Circles V2 reimagines fair money for all

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Today’s launch of Circles v2 is a reassertion of crypto’s community-first ideals. Originally launched in 2020 as an experiment in universal basic access (UBA) to currency, Circles is now back with a refined product, a stronger economic model and a renewed mission: to build a fairer alternative to centralized identity-driven distribution schemes like Worldcoin.

It’s a project out of the Gnosis Chain orbit, and co-founder Martin Köppelmann recently told a room of supporters that getting the concept live was a 10-year process.
“Circles is a quite big and radical idea, and it tries to question, well, how does money work and can we create a better version of money?” Köppelmann said.

At its core, Circles offers an egalitarian money system. Every participant in the network mints the same number of Circles tokens (CRC) — one per hour — for as long as they are active. Unlike Bitcoin, where early adopters gain an irreversible head start, or Worldcoin, which promises global coverage while reserving massive allocations for insiders and investors, Circles maintains balance by design.

Circles is governed by four simple rules:

• Universal access lets anyone join and mint currency once they receive trust from three existing users — no biometric scans or privileged entry.
• Distributed issuance means every human mints one CRC per hour, creating a continuous and equal flow of new money without insiders or early adopter advantages.
• To keep the currency circulating, Demurrage applies a 7% annual decay on all balances, encouraging spending over hoarding.
• And the Rule of Trust restricts transactions to users connected by mutual trust links, making the system socially curated and resistant to bots or Sybil attacks.

With v2, Circles addresses two of its biggest historical shortcomings: usability and liquidity. A new Metri wallet — built on the same technology as Safe — brings a modern, mobile-first interface that feels more like Venmo or Revolut than a Web3 science project.

Users can browse trust connections, join local groups, and spend or trade their Circles. New functionality allows users to optionally back their personal Circles tokens with stablecoins via decentralized AMMs like Balancer. This creates market-based price discovery for what was once a purely social currency.

Where Worldcoin relies on iris scans and a globally centralized (albeit encrypted) registry, Circles builds organically through a web of social connections. To begin transacting, a new user must be trusted by at least three existing users. With over 100,000 historical accounts from Circles v1, new adopters can bootstrap into existing networks quickly while maintaining the project’s local-first ethos.

“Groups” are collections of users who can co-mint, coordinate spending and set shared policies. Groups can now issue their own sub-currencies backed by pooled CRC and even assign real-world goods or services to these tokens.

For example, in early pilots, local vendors in Berlin and Bali accepted Circles for groceries, drinks and services. These group dynamics provide a decentralized scaffolding for what similar projects like Colu once tried to do: bootstrap hyperlocal currencies for urban neighborhoods. Unlike Colu — which subsequently pivoted away from crypto entirely — Circles doesn’t rely on grants or external incentives. It’s designed as a self-sustaining network rooted in personal issuance and mutual trust.

There’s also no VC backing or OpenAI distribution potential, something which Köppelmann likes to see as a strength. “In Circles, there is no owner of the protocol, no team or investors that get 30% of the whole thing — that does not exist,” he said.

At a time when Worldcoin has reignited global debates over digital identity and data privacy, Circles quietly offers an alternative — one without privileged insiders, biometric scanning or opaque governance.

It’s going to be an uphill slog — bootstrapping liquidity, navigating UX hurdles and scaling trust networks are thorny challenges. But, in a sense, Circles v2 is a provocation to the broader crypto ecosystem: What if currency wasn’t about scarcity and speculation, but abundance and participation?

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