F A Q

Why does Bloom Network use the Ethereum blockchain?

The primary reason is low cross-border (international) transaction costs and fast, reliable transactions. It typically costs us $4 and 30 seconds to send the entire global grants distribution to community members, vs. $1,000+ and 3+ days with traditional banking).

Isn't crypto a scam?

There are a lot of scams and noise in the crypto space, and the first thing to know is be careful. However, Bitcoin was invented to make a peer-to-peer digital cash system that could be used by anyone, anywhere, in any currency, without any intermediaries. This means that people fleeing from dictatorships and oppressive regimes can use it to safely leave the country or survive. It opens the potential that money can decouple from government control, which is often backed by violence and corporate capture.

Ethereum, a blockchain that came after Bitcoin, added enhanced programmability for "tokens", which any community can deploy. This means that a community can together determine who has power, what is valuable, why, and who has power to decide who has power or what has value. This is similar to a local complementary currency, if you've ever experienced one.

Bloom Network has historically experimented with alternative economies, from gift economies and time banks, and local currencies. The way we use cryptocurrency combines these experiments so that we can value commons care labor and support local and bioregional economies.

FLO (Flowers), the cryptocurrency token of Bloom Network, is not available for sale. It is a reputation token that is earned by participating in local community actions. This maps onto "cooperative patronage" - when you contribute to Bloom Network's media cooperative, you receive a percentage of our available grants pool, which is issued in USDC, which is exchangeable for your local country's currency. USDC is a stablecoin, a widely accepted form of cryptocurrency that is pegged 1:1 to the value of USD, so people can exchange value without the large fluctuations of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether. Even large traditional systems like Visa (a credit card company) and banks are starting to use stablecoins, for the same reasons Bloom does: fast settlement times and low transaction costs.

You can also use your FLO in Bloom's marketplace to buy offers from other members. This approach of earning tokens for local participation and purchasing member offers has been used successfully by the Rio de Janeiro Bloom chapter for over 6 years to improve the conditions and community connectivity of local farmers and favela residents.

When you use a credit card or make a payment on the internet, typically an intermediary takes 3% of the total purchase cost! That's crazy. Blockchain fees are much lower, a small fraction of a cent to send a transaction.

One of Bloom Network's goals is to change the global power dynamic so that local communities have more say in the use of their natural resources and labor power. Blockchain allows us to build a new system of governance that is more decentralized, transparent, and allows more sophisticated decision-making structures than most corporations and governments today use to make decisions that massively affect everyone's lives and health.

If you want to learn more about use cases for blockchain that are aligned with Bloom Network's value, check out this guide written by our economic protocol engineer, Magenta. Translating Web3 from 26th Century Saturn into 21st Century Earth.