MADAO: Mutual Aid DAO

A self-governing, community-managed mutual-aid DAO allows a network of beneficiaries to share resources in unprecedented ways.

Our team is comprised of basic-income and anti-poverty activists with years of experience, backed by community and economic leaders.

Video introduction: https://youtu.be/lXEbsrMDo7E

Budget Jan - March 2022:

Each officer is paid $15/hour for 20 hours a week, with the exception of our coders, who we plan to hire at $70 an hour.

Cost breakdown
Administration: $3,600
Outreach: $3,600
Community Management: $3,600
Economics: $3,600
Back-End Development: $16,800
Front-End Development: $5,600
Advertising and Web Presence: $3,000

KPIs:

We've devised these four metrics to measure the health of our network:

1. Velocity of Money:  the amount of production a given supply of money enables.
   Our KPI goals for Velocity of Money are 0.5% for March, 0.4% for February, and 0.3% for January.

     2.  Transaction Volume: the total value of all purchases on our network, within a given frame of time. Our Transaction Volume KPI goals are 900 for March, 700 for February, and 550 for January.

1. Size of Network: the total number of persons who have signed up for our network and received their first disbursement of MADAO. Our KPI goals for Size of Network are 45 by March, 30 by February, and 15 by January.

1. Engagement: degree of participation in our community economy, measured in offers to buy or sell goods and services in our community market, and number of community events hosted. Our KPI goals for Engagement are, respectively, 50 and 4 for March, 30 and 3 for February, and 20 and 2 for January.

Please ask for any needed clarification on our KPIs in the comments; we will be happy to discuss our metrics in more detail with you there, or on our Discord server.

November 2021: our minimum viable product: an market place, where a pool of alpha testers buy and sell goods and services in our community currency: MADAO, not yet coded into software--we begin by keeping a ledger in a spreadsheet, to be transferred to code in December.

January 2022: Token on the test net. Beginnings of a software wallet, capable of storing and transferring MADAO on the Cardano block chain; our test marketplace begins using our on-test-net token.

February 2022: Our test-net wallet gains the functionality of buying MADAO with ADA. Buyers determine where the ADA they purchase their MADAO with is distributed--to a specific beneficiary of their choice, within our network; to our DAO's Common Pool, to match up to $600 USD equivalent per month in individual donations to each beneficiary; or to our team, to support development.

March 2022 (Three Months): Begin distributing ADA from the Common Pool to each beneficiary, matching up to $600 USD equivalent of ADA contributions, on the test net.Begin distributing 800 MADAO per month to each member of our network, on the test net.  Beginnings of a graphical UI for our wallet.

Later in 2022: project leaves test net and heads for public launch on-chain.

Success looks like: a network of beneficiaries sharing ADA to pay for their inflexible needs, and using MADAO to purchase additional goods and services from one another; with an accessible, user-managed app.

*What is MADAO?*

MADAO is a decentralized, autonomous, mutual-aid network. In other words, MADAO is a network of mutual beneficiaries, sharing resources to provide each member of our network with two types of monthly basic income, One is $ADA, which members can exchange for whatever currency they use to pay their rent and buy groceries with. The second is our project's token, $MADAO. $MADAO is used to fuel our community-created economy, where network members are free to buy and sell flexible-demand goods, like guitar lessons and homemade clothing, free from worry that the cost of these flexible-need purchases may encroach on their budget for inflexible needs.

*What do you mean by "mutual aid"?*

People in need helping other people in need. MADAO is not a system based on loans or charity. It is a system designed to allow for the mutual empowerment of persons in need, via autonomous resource sharing, and a community-created economy.

*Why a DAO?*

Atala PRISM allows us to dispense with identity verification--a major hurdle for a system designed to distribute resources--trustlessly, and practically without added cost, eliminating our need for an application and screening process entirely. Additionally, a DAO sidesteps the chicken-and-egg problem most mutual aid networks have at start: poor people cannot invest in the infrastructure needed to share their meager resources with one another. By using code to automatically distribute funds to beneficiaries, we create a network unbound by geography or cost of distribution, and accessible to most people with an Internet connection. A DAO structure also allows for fully transparent and decentralized self-governance, a powerful bulwark against mismanagement and corruption, and a distribution system that gravitates towards wealth equality rather than wealth concentration.

*Is this like a crowdfunding project?*

There is a crowdfunding aspect, but the MADAO project entails much more than just crowdfunding. It is a two-pronged basic income, distributed in a combination of $ADA and our project's own $MADAO token. It is designed to meet the needs of individuals who struggle to survive in our global economy, whether they live in a wealthy nation or an impoverished one.

*Who is behind the project?*

An independent economist and trader from Shanghai (Eddie Chu), an electrician and congressional candidate from New Mexico (Sheridan Lund), a recent college graduate from California by way of Arizona (Jenny Press), and a podcast producer from New York by way of Florida (Shael Riley). Most of us met as anti-poverty advocates in the political sphere, and moved our efforts into the crypto space when we realized that governments don't tend to listen to people. You can meet and talk with us on our MADAO Market Discord server: https://discord.gg/fX9VHqvJ

*How will you distribute the $MADAO token*

MADAO can be purchased from our DAO using ADA, and the ADA can be directed to one of three places--buyer's choice--at time of purchase: 1) to a specific network member, contributing to their basic income in ADA this month; 2) to the common pool, allowing the DAO to match up to $600 of USD equivalent in ADA to each network member, each month; or 3) to developers, to support development.

Alongside their monthly distribution of ADA from the common pool, each MADAO network member receives a basic income of 800 $MADAO once a month. Additionally, members receive USD equivalent in MADAO for any USD equivalent in ADA directed to their account by MADAO purchasers, if they've already received the maximum of $600 USD equivalent in ADA from direct MADAO purchases per month.

*How does it work?*

Network members receive a basic income of 800 $MADAO once a month, which members use as a medium of exchange on our community-created MADAO market to trade goods and services with one another. Additionally, the MADAO network allows each user to collect up to $600 USD equivalent in ADA contributions from other users who purchase MADAO with ADA and direct the ADA spent on that MADAO to the wallet of another network member, any member of their choice, so long as it is not themselves or a network member who has already received $600 USD equivalent in ADA from our DAO this month. And, in addition to that, MADAO will match up to $600 USD equivalent in ADA contributions to each network member, every month, with additional ADA from our DAO's Common Pool, on months when our common pool is fully funded, creating a net basic income of $1,200 USD equivalent in ADA, to pay for inflexible-demand needs like shelter and medicine, and 800 MADAO to spend on higher-order needs, like guitar lessons over Zoom and homemade apple pie by mail, in our community-run market.

*How Is MADAO sustainable?*

It might be thought that $MADAO will be unsustainable because the money supply increases over time.

In order for an economic system to be sustainable and stable, the amount of monetary income that the members of the system receive must be matched with productive capability in the system, and vice versa.

The current fiat economic system is unsustainable because growing productive capability in the economy has not been matched with sufficient monetary income for the broadest group of individuals, the worker-consumers, resulting in widespread under-utilization of capital and labor.

This under-utilization shows up in capacity utilization measures, in low interest rates and asset bubbles, and in stagnant wages.

As a result, individuals are faced with paradoxical twin problems — 1) poverty and difficulty accessing the production of the economy, and 2) a dearth of opportunities to apply their talents to meaningful production (in the broadest sense).

$MADAO solves the twin problems by providing individuals access to help through spending their $MADAO basic income while also providing individuals the opportunity to apply their diverse talents and resources to helping others in return for spendable $MADAO.

The $MADAO economy will be kept sustainable by calibrating the $MADAO basic income to the level of activity in the $MADAO economy. The more members utilize $MADAO to provide and receive help to/from others in the community, the higher the basic income can be.

The basic income is valuable because people are talented and their talents can be used to help others. Many individuals have trouble in the fiat economy finding employment that pays more than $7.50 an hour. This is not because their time and talents are only worth $7.50 an hour, but because the economy is in a state of artificial scarcity and does not allow others to have income to access the use of their time and talents.

*What is the Philosophy of MADAO?*

Our goal is to serve the basic needs of all our network members, and to do so in a manner that is "bottom heavy," geared towards providing financial stability and self-actualization to our most underserved members, with priority.

You can also think of MADAO as a virtual nation. The Nation of MADAO has its own economy, where its citizens trade goods and services using the $MADAO token, but The Nation of MADAO suffers from a dearth in housing, food, medicine, and sometimes other inflexible-demand goods and services. Because citizens of The Nation of MADAO, for the most part, lack access to certain resources like housing, staple foods, electricity, and water--they must import them. Citizens of The Nation of MADAO are not always denied access to these resources in the traditional way. Often, the infrastructure exists for Citizens of MADAO to access shelter, food, water, and electricity, but they lack the right type of currency to access those needed resources. So, ADA is imported into The Nation of MADAO, to allow its citizens access to the resources The Nation of MADAO's own economy lacks.

Another way to think of MADAO is as a freemium-model economy. Anyone can opt in and receive $800 MADAO every month, free of charge. If those who try our network find it provides them value, they can, then, buy in, spending ADA to purchase additional MADAO.

*What does success look like at 3, 6, and 12 months*

We aim for consistent growth. As our project progresses, we'll update the KPI metrics we devised with new goals.

*Why did you choose Cardano?*

Cardano has smart-contract functionality, and its fees will never rise above a small fraction of a single ADA, no matter how big the Cardano network gets. Cardano is a peer-reviewed block chain with altruistic intent, designed to be accessible to even the poorest of Internet-connected persons. We think Cardano's Catalyst program is a perfect fit for MADAO.