Semi-Finalists at MIT Solve 2023 Financial Inclusion Challenge

Watch the High-Level Overview
6 Minute Video
About the Truly Networked Economy
See the UX of the Payments & Retail Network
8 Minute Video
About money-less payments & clearing of debt through network patterns
See the UX of the Funding, Impact & Wealth Network
5 Minute Video
Funding new products and growth without debt or equity loss, and not limited by money. Co-creating wealth with impact supporters.
See the System from the User Perspective
    The following videos present how users experience the 3 core solutions:
  1. The Payments & Retail Network
    2. Money-less payments & clearing of debt through network patterns.
  2. The Funding, Impact & Wealth Network
    3. Funding new products and growth without debt or equity loss, and not limited by money; co-creating wealth with impact supporters.
  3. Direct Access to Systemic Perspectives
    4. Unlike the two solutions above which are being deployed, this one is still in R&D. It will expose users directly to network-wide views and many-to-many conversations and relationships.
Who We Are
We are a new Canadian non-profit developing this fintech with a global collective that includes:
  • Technical and executive experience in banking and finance, including risk management, loan origination, and finance law.
  • Acedemic & industry expertiese in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and network theory.
  • Post-graduate researchers in systems thinking, strategic foresight and innovation.
  • Entrepreneurs and management executives.
    • What We Do
    We develop an open-source platform that communities, municipal or national governments can use to overcome monetary, inequality, & debt limitations in economic development. Our capabilities work by surfacing deep interconnections in markets and value flows that simultaneously affect many economic participants, unlike current markets that see transactions as a direct line between only 2 participants. This approach does not require creating new currencies or replacing existing systems.
    Evolution of Value Representation
    Our technology also reveals a much richer and multi-relational perspective on economic value, compared to a one-dimensional price or profit. It can also surface valuation for volunteering, family care, non-profits, and other appreciated activity that today falls outside of economic models.
    Financial Inclusion & Collaboration
    All of this creates more inclusive markets, because the ability to start a new economic activity depends less on previous wealth, financial history, debt, or collateral. The conventionally separated roles of investors and consumers acquire more information symmetry and mutual power under a combined information space of "supporters". This can lead to more collaborative economic growth and better tools for impact shaping.
    The Self-Empowerment
    Because our deep economic networks are a representation of community relationships, they uniquely self-empower communities to shape their economic development. Individuals and organizations see how better to develop products or skills to fit in the best network patterns. Such networks expose how one can plug themselves deeper into their economy.
    Our Vision & Mission
    Our vision is for every viable idea and economic potential to be free from inherited or undeserved constraints like wealth inequality, lack of financial history, or privileges in access and information. Our mission is to evolve economic models so that they catch up to the full productivity & creative awesomeness of humanity, and unleash the economic potential imagined by every community.
    The Challenge
    Economic problems too often happen in absurd conditions where enough skilled people want to find jobs, enough businesses want to create jobs, and enough people want to become sellers or buyers; yet the economy still fails to connect all of this into a working network. Only 0.5% of successful entrepreneurs in the US receive venture capital (Kauffman Foundation, 2019). Most small businesses seek loans under $100,000 while banks are increasingly avoiding requests below that level (Forbes, 2014). The money created by central banks at unprecedented rates ends up more into asset bubbles and less into powering smaller businesses and community economic needs. (The Economist, 2020)(Summers, 2016)(Roubini, WEF, 2015).
    Open-Source Platform & Simulator
    The beta network code and simulator is open-sourced at https://gitlab.com/socialcogs/ions-liquidity-networks. A step-by-step guide shows that the IONs algorithms working technically end-to-end.
    Whitepaper
    For formal and visual explanations of the model and algorithms see our whitepaper.
    From Not Seeing the Network and Domino Effects
    One key issue is that today's economic systems are not considering the domino effects of all our economic relationships. There are a small number of exceptions such as niche accounting systems used between banks. The mainstream economy looks at transactions as affecting only two parties in isolation. Recent science is beginning to see economies as such information flow networks.. What is still lacking are 21st-century financial instruments based on the new science and tech.
    To Seeing Economies as Information Flow Networks
    Our work borrows inspiration from Internet routing algorithms to solve credit problems in an economic network similar to how the Internet solves connectivity problems. This is combined with inspiration from futures contracts, as used in commodity markets for centuries, or Liquidity-Saving Mechanisms (LSMs), as used between banks for decades, to create credit or purchasing power without increasing debt. As a result, our algorithms can drive debt-less economic activity based on how supply-demand relationships could unfold in the future, i.e. not limited by previous wealth distribution, the lack of credit history, or monetary conditions. Check out our Medium publication channel.
    First Pass-Through Instrument
    Today's financial instruments are of a transfer-and-keep type, where the payee needs to keep the instrument in order to get its value. This is a limiting legacy in a highly real-time networked age. All the potential of IONs comes from the simple property that a payee can get its financial benefit simply by having the ION pass through them as it flows through the network.
    First Instrument Not Limited by the Past
    At a quick glance, IONs can appear similar to future contracts, IOUs, crowd-funding, or multi-party credit clearing. However, all these still require at least one party to have access to money or previous invoices/debt. IONs are the first economic growth instruments that are theoretically not limited by the past, i.e. by how previous money or invoices are distributed, while at the same time not requiring the issuance of new currency.
    Non-Disruptive & Symbiotic
    IONs do not require the creation of new currencies nor the replacement of existing monetary systems and capital flows. Wherever existing money has the needed liquidity, there is no need for IONs. Wherever liquidity is lacking, IONs only open up new opportunities that were otherwise inaccessible.
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