Your work is literally your ownership.
No money changes hands.
T$1
is one hour of someone's work.
It's an hour of your life, so build only what you believe in.
The T stands for time.
The five steps
- 1
Start or join a project
Bring your own idea, or join someone else's that needs you.
- 2
Do the work
Put in your time, your skills, your equipment or your space. Whatever moves the idea forward.
- 3
Someone else approves it
Nobody approves their own work. Someone else on the team checks it before it counts.
- 4
You earn tokens for it
Approved work earns you tokens: a record of your share of what gets built. They're not money.
- 5
The record can't be changed
Every token is there because someone did the work and someone else approved it. Nobody can quietly change that record.
How it helps
- Written agreements every member signs when they join, so everyone knows where they stand
- Tokens record ownership, and are minted only for approved work or a partner's service, and nobody approves their own work
- Partners provide real services, like premises, equipment or professional work, and earn a stake each time they deliver
- Simple rules while a team is small, and room to agree more formal ones as it grows
What an idea can become
An idea doesn't have to become a company. It might become an open-source tool, a community project, a co-op or a business. Whatever it becomes, the record of who built what is already there.
If the team decides to incorporate, the ledger becomes the cap table, the list of who owns what. It shows the percentage each person owns, and every percent traces back to the work that earned it.
Most ideas won't make money, and that's fine. Tokens aren't money or shares, and they promise no payout. They record who showed up and what they built. In an age of fakes, that record could become your real CV: what you've actually done, not what you say you've done.
What it changes
No fights over who owns what
Lots of teams fall apart arguing over who owns what. Here there's nothing to argue about. What you own is the record of what you did.
Proof you can't fake
When AI can fake a CV, a portfolio or a reference, what's still real? Work that other people checked and approved, on real projects. Nobody can make up three years of that, and it goes with you wherever you go.
Trust without managers
Every piece of work is checked by someone else, so you don't need a boss to keep things honest. Teams can stay flat and still hold together.
Starting before you can pay
People can put in work before there's any money coming in, because the record protects them. Starting early stops being a leap of faith. Your part is written down.
Failure stops being fatal
Most projects won't make it, and that's normal. If one stops, nothing is taken away. Your tokens and the record of what you did stay yours, and that record becomes part of your real CV. You take it with you to the next thing.
Ownership is written down as you go
No legal bills just to get started, and no arguing over the split before there's anything to split. Every approved piece of work is already on the record.
What we hope for
- More good ideas get built, instead of dying for lack of money or a team
- The people who help build it, own it
- Adults anywhere can take part with their spare time, skills, resources and/or equipment
- A clear immutable record of who built what, open to the team, that nobody can quietly change
Umbwela's own part
Umbwela isn't owned by investors or paid for by advertising. It's a project like yours, built by people who put in their time under the same rules you do.
Every published project has Umbwela as a partner. Umbwela earns tokens only for the platform service it provides, at that project's own time value, through the same recorded flow as any other partner, and it never takes a share off the top.
Every project on Umbwela carries this service, whether it's a community group, a charity or a business. Together, they keep Umbwela open to all of them. It's what lets us keep building, so more ideas of every kind can become real.
What would you build?
Accounts are free, forever.
You get in one of three ways: someone already inside vouches for you, a Community Hub near you invites you, or you earn an invite with a short quiz. There's nothing to pay, now or later.