador. The Telegram group was quiet, everybody was wondering how they could get the word out about G$, so I made the WhatsApp group. Obviously, we don’t get paid as ambassadors when I joined last year, but we were talking about how to make videos, and broadcast GoodDollar to everyone(inaudible). Anna Stone asked me one good day if I could work as the GoodDollar Marketplace Manager, so I started managing the G$ marketplace. Early this year, I was elected via the Good DAO as a Lead Community Moderator.

Well done, it feels good when someone recognizes your hard work, doesn’t it? We try to keep these to about 30 minutes so I’m going to ask you to wrap it up with a question for our next guest. It doesn’t have to be remotely Blockchain related!

When did they join the crypto and Blockchain space?

I’m super interested in the whole project, let’s stay in touch.

No problem at all! Thank you!

Thanks, Stephen, bye for now!