MiraDAO: Funding Effective Environmental and Social Impact Through Positive Sum Fundraising
MiraDAO is a blockchain based, cryptocurrency platform that allows users to easily earn passive income while funding organizations creating change in the areas of science, climate and social impact.
KEYWORDS
Economics, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Social Impact, Systems Thinking
SUMMARY
Innovation in the nonprofit sector is stagnant due to being dominated by large incumbents and an ineffective fundraising system. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology present exciting new possibilities for fundraising and charitable giving. However, technological barriers make many of these crypto-based solutions inaccessible to most. That is why I have developed MiraDAO, a platform and community that brings together all of the most impactful crypto-based organizations making an impact, and allows you to contribute to them while being rewarded for doing so. The term DAO stands for decentralized autonomous organization, which means MiraDAO is governed by the users themselves and guided by a set of rules defined by code on a blockchain, rather than corporate governance structures.
challenge
My main challenge when building this project was designing the smart contract system that powers MiraDAO. A smart contract is a program that automatically executes actions based on a set of predefined rules. The objective of the MiraDAO smart contract was to allow users’ funds to be automatically taxed, distributed to borrowers to earn interest, that interest had to then be collected and redistributed to the various impact related organizations we support. The same process had to be possible in reverse as well, when a user would decide to withdrawal their funds. After many iterations, the MiraDAO smart contract system seems to work theoretically and is actively being developed for practical testing.
Outcome
The MiraDAO platform presents a promising new way to facilitate fundraising through aligned incentives for all stakeholders involved. The smart contact system allows impact organizations to receive perpetual funding through the MiraDAO platform, and for users to redeem the full amount they deposited upon withdrawal. This system, along with financial incentives for users, should result in more crypto owners depositing their tokens in MiraDAO to make an impact. The blockchain application itself is currently under development and will be completed and ready for on-chain testing by the end of May.
