Hey guys, great to chat with you all yesterday. I'm excited to see how this shapes up!
After reading the main idea above, I have two general comments regarding the Main Problem(s) we intended to solve, and also one regarding Internet access.
Focus on Main Problems:
In this context, we’ve essentially named two parties the Sender (Central Gov’t, NGO, Charity) and the Beneficiary (intended population). Let’s call them S and B, and for this exercise let’s use an S, a Gov’t, that wants to distribute a fixed monthly amount of Mana (M), to an economically poor group of 10,000 people. Let’s choose a developing world context because by solving the greater problem, we may be able to handle the smaller ones in turn. There are a couple of main problems that exist in this space, let’s review them chronologically.
- Qualification. What characterizes a person from a larger population of 100,000 to be chosen in this group of 10,000 to become a B.
- Identification. Once I have identified a B, how can I ensure that this specific B receives the intended 100 Mana on a monthly basis.
- Fraud. How can I be sure that this B has only received 100 M and has not created a new B account, nor coerced another B to give them their 100 M.
- Usage. Every S has a set of goals for which they intend that 100 M is spent on. These are usually the essentials: Food, Water, Electricity, Healthcare, Education.
- Dependency. An S wants to serve the intended group of B’s, and desires that they improve their livelihood. What happens, when they actually improve? Can we ensure that a qualified B isn’t forever dependent on our transfer of M?
*Any one of these can be a specific application or a use case.
Do we want to refine our scope to just pick one of these or focus on another main problem?
Internet:
Kenya, since 2007, has been using M-Pesa, a successful P2P mobile payment system via “dumb” phones, it is just an SMS text service, and is fully integrated with businesses and I believe governments. Cell towers cover most of the service area, and data plans are not used.
Getting inexpensive smartphones to intended populations is not a problem. Internet access is.
There are small contained network solutions that include Bluetooth or NFC. Is this an option?
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