One Small Town legal company, UBUNTU Planet NPC, launched 6 major projects, designed to work together and strengthen the Contributionism vision :
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One Small Token Cardano native
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Stake Pools on Cardano
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NFT Marketplace
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Time-Equity Wallet
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Smart Contracts
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Smart Card
One Small Token
Our One Small Token, that we called the ‘’Mite’’, is a cryptocurrency token with the first aim to get funds for opening our stake pools and secure sustainable income to the towns and businesses One Small Town supports. We will start with one stake pool per town that signed on to the One Small Town implementation. The One Small Town and the Mite ideas have been around for well over fifteen years. We believe the Cardano technology will successfully manifest our long held vision and combine decentralized finance with the real economy.
(The Widow's Mite is a parable of Jesus Christ that a poor widow's tiny gift to the temple meant more than all the major gifts of wealthy donors as it represented her belief and hope in the temple at great personal cost to herself. The Mite token manifests the delegate's faith and hope in One Small Town. One Small Town honours and respects the gift and ensures it will be used to build a strong foundation of the town. Mite also means power. So a small but powerful donation given freely and in love by even the most precarious show their faith in OST and that they will be well served by the community. The Mite was first conceived as digital currency for communities back in March 2009 when John Burns researched "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" and saw the protocol as essential to trade in small towns. Original March 2009 Mite Article )
Stake Pools
As we grow, we will open a stake pool for each town and for each of the 50 or so active businesses in each small town that desires one. By delegating ADA to the OST Stake Pools investors support a designated One Small Town. Training on the use of the blockchain tools and the stake pool will be delivered for free for each delegator.
Three types of persons or institutions are foreseen to participate in the purchase of our token:
PATRON: Supporter of the One Small Town plan and accomplishment of Contributionism in the world. These are outright gifts to One Small Town with the satisfaction to be part of the creation of a new world and no requirement for return on or of their donation.
INVESTOR: Holder of the One Small token, ideally believe in the One Small Town plan on a conscious level. Will be able to purchase a NFT that represents a share in the One Small Town businesses and will earn dividends while holding it.
TRADER: Volatility players, traders are more short term oriented seeking gains on their holdings of the Mite token and therefore less desired to participate in our project.
NFT Marketplace
Investors will be able to purchase NFT with the ‘’Mite’’ through a dedicated marketplace, the Regenico portal, where each collection represents a town and each NFT shares in the business profit of the said town. Holding NFT enables the investor to receive dividend from the business benefits.
The One Small Town marketplace web portal graphically shows planet Earth, which rotates to highlight each OST town/collection, with a zoom to the storefront. Videos and details of the provenance of the art (of the NFT) and the community business the NFT purchase will support. This is a vital element of the NFTs as they are virtual but truly fund and support real towns and the vital businesses and thousands of townspeople. As we are open to collaboration, if any existing marketplace can satisfy our vision, we can simply exchange our NFT there. Please contact us to make us aware.
Time-Equity Wallet
A wallet will be developed to allow investors to stake their ‘’Mite’’ to earn interest rewards, but also for registered members to accumulate their volunteer hours in the form of a "Fellowship" token. OST citizens will contribute three hours per week and the "Fellowship" token represents that commitment. The more TIME a volunteer gives, the more he or she has EQUITY in return, to exchange for the supplies and services the town or network provides. As the town will have about 50 active businesses and be trading with multiple other OST members we anticipate the majority of transactions can occur on the Cardano ecosystem using both Mites and Fellowship Tokens. This will ensure liquidity and interoperability of the digital financial marketplace.
Smart contract
In the One Small Town plan, external investors agree to an exit strategy to be certain that at the end, the people of the town own 100% of all the businesses. Programmed contracts can automatically sell the investors NFT back to the town once they have completed the investment contract agreement. Shares will be redistributed to One Small Town businesses. This will provide transparency of all One Small Town business contracts.
Smart card
A smartcard will store all the members necessary information such as skills and abilities, volunteer hours, business share etc… Connected to the blockchain, it can communicate with the wallet, and anyone could instantly prove his/her identity as a contributing member. Even move to a different town and be recognized as a One Small Town member and can easily find meaningful work, engagement, accommodations and support across the global One Small Town network.
Ubuntu Planet NPC Global Office
The objective of the Global Office is to provide solid foundations for the One Small Town world-wide ecosystem. The One Small Town/Ubuntu Global Office was formed and will operate in a similar manner to a group holding company (Holdco). Currently, there are nineteen Ambassadors and approximately twenty professionals contributing their expertise to the One Small Tow Global Office.
The One Small Town Global Office implementation is a phased approach, with Phase 1 already completed as follows:
Organization design
Recruitment of key roles
Project Planning and Implementation documents
Implementing technology – project management, business planning, communications
Redesign of One Small Town Website and Social Media platforms
Recruiting ambassadors, business plan writers, subject matter experts, project managers, and legal/accounting
Phase 2 is to establish the Global Office as a profit centre. Potential revenue for each One Small Town sign-up:
Annual management fees
Professional services fees – accounting, legal, operational, human resource management
Sales and marketing services, as well as commodity trading services
Implementation charge via cost recovery
Marketing
One Small Town Website (www.onesmalltown.org)
A dedicated One Small Town website has been launched to provide clarity and additional functionality to assist both individuals and businesses to register interest, volunteer, join as patrons and learn from the training videos available. There is also a shop with branded Ubuntu goods to purchase. The website is closely linked with new social media pages designed to drive traffic to the website.
Social Media Campaign
The new social media pages were recently launched to assist with communications, marketing, increasing both awareness and web traffic. Michael Tellinger is regularly interviewed by a variety of podcasters. One in particular, is a great supporter of One Small Town, and has an audience of over 18 million.
As with any community decentralized venture there are many challenges that we will face. Each town will face the same economic risks that all open markets face. The initial Cardano One Small Token Stake Pool will need to attract delegators amongst an already crowded market. The barrier to entry to operate the Stake Pool profitably requires sufficient size to benefit and receive a competitive yield of new tokens to attract delegators. The town governance of Town Elders and OST contributors will need a transparent model so that funds paid into the town will be used for the maximum benefit of the town. The competition amongst the various businesses for the funds will be open and fair using governance models built into the ecosystem as well as legacy based methods of equity distribution unique to each town. There will be a knowledge and communication gap between the crypto aware stake pool delegators and the local townspeople. The communication of a unified set of goals and milestones that all stakeholders will respect and engage in will be essential.
The development of local skilled staff who can run a local stake pool. It will be paramount for the OST model that each town function as independently as possible. This transition from running the stake pool and other aspects of the ecosystem from a centralized location to the town level will face hurdles. The local governance model will integrate with Cardano's governance utilities built into its ecosystem. The need for the real community to integrate with the Cardano digital platform will be measured in terms of feedback from all stakeholders as to the operability and qualitative and quantitative elements of how well the technology integrates with regular town life. Also, the initial towns we will introduce One Small Token's ecosystem to will need secure power and uninterrupted secure high speed internet to ensure smooth transactional experiences. This may be a natural collaboration with other Cardano partners like World Mobile. The human ergonomics and financial numeracy skills to operate using smart phones and terminals to do business, buy and sell goods and services, track time banking, secure personal identities, skill levels and ideal work interests etc. will require ongoing training and skill development with feedback loops to improve and enhance delivery of services and build stronger more independent communities.