Our New Chapter Towards Human Empowerment Begins Here and Now!
Moving forward into a new chapter of our mission, beyond UBI, we are ready to launch new products and services to unleash human potential.
The moment finally arrived. It is time to share with you our new path: from a Decentralized Poverty Alleviation Protocol to a Human Empowerment Protocol, launching new products and services to unlock opportunities and human potential.
We are transforming into the financial inclusion and educational hub as we are ready to provide inclusive financial services and educational tools for unserved and underserved people worldwide, all through blockchain. Keep reading to understand why and how we are going to do that.
Our WHY:
What if we can find a better way to help vulnerable people to empower them and get what they need when they need it?
Our journey started searching for an answer to this question in 2020. It was also the year the world was struck down by the Covid outbreak, which had grown into one of the greatest humanitarian issues. It pushed over 97 million people into poverty, and as impactMarket, we were aware that this unprecedented crisis called for groundbreaking solutions.
At the heart of the pandemic, we concluded that the current financial system would not be able to distribute funds to those in need and empower all effectively.
In order to find better ways to leave no one behind, we had to build tools and services that were more accessible, efficient, transparent, and borderless. For us, the answer was hidden “in the chains”; we decided to leverage the power of blockchain to help underserved and unserved communities worldwide.
These past two years have been an incredible journey and have demonstrated that when underprivileged communities have access to even the most basic resources, such as UBI and an amount of as little as $1.90 they can rewrite their destinies. We have witnessed how it can create a butterfly effect, changing impoverished people’s lives against all odds.
Now, we are moving forward into a new chapter of our mission, knitted in the chains of the future. Before we announce our new direction and the upcoming products we will launch, let’s take a look at impactMarket’s journey that brought us to this very point.
How It All Started?
We believe that poverty is one of the biggest global challenges of our time, limiting human potential and people’s chance to live in a fairer world. We cannot only rely on the government, centralized and traditional entities, or intermediaries to reach beneficiaries to break this vicious circle. The current tools proposed by these systems cannot solve issues such as:
- The lack of funds and the unfair distribution of it to underprivileged people
- The lack of access to inclusive financial instruments and services
- The lack of efficiency in philanthropic methods, especially regarding the distribution of donations.
To show that there is always a better solution, we took the responsibility to lead the way. We built impactMarket as a decentralized poverty alleviation protocol that enables any vulnerable community to implement poverty alleviation mechanisms, like Unconditional Basic Income (UBI). By operating on top of the Celo network, an open-sourced Proof-of-Stake (PoS), we started our journey to become one of the world’s largest blockchain-based UBI systems.
‘‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. (Chinese proverb)
In October 2020, we launched our first pilot in Brazil through the Fehlsona Community, with only 30 beneficiaries in the country’s capital. Our impact rapidly grew in the region, reaching 12,000 beneficiaries in less than 12 months.
Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jozKD2rQqxo
“We believe we are making a difference when we see cases like the Povoado de Jaguara community, where people lived in a place without access to drinking water, cell phones, internet, and public transport service, and with the help of impactMarket and partners, all of this is now possible”.
Since Brazil, we have expanded worldwide and supported thousands of vulnerable people from Nigeria to Ukraine.
- Thanks to our impact-driven UBI, we have reached over 46K beneficiaries in 269 communities and helped them to cover their basic needs and invest in raw materials, livestock, and tools to secure long-term financial self-employment opportunities.
- We have distributed over $2.94M funds to thousands of underprivileged people all around the world.
- We have raised a total of $2.1M ($1.6M in pre-seed and seed equity rounds and $500K through an IDO) to develop our web3 protocol and expand into unserved communities in the poorest countries.
- We launched the $PACT token through an IDO on Polkastarter, and our donors started to be rewarded with $PACT thanks to the impact Farming mechanism, becoming the influencers of our protocol’s future health, direction, growth, and impact.
- $PACT Holders give our beneficiaries the motivation to move forward and change the narrative. As a way of appreciation and giving back, we started Staking Mechanism. They can now earn passive income by holding our governance token.
- We have created the impactMarket Growth Framework, an exclusive methodology developed by our team for drawing our direction to understand better, guide, and manage the protocol’s growth around the globe. Thanks to the Growth Framework, we can comprehensively analyze vulnerable communities and ensure our poverty-ending efforts are efficient.
- We have joined Celo’s Initiative DeFi for the People and Social Impact Collective to multiply our impact in giving access to finance to underserved people and driving global DeFi adoption.
After three impactful years and thousands of stories about how impoverished people succeed with little capital, we are dedicated to doing more by harnessing the DeFi. We started with UBI, but our new journey begins toward human empowerment, and we are ready to go further, providing even more solutions to people.
We Are Ready To Unlock More Opportunities For All
We are very excited to announce that impactMarket is transforming into the Human Empowerment Protocol and on the path to becoming the leading financial and educational inclusion blockchain hub.
As impactMarket, we will pave the way toward financial inclusion and education and empower those in need, unfolding human potential. To do this, we are about to launch multiple game-changing financial products and services such as wallet, micro-credit, and Learn & Earn programs.
- Our new borderless and censorship-resistant financial tools and services will give people power over their circumstances and generate sustainable economic environments for the world.
- By becoming the blockchain-driven financial inclusion hub and an industry reference for social good, we will enable financial independence and literacy for all.
- Focusing on DeFi, we will remain a forerunner for helping underserved and unserved communities worldwide by leveraging blockchain.
- We will also serve everyone who believes in DeFi and choose to do good with socially-driven finance products over traditional finance.
Our new position will also allow us to become a catalyst in realizing the most significant Sustainable Development Goals. In addition to accelerating SDG №1 Goal: No Poverty by 2030, with our new DeFi products and services, we will focus on:
- SDG 4: Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all
- SDG 8: Promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all
- SDG10: Reduce Inequality within and among some countries
- SDG 17: Strengthening the means of implementation and revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development
While we are transforming into financial inclusion and educational hub, we are ready to turn dreams into reality.
Dare to dream!
As impactMarket, we believe everything begins with one dream, one step, one act of kindness and courage. One becomes multiple when we empower each other. Taking the road less traveled for better possibilities, we dare to disrupt millennia-old financial systems for a fairer world in our new chapter.
We dare to empower those who need it the most. We dare to be the pioneer of the blockchain-driven Financial Inclusion Revolution. We dare to dream of better possibilities. We dare to change the status quo dream. We dare to empower dreamers who were too busy thinking about how to overcome their daily challenges to provide the next meals for their families. We dare to encourage underprivileged people to dream of a better future.
Dare to dream is for all of us, still, it’s even more for those that for too long didn’t think they could dream of something else, a better life, a better future.
You can find us on:
Medium, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Youtube, Telegram, and Discord.
Dare to dream too!
You can be part of the change and empower people here. Your contribution goes to the communities, and when donating cUSD to a specific community or through the impact Farming page, you get $PACT tokens as a reward for the impact you’ll have made💙.
impactMarket (the application layer protocol)
impactMarket is a transparent, reliable, and inclusive human empowerment protocol. Enabling financial independence and literacy for all. It operates as a DAO on top of the Celo network, using $cUSD and $PACT as its governance token while running autonomously through smart contracts.
impactLabs (the company)
impactLabs Lda, based in Portugal, was founded in Nov 2020, by Marco Barbosa, Bernardo Vieira, Afonso Barbosa, and eSolidar. The company is focused on building inclusive and decentralized systems to unleash human potential and disrupt access to finance while driving DeFi adoption.
