How it works
A wage is a promise to cover the month.
A salary is a number in a currency, and the currency does not know what you buy. Rice goes up, the naira slips, and the payslip stays where it was while the month it used to cover gets shorter.
Basket writes the wage the other way round: so many months of living a month, priced by the town’s own board and paid by the second out of the boss’s pot.
| Line | A month of it, on the board | Your share | In your month |
|---|---|---|---|
| rice | $48.17 | 40% | $19.27 |
| rent | $118.99 | 25% | $29.75 |
| fuel | $55.43 | 15% | $8.31 |
| school | $35.16 | 10% | $3.52 |
| the rest | $71.12 | 10% | $7.11 |
| A month of living | $67.95 | ||
| 1.2 months a month | $81.55 | ||
| the seconds in a month | $0.000031 | ||
Six things, in the order they happen.
Everything the contract does, drawn with today’s figures from the example.
rice$48.17
rent$118.99
The town keeps a board
Five lines: rice, rent, fuel, school and the rest. Each is what a month of it costs, as the median of the last seven posts by people paid or paying in that town. One wild post moves nothing.
You say what your month is made of
Five shares that sum to one. Your month costs the board’s prices in your shares. A driver’s month has more fuel in it than a teacher’s.
- × 1.2months a month, never above $130
A boss hires in months
So many months of living a month, never above a ceiling, with a pot of dollars to start. That is the whole contract.
- $14.30057+ $0.113 an hour
The meter runs
Your pay streams out of the pot every second at today’s price of your month. Take it whenever you like; it lands in under a second.
rice $48.17 $54.43
pay $81.55 $84.55
Rice goes up, pay goes up
A post moves the line, the line moves your month, your month moves the meter. The same the other way. The poster’s own pay settles at the old price first, so nobody games their own post.
Ugo Logistics’ pot2 days left
The pot runs dry, the meter stops
Everyone can see how many days are left in the pot. The boss tops it up, or either side ends it and the rest goes back. What has streamed is always the worker’s.
Why Arc
A wage of eighty dollars a month is three hundredths of a cent a second. It can only stream if a payment that small costs less to settle than it is worth, and it can only follow a price board if every correction lands the moment it is posted. On Arc both are true, in the dollars the town already uses, so the meter can run and the worker can take what has streamed any second of the day.
What is an example
The two towns and nine people on the first screen are examples and say so: made-up people, example money, but the same arithmetic the contract runs. With Basket’s contract on the registry and a wallet, Hire someone opens a real pot, the board is a real town’s, and everything on it is read from the chain.
Fair questions.
Is this real?
The two towns and nine people on the home page are examples and say so: made-up people on the arithmetic the contract runs. With Basket’s contract on Arc and a wallet, “Hire someone” opens a real pot, the board is a real town’s, and every second of pay is on chain.
Who says what rice costs?
The town does. Anyone paid or paying through Basket in a town can post what a month of an item costs them. The line is the median of the last seven posts, so a single post barely moves it and only a crowd can. A boss and their workers both post, and both can see who posted what.
Can’t workers just post high prices?
They can post; the median takes seven of them to move, and the boss posts too. And the boss set a ceiling at hiring: whatever the board does, the meter never runs above it. Between the floor of honest prices and that ceiling is exactly the protection the wage was meant to give.
Where does the extra money come from when rice goes up?
From the boss, which is the point. A wage in months of living is a promise to cover the month; when the month costs more, the promise costs more, up to the ceiling. Nobody is hedging anything; the pot is the boss’s dollars and the meter simply runs faster.
What if the pot runs dry?
The meter stops and everyone can see it did. The boss tops it up and it runs on; or either side ends it, what has streamed stays the worker’s, and the rest goes back. There is no way to owe pay you cannot see.
What does the platform take?
Half a percent of every deposit into a pot. Posting, taking pay and changing a basket cost nothing beyond Arc’s fee.
Why months and not dollars?
Because a month is what a wage is for. Fifty thousand naira meant a month once and means three weeks now. “1.2 months of living” means the same thing in every year and every town.
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