SuperHi Basic Income
Applications closed
What is SuperHi Basic Income?
An experiment to see if giving creative people a financial buffer accelerates their career.
Seven people have received...
Applications are now closed. Follow us on Twitter or Instagram for updates about SuperHi Basic Income.
Updates
Applications are now closed for SuperHi Basic Income. We had over 22,000 applications, with a collective 1.78 million words written — a big, big thank you to everyone who took the time to apply!
The sheer number of applications was a surprise to the SuperHi team, and we weren’t expecting such a strong response—11x more than anticipated.
We are also happy to announce that due to the increased support and donations we’ve had for the project, there are seven recipients of SuperHi Basic Income, instead of five.
Free money? What’s the catch?
SuperHi’s mission is to help creative people be more creative. We see many in our community that are unable to achieve their goals due to financial constraints or not having a buffer to fall back on. SuperHi Basic Income is a kind of experiment to see if people might be able to accelerate their careers or make a stable living, with the help of basic resources and a financial backup. Here is what winners receive...
- $1,000 USD a month, for six months.Giving you a financial buffer to change your creative world.
- A MacBook Air or iPad Pro.Giving you the tools to be more creative.
- A SuperHi membership.Giving you access to high-quality creative education.
There are no set outcomes or requirements for recipients to meet. For us, we want to see if people can reach the next step in their creative careers with the required funding that covers a creative’s basic needs. Some examples of what you could do with the money...
- Work on your portfolio and résumé
- Learn skills to get that perfect job
- Make the jump to freelance
- Focus on your side hustle
- Do absolutely nothing at all
The worst case scenario is no change, but the best case is that the experiment drastically changes people’s lives permanently.
ApplyWho could apply?
People who either work in or want to work in a creative field, and are planning to make a large change to their career. pplications are now closed, but here is a timeline of how the project rolled out…
Applications open.
Judges voting.
Recipients announced.
Funds sent.
Our application process had a three-part process; the first is to you needed to let us know about yourself, the second is you gave the judging panel a reason why you feel like you need SuperHi Basic Income, then the third is you verified your application with a social post to show that you’re a real person.
Why use crypto?
We designed SuperHi Basic Income to be as transparent as possible.
- A fully transparent process.All transfers will be public on the blockchain, verifying that the receipents received their money. No “trust us, here’s a screenshot”.
- Public proof of funds.Each recipient’s money is stored in a Gnosis Safe, a decentralized way to manage digital assets that allows everyone see the money is there (see for yourself).
- Guaranteed funds each month.Using a digital currency ensures recipients will receive funds monthly, no matter what happens to the project.
- Allows the community to deploy funds.If everyone at SuperHi gets hit by a bus, this process still allows the community to deploy funds. There is no single point-of-failure.
Guaranteed winners will be paid in USDC, a digital currency that matches the US dollar, so there’s no worries about fluctuating prices! You don’t need to understand crypto or pay to receive SuperHi Basic Income.
This experiment is a carbon-negative campaign, a step beyond carbon-neutral. At SuperHi, we recognize the problems of Proof of Work blockchains so we will be making all transactions verifiably carbon-negative by offsetting emissions via Offsetra.
Who picks the winners, and how?
We carefully selected and recruited a judging panel to be part of the process to make the process independent from the SuperHi team. Our judging process involved two round…
Round 1
- A judge was shown two applications at the same time.Applications are picked at random and only the reason part of applications will be shown.
- Judges picked their choice of the two.Judges decide which the two do they think will accelerate their careers with the addition of SuperHi Basic Income.
- Applications with two no’s were eliminated until 100 remained.This ensures every application is read at least twice by judges.
Round 2
- Every judge will receive 100 votes each to distribute.The voting will be done “off-chain” in a standard database.
- Judges can give between 1 and 10 of their votes to any application.Judges will be asked again to vote based on who they feel will be able to accelerate their career with funds.
- The applications with the most votes win.Votes will be totaled on Feb 11, and voting will be released publicly.
Every judge that completed the voting process – either 100 selections in round 1 or completing round 2 – in a fair way received an equal split of a judging fund of $8,000 USDC as thanks for completing the process.
Apply to be a judgeSupport the experiment
Although our first round of winners have been announced, we will be extending the program out to another round of winners if more funding is received.
Funding for the project is received and transferred in crypto currency, so we made donations possible through the sale of an NFT. We are offered a 1 / 250 NFT. Every $6,000 worth of donations will allow another person to receive the funds, and anything extra fundingmoney over will be distributed between recipients. This is a non-speculative NFT project. Supporters can receive…
- Access exclusive reports into the experiment.
- Receive a limited-edition NFT showing your support.
- 100% of funds go directly to recipients.
Who is SuperHi?
SuperHi helps creative people be more creative. We are an educational community focused on helping people who work (or want to work) in the creative industries by providing courses in topics such as coding, design, crypto and project management. We believe in...
- High-quality, specialist education.Learning should not be a one-size-fits-all, lowest-common-denominator experience.
- Real-world outcomes.You should be learning practical skills to understand theory, rather than just learning academic theory.
- Learning is a social experience.Improving your skills doesn’t need to be a solo experience. A community of like-minded peers is there to support and help.
We have a free course called Plan, Design + Code Your First Website or check out our YouTube channel for more. Follow us on Twitter or Instagram for updates about SuperHi Basic Income.
If you’re looking to join a remote-first company that supports creative people, we’re hiring!
Got a question?
Is this a real campaign?
This is 100% real. The money is held in a secured safe, ready to be deployed, which can be verified on third party sites such as Etherscan or Gnosis. It's impossible for us to fake the money being in there... it's ready to go!
SuperHi is a very real company too. We've been helping tens of thousands of creative people gain skills since 2016 and are backed by some of the world's best VCs such as Framework, Expa, Torch Capital, Reach Capital and Designer Fund.
How do I use the money in real life if it's digital currency?
How do I apply?
Unfortunately applications are now closed. Anyone who applied for SuperHi Basic Income, was required to fill in an application form and verify it to go to the judging panel.
We will also require all winners to prove their identity with a standard form of identification (e.g. passport, drivers license) to SuperHi before funds are distributed.
Who can apply?
We opened up applications to anyone who is over 18 years old from anywhere in the world, except for countries which are under US embargoes or sanctions. SuperHi is a US-based company so we have to follow the rules around this.
We will also require all winners to prove their identity with a standard form of identification (e.g. passport, drivers license) to SuperHi before funds are distributed.
How much does it cost to apply?
Nothing! It's 100% free to apply, and there are no fees to pay if you win.
Do I have to pay tax on this if I win?
Yes, this would count as income the majority of worldwide jurisdictions and have to be reported as such.
We recommend services such as TokenTax which are great to dealing with taxes for crypto-currencies.
Why not use PayPal, Venmo, wire transfer, etc?
We could have but there were three major flaws around the transparency of traditional financial systems. The first being that we wanted to publicly prove and ensure recipients that the money is in an account ready to be deployed – the best we could do is a screenshot but of course, that can be faked.
The second is that we wanted to guarantee that the transactions are being sent.
The third is most traditional financial systems only allow one person to deploy the money. Using crypto, we can let there be multiple people involved in the sending of funds so it's not solely owned by the SuperHi team.
How would things change if the price of Ethereum goes up or down?
Nothing major would change. The funds are stored in a digital currency which is tied to the price of the US dollar, so the money itself doesn't get affected. Of course, if you're in a non-US country then currency exchange rates would naturally change however.
The only thing that is dependent on Ethereum prices would be if you want to exchange USDC into a 'fiat' currency (e.g. US dollars, Euro, British pounds) as there would be a network fee for doing this which is partly dependent on Ethereum and how much traffic is on the network at the time, but this is likely to be only a small difference, rather than anything major.
Why not use a Ethereum layer 2 such as Polygon or Arbitrum?
We thought heavily about what 'chain' to use to do this and after talking to several external people with wallets, the majority of them didn't have any layer 2 (L2) tokens so we felt that there would be less usage of gas in doing sponsorship as a Ethereum layer 1 NFT over having people having to spend gas swapping L1 for L2 tokens and then buying.
The average gas used for a Uniswap token swap is around 155 gwei so we felt that focusing on optimizing the gas usage to be as low as possible would be more productive to the experiment.
What does being a carbon-negative campaign actually mean?
Firstly we believe that Proof of Work blockchains suck and the quicker that they move to a more sustainable solution, such as Proof of Stake, the better. To offset carbon emitted due to the Ethereum blockchain, we will be using an independent tool, Carbon.fyi, to calculate the CO2 footprint of all contracts and transactions.
We will then double the amount to be offsetted via Offsetra and publish verification on the SuperHi Twitter account.
How can I contribute?
There are three ways that others can help with SuperHi Basic Income. The first is you can be a judge for the applicants and voting for which people you think should receive SuperHi Basic Income. All judges that complete the voting process will also receive an equal share of $8,000 USDC.
The second way is if you feel like you can afford to, sponsor the project by purchase an NFT for 0.1 eth. 100% of the proceeds will go directly towards the campaign (proof on line 1132 of the NFT contract here).
And lastly, any public support of the experiment would be incredibly helpful. Please share what we're doing on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or whatever your favorite social media platform is!
How are judges selected?
The SuperHi team will be selecting an undetermined number of judges to ensure a wide, diverse range. The number of judges selected will be based on the number of applications received – the more applications, the more judges that will be selected!
Anyone applying for both judging and the main application form will be removed from the judging pool to ensure fairness.
Will I know who the judges are?
We won't be announcing the judges publicly but you'll be able to see what Ethereum accounts have access to the judging panel via the judges contract. We are not announcing judges so that it doesn't lead to any external influence or biasing of the voting process.
Will I know how many votes I get after judging?
All judges votes will be on-chain meaning how many votes they gave for each application will be public. Only the IDs of the applications will be public however so no need to worry about your name, email or application being revealed.
We will email after the judges vote is closed to let you know if you have or haven't received the funds.
Can I announce this publicly if I win?
Of course! All recipients are welcome to talk about the project and how they use the funds. Each recipent's crypto wallet address will be publicly on the blockchain so others can see that the funds are truly sent.
If I win, what would be expected of me?
Winners will have to set up a Ethereum wallet to be able to receive funds. It's free to do and won't cost you anything.
During the experiment, we will be working with an independent researcher to check on your progress. We expect there to be around 30-60 minutes per month of reporting back to us on how you're getting on which can be done via email or Zoom calls.
Generally, we'll let you get on and use the funds to try and achieve your career goals though!
If I win but don't accomplish goals, what happens?
Unlike a grant or residency program, we aren't holding you accountable for outcomes. We won't reprimand you for not achieving what you thought you applied to do with SuperHi Basic Income.
This is an experiment for us and you, and it's very common for experiments to fail. You will never be required to pay us back, the money is still yours. We are using this as a test to see if a financial buffer helps people achieve goals and if the answer is no, that is still a great outcome to know.
Further reading
We aren’t the only ones who think that money helps people’s careers and their well-being. A lot has been written on the subject of Universal Basic Income and we, at SuperHi, want to prove the theory out… less talk, more action!
To read more on the subject, there are some fantastic articles, books and videos below…