Sovereign Community Finance

• Context:

  • Communities, co-ops, and SMEs struggle to pool local capital without surrendering custody to banks, fund managers, or informal treasurers.

  • Traditional intermediaries add fees, delays, opacity, and single-point failure risk. Grassroots projects face “trust gaps” even when local money exists.

  • Idle reserves sit unproductive, eroded by inflation, or fragmented across accounts, making coordinated action slow and costly.

• Scale:

  • Trillions in community, SME, and diaspora savings are underutilized or trapped in low-yield accounts.

  • Global project financing gaps (infrastructure, housing, climate, local services) run into the trillions annually.

  • Billions of people operate in environments with weak financial infrastructure, limited transparency, or unreliable custodians.

• Impact of the problem:

  • High friction and custodial risk block local investment, delaying or killing viable projects.

  • Capital inefficiency: funds are either centralized (risk/fees) or scattered (inert), reducing community resilience.

  • Opportunity cost: missed yields on idle reserves and lost compounding for years.

  • Trust breakdown: past mismanagement or fraud discourages participation, shrinking the pool of capital.

  • Liquidity mismatches: when projects need cash, funds aren’t coordinated or liquid enough to move quickly.

Self-custodial community banking directly addresses these pain points by enabling programmable pooling without ceding custody, on-chain transparency and governance, automated liquidity-aware yield on idle reserves, and rapid, policy-driven drawdowns—unlocking local capital at scale with lower risk and higher trust.

The global financial system is built on centralisation, opacity, and extraction, leaving communities, cooperatives, and small enterprises with few options for pooling and deploying capital on their own terms. Traditional intermediaries—banks, fund managers, or even informal treasurers—introduce friction, fees, and custodial risks that erode trust and stifle local initiative. Meanwhile, trillions in savings sit idle or are locked in low-yield accounts, while viable projects struggle to access funding due to fragmented resources, bureaucratic hurdles, or past experiences of mismanagement. The result is a vicious cycle: capital remains underutilised, projects stall, and wealth continues to flow upward rather than circulating within the communities that generate it.

The scale of this problem is vast. Globally, billions of people operate in environments where financial infrastructure is either absent, extractive, or misaligned with their needs. From local cooperatives to diaspora networks, the inability to coordinate capital efficiently stifles resilience and innovation. Our solution directly tackles this by providing the technical and social scaffolding for communities to become their own banks—reducing risk, increasing trust, and ensuring that wealth circulates in service of shared goals.

For the CU*money alumni community, this challenge is particularly acute. Its members are already engaged in deep psychological and practical work to reshape their relationship with money, moving from scarcity and individualism to abundance and collective purpose. Yet, without the infrastructure to coordinate capital transparently and securely, their ability to turn shared values into tangible outcomes is limited. The lack of self-custodial tools forces reliance on systems that misalign with their principles, perpetuating the very dynamics they seek to transcend. By addressing these systemic barriers by creating a decentralised, self-custodial treasury system. It will enable members to pledge funds to shared projects while retaining full control of their assets, earn yield on idle reserves through automated, low-risk strategies, and govern allocations via transparent, community-driven smart contracts. By removing intermediaries and aligning financial flows with purpose, we will not only unlock dormant capital but also model a new paradigm: one where wealth is stewarded by those who create it, for the benefit of all.

A self-custodial financing stack where real-world relationships form peer networks that create member-custodied treasuries. These treasuries seed purpose communities and outcome networks. Smart contracts manage pledges, drawdowns, and tokenized claims; a decentralized identity layer (DIDs/VCs) enables trust without platform intermediaries. Idle reserves earn yield via non-custodial, policy-driven treasury automation. A transparent, dynamic valuation model prices outcomes by verified utility/demand and rewards collaboration and asset reuse with superior margins.

Approach

• Self-custody first: Users hold keys; scoped permissions; no central custodian.

• Programmable pooling: On-chain governance for proposals, quorum, execution; auditable flows.

• DID-native coordination: User-owned credentials for roles, reputation, compliance attestations.

• Automated treasury: Liquidity tiers (stablecoins/BTC), buffers, fee-aware rebalancing, circuit breakers.

• Dynamic valuation: Algorithmic pricing tied to utility, demand, and reliability; revenue-sharing along asset chains; anti-gouging caps/fairness floors.

• Network structure: Relationships → Treasuries → Purpose Communities → Outcome Networks → Asset Organizations executing components.

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Methodology

• Architecture: Audited core contracts; modular policy engines; oracle/risk feeds; multisig guardians; ZK/selective disclosure where needed.

• Treasury algorithms: Target allocations with tolerance bands; drawdown-aware liquidation path; stress tests/backtests.

• Value accounting: On-chain metering of usage, cost attribution, and revenue splits across reusable components.

• Risk management: Asset/protocol allowlists, concentration caps, real-time health checks, emergency de-risking.

• Assurance: Independent audits, formal verification of critical paths, bug bounties, immutable logs, periodic attestations.

• UX: Policy presets, real-time dashboards (pledges, available-to-draw, yield, governance), one-click pause/override.

Funds from the Hacking Wealth Challenge will enable us to build a prototype and implement it within the Conscious-u (https://www.conscious-u.com/ ) network

The Prototype Pilot

For the CU*money alumni community, this challenge is particularly acute. Its members are already engaged in deep psychological and practical work to reshape their relationship with money, moving from scarcity and individualism to abundance and collective purpose. Yet, without the infrastructure to coordinate capital transparently and securely, their ability to turn shared values into tangible outcomes is limited. The lack of self-custodial tools forces reliance on systems that misalign with their principles, perpetuating the very dynamics they seek to transcend.

This pilot addresses these systemic barriers by creating a decentralised, self-custodial treasury system. It will enable members to pledge funds to shared projects while retaining full control of their assets, earn yield on idle reserves through automated, low-risk strategies, and govern allocations via transparent, community-driven smart contracts. By removing intermediaries and aligning financial flows with purpose, we will not only unlock dormant capital but also model a new paradigm: one where wealth is stewarded by those who create it, for the benefit of all.

• The Pilot will involve a cohort of between 30–60 alumni, for 12 weeks. Participants will be able to create a "Identity Network" and through the interpersonal relationships create a reputationally secured Community. The Community will be able to

• collectively define and align risk policy (risk bands, buffers, governance) with community values. Each member will then be able to connect their capital to the community Treasury which will grant them the ability to algorithmically manage this capital while still retaining custody of their funds. By being part of the Community each member pledges to re-invest a portion of their surplus funds (profit) from the algorithmic investments toward projects. It is important to note the investment is not a donation it is a way to build collective investment in shared purpose. Investors are able to create incentives for people to deliver outcomes where such people need capital to sustain their production.

• The Pilot aims at defining a fund which will support a 1–2 small outcomes (e.g., learning initiative or local resilience fund); all flows on‑chain. Through the course of the Piilot we will be able to create documentation: Open metrics, playbook, and case study for replication.

Our solution is a self-custodial financing stack that merges decentralised identity, programmable treasury management, and dynamic valuation to create a trustless yet deeply human system for capital coordination. The pilot will enable CU*money alumni to form peer networks that pool resources via smart contracts, with each participant retaining custody of their funds. Smart contracts will automate pledges, drawdowns, and yield generation, while a decentralised identity layer ensures that governance and reputation are tied to real-world relationships rather than platform intermediaries.

The approach is rooted in three principles: Self-custody as a foundation: Participants hold their own keys, with scoped permissions ensuring that no single entity—including the platform—can unilaterally control or misappropriate funds. This eliminates custodial risk and builds trust from the ground up.

Algorithmic treasury management: Idle reserves will be automatically diversified across low-risk digital assets (such as stablecoins and Bitcoin), with policies set by the community to balance yield, liquidity, and risk. Stress-tested algorithms will rebalance portfolios in response to market conditions, ensuring that capital grows without exposing members to unnecessary volatility.

Dynamic, utility-based valuation: Unlike traditional financial systems that price assets based on speculation or extraction, our model ties value to verified utility and demand. Contributions to shared projects—whether financial, creative, or organisational—will be rewarded based on their real-world impact, with revenue shared transparently along the chain of collaboration. This incentivises not just investment, but the creation of reusable, high-value assets that benefit the entire network.

The methodology combines rigorous technical development with community-centred design. Audited smart contracts will underpin the treasury, with modular policy engines allowing customisation for different cohorts. Decentralised identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials (VCs) will enable members to prove their roles, reputation, and compliance without relying on centralised authorities. Real-time dashboards will provide visibility into pledges, available funds, yield, and governance actions, while emergency mechanisms (such as multisig overrides and circuit breakers) will safeguard against misuse.

The pilot will unfold in phases, beginning with a co-design process to align the treasury’s policies with CU*money’s values and the specific needs of its members. We will then onboard a cohort of 30–60 participants, providing training and support to ensure smooth adoption. Over 12 weeks, the community will test the system by funding a small-scale project—such as a collaborative learning initiative or a local resilience fund—with all financial flows recorded on-chain for full transparency. Independent audits, formal verification of critical contract paths, and continuous feedback loops will ensure robustness and adaptability.

The technical team brings deep experience in decentralised finance, smart contract security, and algorithmic treasury management, while ConsciousU contributes a thriving community already primed for conscious capital stewardship. Their members’ commitment to psychological and financial transformation provides the ideal context to stress-test the system’s usability, governance, and impact. By documenting every step, from onboarding to outcome delivery. Upon completion of the process, we will be able to roll out the process to other communities, creating an interlinked web of community banks globally.

Success metrics

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• Adoption: 80% cohort activation; ≥50% repeat engagement across 3 governance cycles.

• Capital: $5k–$10k pledged; ≥60% average liquidity buffer maintained; <50 bps slippage per drawdown.

• Yield and efficiency: Net APY on idle reserves within policy band; ≥20% reduction in time‑to‑fund vs baseline.

• Trust and transparency: 0 custody incidents; audit and post‑mortem reports published; ≥70% member-reported trust increase.

• Outcome delivery: ≥1 funded outcome completed; on‑chain proof of delivery; ≥75% participant satisfaction.

• Reuse/collaboration: ≥3 reusable assets created; measurable margin uplift from asset reuse.

There are number of relevant outcomes that further the goals of the Hacking Wealth Challenge:

Decentralised Capital Coordination: Communities will gain the ability to pool and direct capital toward shared projects without relying on banks or intermediaries, reducing friction and increasing the speed of execution. This shifts power from extractive institutions to the hands of those creating value.

Enhanced Financial Autonomy and Security: Members will retain full custody of their funds at all times, eliminating the risk of mismanagement or fraud by third parties. The use of self-custodial wallets and multisig governance ensures that no single point of failure can compromise the system.

Yield Generation on Idle Reserves: Automated treasury algorithms will diversify and invest unutilised capital, generating yield that compounds over time. This not only protects against inflation but also creates a growing pool of resources for future projects, reinforcing the community’s financial resilience.

Transparency and Trust: Every pledge, drawdown, and governance action will be recorded on an immutable ledger, providing full auditability and fostering accountability. This transparency is critical for building trust, especially in communities where past financial mismanagement has left scars.

Fairer, Utility-Based Valuation: The dynamic pricing model will ensure that contributions are rewarded based on their real-world impact rather than speculative value. This aligns incentives with collective well-being, encouraging collaboration and the creation of assets that serve the broader network.

Empowered Peer-to-Peer Networks: By removing platform intermediaries, the pilot will enable organic, relationship-driven networks to form and thrive. Members will connect based on shared purpose, with decentralised identity tools ensuring that reputation and trust are portable and persistent across cohorts.

Reduced Transaction Costs: Smart contracts will automate processes that traditionally require lawyers, accountants, or fund managers, drastically cutting overheads and making capital coordination accessible to even small or informal groups.

Incentivised Collaboration and Asset Reuse: Contributors who create reusable components—such as templates, tools, or educational resources—will earn superior margins, fostering a culture of innovation and shared ownership. This turns capital into a regenerative force, rather than a zero-sum resource.

Scalable Blueprint for Wealth Redistribution: The pilot’s documentation, metrics, and case studies will provide a turnkey model for other communities to adopt. By demonstrating success within CU*money, we will pave the way for broader adoption, amplifying the hack’s impact far beyond the initial cohort.

Resilient, Adaptive Financial Infrastructure: The combination of self-custody, algorithmic management, and transparent governance creates a system that is robust against shocks, adaptable to changing needs, and optimised for long-term sustainability. This resilience is critical for communities operating in uncertain or underserved financial environments.

Relevance and fit with Judging Criteria

Strategic Alignment: This pilot directly advances the Hacking Wealth Challenge’s mission by redistributing both wealth and power. It replaces extractive intermediaries with community-controlled infrastructure, ensuring that capital flows toward regenerative outcomes rather than speculative gain. The focus on self-custody and transparency addresses the root causes of financial exclusion, while the dynamic valuation model ensures that wealth is created—and shared—by those who contribute to the common good.

Team Capability: Our team combines technical expertise in decentralised finance and smart contract development with ConsciousU’s proven track record in community building and money psychology. The technical lead has successfully deployed similar systems in other contexts, while ConsciousU’s facilitators bring years of experience guiding groups through transformative financial and relational processes. Together, we are uniquely positioned to execute this pilot and scale its lessons.

Jehan Hiramanek has a background in Computer Science and Finance and brings a wealth of experience working in Financial markets, banking and Technology projects. His work in the research and design of decentralised networks will create the design and architecture of the project systems and infrastructure.

The Team at Conscious-u including Nadjeschda Taranczewski (psychologist and coach) and Marc Bauer (developer) have the expertise and networks to design and implement the Pilot using the decentralised application Tools built.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Principles: The system is designed to be accessible to individuals regardless of their technical expertise or financial background. Decentralised identity tools will ensure that participation is not gated by traditional credit scores or institutional affiliations, while community governance will prioritise equitable access to resources and decision-making power. The pilot will actively seek input from marginalised voices within the CU*money community, ensuring that the system serves those who have been most excluded by conventional finance.

Resource Efficiency: The grant will partly cover development, audits, community onboarding, and documentation, enabling us to deliver a fully functional pilot and a replicable blueprint. Our modular approach ensures that resources are allocated where they will have the greatest impact, with every pound spent advancing both the technical infrastructure and the community’s capacity to use it.

Impact Potential: The pilot’s outcomes; transparency, yield generation, and decentralised coordination, have the potential to transform how communities worldwide manage and deploy capital. By proving the model within CU*money, we will create a template for cooperatives, diaspora networks, and grassroots organisations to follow, unlocking billions in dormant capital and redirecting it toward local resilience and innovation.

Community Engagement: ConsciousU’s members are already deeply engaged in reimagining wealth and collaboration. Their participation will not only ensure the pilot’s success but also enrich the wider Hacking Wealth cohort with insights into the intersection of money psychology, decentralised technology, and collective action. We are committed to sharing our learnings openly, contributing to the challenge’s goal of building a movement for equitable wealth redistribution.