impactMarket: the one that pays in dollars
Written by the Crypto Gratis editorial team · Last reviewed
Of everything on this site, impactMarket is the project that most clearly delivers real value to people who need it. It pays a dollar stablecoin rather than a token of its own, it operates in some of the poorest countries in the world, and it has distributed millions of dollars. The catch is that you cannot simply sign up.
Why this one is different. Every other project here pays you in a token it created, whose value depends on demand that may never arrive. impactMarket distributes cUSD, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, funded by donors. A beneficiary receives dollar value that does not dilute and does not halve overnight. That single design choice is worth more than every other feature discussed on this site.
How it works
impactMarket runs on the Celo network as a DAO. Supporters contribute cUSD to funds attached to specific communities. Verified beneficiaries in those communities claim from their community's fund on a recurring basis. Smart contracts handle the distribution, so the flow from donor to recipient does not pass through a bank, a remittance operator or a local intermediary — which is the point, in places where all three are expensive or absent.
Alongside the basic income there is microcredit for small loans, and a learn-and-earn programme that pays for engaging with educational material.
Where it operates
Priority countries have included the Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo, Mali and Venezuela, with secondary focus on Malawi, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Uganda and Tajikistan.
Note what that list is: not the countries with the most crypto speculation, but the ones where a few dollars a month is a meaningful intervention. It is a different project from the rest of this category and it is aimed at a different person.
The scale, in numbers
The protocol reports on the order of $3 million distributed to beneficiaries, with tens of thousands of people reached and more than a million individual transfers. Those are real dollars arriving in real hands, which is not a sentence we can write about anything else on this site.
Figures move; check the project's own dashboard rather than relying on ours.
How to get involved
If you might be a beneficiary
Access is through an approved community, not individual sign-up. If you are in one of the countries above, look for a local organisation already working with impactMarket — the project's site lists active communities. If none exists near you, there is no route in today, and you would be better served by GoodDollar, which is open almost everywhere.
If you want to contribute
Anyone can fund a community. This is the rare case where the answer to "how do I get free crypto" might reasonably be "you are not who this is for, but you could pay for someone who is."
The honest limitations
- You probably cannot join. Coverage is limited to funded, approved communities. That is a feature — it is what keeps the money going to people who need it — but it means most readers of this page are ineligible.
- It depends on donations. A community's fund can run dry. Unlike a minted token, the supply is not infinite, which is both the strength and the constraint.
- It is on Celo. You will need a Celo-compatible wallet and a route to convert cUSD locally. See cashing out.
Common questions
Can anyone join impactMarket?
No, and that is the trade-off. Beneficiaries join through a community that has been approved by the protocol, rather than by signing up individually. If there is no approved community where you live, you cannot claim — which is why GoodDollar is the more realistic option for most readers.
What does it pay in?
cUSD, a dollar stablecoin on the Celo network. This is the single most important difference from every other project on this site: what you receive is pegged to the dollar, so it does not lose half its value while you are saving it.
Where does the money come from?
Donors and supporters who contribute to community funds, not from minting new supply. That is why the value does not dilute — and also why coverage is limited to what has actually been funded.
See also: how it compares to the open-to-everyone projects, and why paying in a stablecoin solves the problem that defeats most UBI tokens.
Sources
Everything above is based on the following. Where they and we disagree, they are right — check them before you act on anything here.