[GIP-26] Begin Distributions to House of Alignment

sam_mccarthy · May 14, 2026, 5:42pm

GIP: [GIP-26] Begin UBI Distribution to House of Alignment

Title: Begin UBI Distribution to House of Alignment

Author: Good Labs Foundation

Status: Stage III – Work In Progress

Track: Protocol

Created: 05/14/2026

TLDR

The aim of this proposal is to formally launch GoodDollar’s House of Alignment and begin UBI distributions from a newly formed pool to the inaugural member projects. The primary objective of this program is to shift from GoodDollar’s distribution-only model, to community-driven distributions that promote demand for G$ and ecosystem growth, ultimately strengthening the Reserve and the long-term sustainability of the protocol.

This proposal:

Explains how the community input and outcomes from CoGov were used in this design
Provides an overview of the House of Alignment model and the metrics the performance of this pilot will be measured against
Presents the first members and how they plan to use their distributions
Details the proposed technical changes
Outlines next steps

Background & Motivation

Launching the House of Alignment is the next step in GoodDollar’s Governance Re-Vision, which began with two primary objectives:

Build a new system that increases community engagement in GoodDollar governance
Redesign GoodDAO to support the growth of a sustainable economy on top of GoodDollar’s open infrastructure

From the recently concluded collaborative governance redesign process, “CoGov,” a new vision for GoodDollar’s governance system and GoodDAO emerged. Following the principle that collaboration between aligned projects is key to scaling financial inclusion, GoodDAO was reframed as a network of impact capital allocators — a community that manages money distribution to grow a collaborative economy.

This new vision revealed the need for a governance structure that better aligns all stakeholders, principally the projects that share GoodDollar’s mission. This Network Alignment System has now been introduced as one part of GoodDAO 2.0’s new bicameral governance: the House of Alignment.

How It Works

The House of Alignment model is intended to scale UBI by enabling community-driven distributions that increase G$ demand, integrations, usage, and overall network activity.

Overview:

Member projects stake a minimum amount of $G
Each project receives approximately $800 in $G per month from the newly formed House of Alignment pool
Each project redistributes their $G allocation to their local communities

Crucially, the funds distributed to the House of Alignment are not intended to remain in project treasuries. Instead, the member projects must redistribute their allocations in a way that is aligned with the GoodDollar mission of promoting financial access and inclusion, while also promoting the growth of the ecosystem. While the redistribution strategies detailed below vary by project, through this model we aim to promote a virtuous cycle where the distributions made to the House of Alignment increase the economic activity of all participants, underpinned by G$, resulting in greater demand for G$, future distributions, and network growth.

How Success Will be Measured

As this will be the first pilot of the House of Alignment model, it is important to lay out specific timelines and evaluation criteria, in order to accurately identify what is and isn’t working across different projects and iterate before scaling further.

Implementation date (subject to governance approval): Beginning of June
First evaluation date: September 30, 2026

Leading up to September 30th, the member projects of the House of Alignment will be required to report on the G$ usage and impact generated by their allocations, which will be published on GoodDollar’s governance forum. The results will be reviewed by GoodLabs and the GoodDollar community against performance metrics to evaluate the House of Alignment’s effect on key areas such as G$ distribution, demand, and impact. These metrics will track and measure activities like G$ holding and staking, new wallet onboarding and retention, transaction volume and velocity, as well as the qualitative context and concrete examples that quantitative metrics can’t capture. This evaluation will help determine future allocations.

Overview of Member Projects

To start, we are proposing the following four inaugural members of the House of Alignment: Gardens, Green Goods, ReFi DAO, and Textile.

Gardens

Overview: Gardens is a bottom-up governance framework for web3 ecosystems that provides coordination infrastructure and funding mechanisms to help grow networks of public goods.
Use of distributions: Gardens will redistribute its allocation through a dedicated $G-denominated Conviction Voting pool—the Aligned Commons Pool—that funds mission-aligned Gardens communities. Communities will stake G$ to participate in the pool, driving demand for G$ and further growing the ecosystem.

Green Goods

Overview: Green Goods is a compliance and local-first impact reporting platform that captures, verifies, and funds community-led regenerative work, connecting field workers documenting environmental actions to the capital and verification systems that make those actions sustainable.
Use of distributions: Green Goods will use G$ to help fund their current cohort of regenerative projects across solar, agroforestry, waste management and education. This will support the initial growth of the projects and the long-term building of commitment pools centered around G$, helping to incentivize holding and swapping G$ within these communities.

ReFi DAO

Overview: ReFi DAO is a hub that connects regenerative movements globally, empowering communities to co-create a future rooted in social equity, economic opportunity, and ecological restoration.
Use of distributions: ReFi DAO will split its allocation between key regional hubs to ensure global representation and funnel G$ directly into local regenerative ecosystems. All distributions will be structured as sponsored tasks on the Balaio platform, paid in G$, generating demand for G$ and real economic impact at the community level.

Textile

Overview: Textile is an open credit network that connects lenders and borrowers through transparent, on-chain credit pools with institutional-grade structure.
Use of distributions: Textile will set up a dedicated G$ Loan Subsidy Pool that subsidizes the interest rate on loans to businesses. This pool will make borrowing meaningfully cheaper for certain borrowers and grow the financial activity around G$.

Each of these projects will bring their own incredible mission that aligns directly with GoodDollar and we are super excited to see the impact we’ll have with them!

Proposed Changes & What This Means

While the required technical changes are few, the House of Alignment will have a hugely positive impact on how $G is distributed and how the future of the GoodDollar protocol is defined.

The deployment includes initiating the distributions to the House of Alignment from the GoodDollar Reserve on Celo, which requires changing the parameters of the CeloDistributionHelper contract. Currently, 90% of the reserve distributions are directed to the UBI Pool earmarked for individual UBI, while the remaining 10% are directed to the GoodDAO treasury. Following this proposal, 50% of the reserve distributions will be directed to the UBI Pool, 40% to a newly created House of Alignment Pool that will manage distributions to the House of Alignment, and the remaining 10% will remain directed to the GoodDAO treasury.

UBI Distributions	Before	After
UBI Pool	90%	50%
New House of Alignment Pool	0%	40%
DAO treasury	10%	10%

In order to manage $G distributions to the member projects of the House of Alignment, a Flow Splitter will be set up on Flow State. This simple primitive will enable the onchain distributions from the newly formed pool to the House of Alignment, which will be allocated to each member project in an equal amount to start. In the future, these distributions will be subject to a governance vote.

The House of Alignment will continue the GoodDollar protocol’s legacy as an open standard for distributing free digital money as a public good, as well as GoodDollar’s mission to make money flow to the people who need it most.

Next Steps

Community replies to this post with any questions or concerns
A community vote on Snapshot is conducted to aggregate consensus
If approved, protocol Guardians implement changes
Community will be updated on progress and deployment timeline through the forum

Looking forward to continuing to evolve GoodDollar’s governance and impact with all of you!

Gpalomino · May 14, 2026, 6:20pm

GIP-26 authorizes massive distributions of G$ to the House of Alignment in Celo. How does this proposal guarantee that this flow of money will not erode the backing that supports the value of our current assets, considering that issuance in Fuse is declining?

Gooddollar2020 · May 22, 2026, 5:26pm

Against

While the concept of transitioning to House of Alignment distributions is interesting, I am against this proposal in its current form due to several critical risks regarding its execution, sustainability, and evaluation.

Key Concerns:

Dilution of UBI Pool: Shifting from a direct “distribution-only” model to allocating funds to an experimental “House of Alignment” pool risk depleting standard UBI distributions for individual users before the model is proven.
Vague Metrics: The proposal states it provides an “overview of metrics,” but it lacks concrete, mathematically sound KPIs. We need strict financial triggers to halt the pilot if it underperforms.
Reserve Strain: The text claims this will “strengthen the Reserve,” but adding new intermediary member projects could create immediate sell pressure on G$, achieving the exact opposite effect.
Centralization Risks: Selecting an “inaugural” group of member projects creates an insular ecosystem. The process for how these first members were chosen over others remains unclear and potentially exclusionary.

senryu · May 24, 2026, 1:02pm

Two thoughts about this proposal.

This is a big cut out of the UBI Pool. The current amount a user can claim is worth around 1 dollarcent. That is not enough for any daily use even in low-income countries. This proposal would bring that down to half a cent per day. Wouldn’t it be better to start the house of alignment pool a bit more cautious with maybe 10 or 20%?
The member projects are all very web3 oriented. Only web3 savvy users can participate. I think it’s important to bridge the gap between web3 and the offline world. Spending the G$ is a big hurdle for many people who need it the most. This is what we do with our FairSpirit projects. There we support communities with additional G$ (10.000 per day) and help them to that they can spend it locally.
So I propose to include FairSpirit as a member project.

Gooddollar2020 · May 24, 2026, 5:03pm

The Fairspirit proposal of allocating 10,000 G$ daily to a select group of five individuals lacks broad appeal. I advocate for a more equitable distribution of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) pool among all eligible claimants, ensuring that allocations are unconditional and not subject to random selection. Consequently, I oppose the inclusion of Fairspirit within the House of Alignment.

senryu · May 24, 2026, 5:34pm

Hi, the same argument can be made for all the other Member projects. By diverting G$ from the common UBI pool to these projects you are selecting recipients.

Also, it’s not 5 participants. We are expanding to more and at the moment all of this is payed for by donors and sponsors of FairSpirit itself.

The purpose is not only to help our participants, but also to make G$ useful in real life. Which I think is an extremely valuable contribution.

Becoming a member project would greatly improve our impact and help introduce G$ in real life.

Gooddollar2020 · May 24, 2026, 5:52pm

While I understand that Fairspirit aims to expand its reach, the core issue is systemic. Diverting any funds from the universal pool to specific member projects inherently creates a multi-tier system. UBI works best when it remains completely unconditional and uniform for everyone. If donor money currently funds Fairspirit, it might be better to maintain that independent structure rather than integrating it into the core UBI pool.

senryu · May 24, 2026, 6:20pm

I agree that unconditional is best. But I repeat, this goes for all the Member projects. Not specifically FairSpirit.

One variant we work with is a random raffle. That preserves the unconditionallity as good as possible as long as there are not enough funds to pay everyone a viable UBI.

Gpalomino · May 24, 2026, 6:20pm

To properly assess the significance of my votes in this Snapshot and ensure the pilot’s viability, I believe it is essential that the foundation formally clarify: What exact metrics or penalties will be applied if these projects negatively impact liquidity before the September 30th evaluation? How will the flow of incentives or buybacks be structured in the subsequent phase (Stage IV) for the stakers who sustain the system’s activity? What audit or emergency pause mechanisms will the ‘Flow Splitter’ have on the blockchain if we detect that a project is misusing funds before the September review date?

Gooddollar2020 · May 24, 2026, 6:45pm

I appreciate your understanding.

I believe that keeping the system with 90% Universal Basic Income (UBI) and 10% Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) allocation will lead to a long-term increase in the value of the current “Small” UBI.

Furthermore, the House of Alignment and Fairspirit must be funded through donations. That’s better for the future prosperity of the G$ Project and its vision, “Equitable UBI for all.”

afo · May 25, 2026, 8:24am

Hi! I’m Afolabi steward at Greenpill leading the Dev Guild the builders of Green Goods.

To start, I want to thank Sam and the Good Dollar team for inviting us into the House of Alignment. Having worked with Sam in the past across different grant rounds and operations, I’ve always had a great experience, and I have no doubt this will be the same.

The project we’re joining the House of Alignment with is Green Goods, an Ethereum-based protocol centered on making impact reporting accessible and then tying that tightly to capital formation, closing the gap between the two.

We do this using Ethereum-native tools like Octant and DeFi vaults, where people can support a garden not by giving up principal but by contributing the yield. We also lean on simpler primitives like cookie jars, which are trustless containers where a community can pool donated funds and withdraw them through a trustless, shared system.

On GoodDollar specifically, this is something we’ve been aware of in the space for a while, and we’re genuinely excited to explore how we can use G$ inside Green Goods. The goal is not for people to receive G$ and immediately sell it, but to put it to work as an incentive around commitment pooling and other staking elements.

For added context, we’re in the process of taking over the spinach fi platform and rebranding it as Greenpill Spinach, and there could be real opportunities there to encourage Good staking and similar mechanics.

So the powerful thing we want to see with G$ is this: funds that come into our ecosystem flow to the gardens to do regenerative work, and as we build out commitment pooling functionality, communities can use G$ as a strong incentive to access quality services more affordably than they could with other tokens.

If things go well, G$ becomes a staple in our community, something people can access and stake for later use through vouchers and similar mechanisms.

We’re looking forward to joining the call this week to share more about Green Goods and answer any questions the community may have.

On the comments shared so far

I of course want to understand more about where people are seeing things, and I want to speak to a few of the points raised.

On where the G$ in our allocation will flow: these are on-the-ground projects. They include solar hubs at local universities in Nigeria that provide space to incubate regenerative projects and take part in larger infrastructure projects, and farmers in Brazil doing agroforestry and similar regenerative work.

To the point about bridging beyond web3-savvy users: Green Goods is built specifically to abstract away the blockchain elements and deliver the benefits to people in a very IRL, community-based manner. We’re just getting started and growing, and I think there’s strong potential for people to associate G$ with community-based vouchers, creating circular economies where G$ is staked and used rather than sold. In that model, G$ becomes the asset that gives you access to what you actually need: farming materials if you’re farming, supplies if you’re doing waste work, and so on.

A perspective on UBI

To share my own view, I think part of the challenge with UBI is when it’s provided without a clear path to circular economies. It ends up under constant sell pressure because people aren’t connecting it to the ability to swap it or use it for other purposes.

This is me still learning the GoodDollar ecosystem, but I believe finding ways to make G$ circulate and be staked in ways that are useful and meaningful to communities is genuinely powerful. It lets us treat G$ not just as a UBI incentive but as a staking incentive that unlocks access to goods and services within a microeconomy.

Especially given the times we’re heading into globally, I’m not sure a single large global UBI scales well, and it risks becoming diluted. But building microeconomies centered on G$, with communities actually putting it to use, can be very powerful, and those micro effects can grow into macro ones over time.

Look forward to more discourse and getting to know the community better.

sam_mccarthy · May 25, 2026, 7:20pm

Hi all, I really appreciate everyone’s input! I want this to be an iterative process and all the feedback so far is super valuable in helping to strengthen the proposal, especially around KPIs, accountability, and transparency.

Several concerns have been raised about the proposal in its current form and I will do my best to address them. My responses are below, grouped by theme.

On the size of the distributions from the UBI pool

I first want to point out what this proposal is NOT. This proposal does not remove or replace UBI. Individual UBI remains unconditional, while the House of Alignment is a separate, complementary layer.

The primary intention of this proposal is to explore how GoodDollar can also support partner projects and public goods aligned with GoodDollar’s mission. Through the House of Alignment pilot, we’re exploring a mechanism to grow ecosystem participation and coordination around G$, helping to increase utility, circulation, and long-term sustainability around the token. The size of the distributions is intended to allocate significant amounts to each of the initial four projects — making it worth their effort to participate, producing meaningful impact for their communities, and generating useful data for future program iterations.

The key aspect of the proposal is that the G$ allocated to the House of Alignment are required to be redistributed to each project’s ecosystem in ways that drive future G$ demand. Growing G$ demand means growing the GoodDollar Reserve — the source from which all UBI is paid — and growing future individual UBI distributions. The choice is not “preserve UBI vs. divert it” but rather, should we invest part of it in mechanisms designed to grow the pool for everyone? I understand 40% is asking for a large amount initially, but using September 30 as a first evaluation date helps mitigate the associated risks and concerns.

On Reserve backing and sell pressure

This is precisely what the member selection and redistribution strategies are designed to prevent. Each of the four inaugural projects in the House of Alignment have been chosen based on their alignment to our mission, their partnership with GoodDollar itself, and their bespoke redistribution strategies that have been designed to create structural long-term demand for G$.

As I stated above, growing G$ demand is the same as growing the Reserve. The broader idea is that stronger ecosystem participation and coordination around G$ can help strengthen the long-term sustainability and impact of the GoodDollar ecosystem as a whole. With the current proposal, the same unit of G$ is doing economic work towards Reserve growth, not against it.

Today, a large portion of G$ distributions naturally leave the ecosystem quickly, which is understandable given real-world needs. For this reason, the status quo is not neutral — the amount of each individual UBI claim today erodes against a growing user base unless the Reserve grows. If we want to scale GoodDollar’s impact, we must increase demand for G$. Through the House of Alignment, G$ will be circulating through local economies, aligned communities, and on-the-ground projects (perfectly described in Afo’s post), instead of only being claimed and immediately exiting the ecosystem. Part of this experiment is exploring whether some distributions can instead create longer-term circulation <> utility <> participation flywheels around G$.

On metrics and accountability

Starting on September 30, each member project of the House of Alignment will be reporting periodically on the G$ usage and impact within their ecosystems. While the specific KPIs will evolve over time, the following metrics that are mapped directly to the program’s objectives will be tracked from the start, and should serve as a good initial framework:

Area	Description	Metrics
G$ Distribution	G$ received; G$ redistributed; G$ held end of quarter; Redistribution breakdown	Total G$ amount received; Total amount actively deployed; Remaining G$ balance; Amount and % by recipient
G$ Demand	New active wallets; Retention rate; Transaction volume; Transaction count; G$ staked	New wallets holding G$; % of recipients who still hold G$ 30 days after receiving it; Total G$ volume attributable to project activity; Number of G$ transactions attributable to project activity; Total G$ staked in Reserve attributable to project or its users
Qualitative Impact	Concrete example(s) of G$ creating meaningful impact; How are people in each community using the G$?	Narrative context that quantitative metrics can’t capture

On member selection

Two distinct concerns are worth noting here, regarding both the process and “web’3-centricity” of the projects.

On the process: The initial cohort was whitelisted by GoodLabs as appropriate for an experimental pilot. Each project was selected based on their alignment and prior relationship with GoodDollar in order to ensure that the allocations would be distributed appropriately and effectively. Curated selection at this stage is deliberate as we’re testing a new allocation and governance mechanism with known, aligned partners before opening membership to full governance vote. Subsequent cohorts will be selected via periodic votes of both governance houses, as outlined in the roadmap for GoodDAO 2.0 that I previously presented to the community during the CoGov process.

On “web3-centricity”: This reads the partners by their infrastructure rather than their user base. The inaugural members serve local universities in Nigeria and farmers in Brazil (Green Goods), Latin American micro-businesses in the informal credit economy (Textile), and Global South community nodes (ReFiDAO). These are precisely the populations GoodDollar UBI is meant to reach and these partners have already built the rails to get it there.

I hope this gets us to a better understanding of this proposal’s objectives and I’m happy to answer any additional questions the community might have. To promote greater transparency around the House of Alignment and answer your questions further, we’re hosting a community call this Friday: https://luma.com/s1i88ipb

I look forward to seeing you all there!

Gpalomino · May 25, 2026, 8:03pm

Hi Sam, hi Afolabi. Thank you so much for the detailed explanations and transparency in sharing the vision for this first cohort. The infrastructure focus and the deliberate selection process for this controlled pilot are perfectly clear. From my position in governance, I fully support the initiative to transition to Celo and test these new mechanisms. I am confident that working with such aligned partners is the right path to ensure the experiment is a resounding success before the September evaluation and the subsequent launch of GoodDAO 2.0. You have my full support to move forward with this proposal.

Vincent1 · May 27, 2026, 10:12am

This is a very Good idea….very active based …let’s see how it works

Depriye · May 27, 2026, 10:28am

This project is very innovative and interestin

Uchenna.23 · May 27, 2026, 10:40am

I don’t know how this proposal works ….can experts in the house explain it better

Starkingeminence · May 27, 2026, 11:28am

I think the team should focus more on a reliable way to increase the demand the token cause the current daily emission for ordinary users is grossly below poverty rate and now you want to slash it again for a CHANCE of improving the resilience of the project

Eminencee · May 27, 2026, 11:41am

I think the textile project will be the most likely to be sucessful cause it easily creates demand for G$

If I can vote for one of them that will definately be the one I’m voting for

Itzahde · May 27, 2026, 12:24pm

Actually is truly impressiveI do like to prefer keeping it and strengthen

Faraz001 · May 27, 2026, 12:28pm

I think this is a bold and interesting step for GoodDollar. Building real utility and ecosystem activity around G$ could help strengthen the project long-term.

The reduction of direct UBI is a big change, so transparency and measurable impact will be very important. Overall, I support testing new models that can grow adoption and real-world use of G$.