PANews reported on May 21 that according to The Block, Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann launched the Circles v2 protocol, integrating Metri wallet, Safe, CoW Swap, and other components, built on Gnosis Chain. This experimental project attempts to create a "community-owned currency" where each member automatically receives 1 exclusive ERC-20 token per hour, with a daily production of 24 tokens. One of the main improvements of Circles v2 is the addition of GnosisPay, a non-custodial, Visa-backed card and crypto payment solution. V2 also introduces the concept of "Group", which is a collection of different Circles under a shared ERC-20, thereby improving fungibility.
Köppelmann stated that Circles achieves decentralized currency issuance through a hard-coded distribution mechanism (rather than a Bitcoin-style supply cap), with its value depending on community consensus - which can be viewed as an IOU or exchanged for physical goods. Users need to "connect" with each other to give meaning to the tokens, a design aimed at addressing the centralization problem among early Bitcoin holders. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin once described the project as a "quasi-universal basic income experiment".
