ubi.vision
An open-source specification for a time-based universal basic income system. Every person receives 24 hours daily. That is the currency. That is the foundation.
This is a builder's reference — a technical repository for the system described in the book, presented as actionable specification. It is not a product. There is nothing to buy. There are no investors, no equity, no shares. The project has no owner.
Developers, universities, NGOs, and community groups are invited to build nodes.
What this is not
Not a product launch. Not a startup. Not an ICO or crypto project — Time is not a token, it is not mined, it is not traded on exchanges. Not a government program — no state issues it, no state can withdraw it. Not communism, socialism, or any existing -ism. It is a replacement economy with a different currency.
Glossary
Core terms of the system. Each is defined precisely. The system is built from these primitives.
Any individual registered in the system. Registration creates a unique Handle and activates the Daily Wallet. No eligibility requirements, no credit checks, no income thresholds, no approval process. Every participant receives 24 hours at local midnight without exception.
An independently operated instance of the system. Any university, NGO, community organization, or group of motivated individuals can run a node. Each node maintains its own participant accounts, issues daily allocations, processes transfers, manages tier expansions, and governs its own Universal Circles.
Nodes are sovereign — no central authority can shut one down, override its governance, or control its currency. Nodes are interoperable: a participant on one node can transfer time to a participant on any other node, like email across providers. There is no master node. There is no headquarters.
The participant's unique identity address. Format: slot1:slot2:slot3. Three slots, each containing a word, number, or any combination of characters, chosen freely at registration. Each Handle is unique system-wide.
No geographic information, no national identity, no personal data is embedded. The Handle belongs to the participant alone.
The giving layer. At local midnight, every participant receives exactly 24h 00m 00s. Hours can be transferred to other participants in exchange for goods or services, given as gifts, or contributed to Circles. The Daily Wallet does not accumulate. At 23:59:59, any remaining hours flow automatically to Universal Circles.
The Daily Wallet is the floor. 24 hours arrive tomorrow regardless.
The savings layer. Holds time received from other participants through work, exchange, gifts, or community distributions.
A participant cannot deposit time into their own Vault. Self-deposit does not exist. The only way the Vault grows is when another person transfers time into it. Time in the Vault does not expire. Earned time is earned time. Expiring it would be wage theft committed by the system itself.
Maximum capacity: 99 hours. When making transfers, the system draws from the Daily Wallet first. The Time Vault is only accessed when the Daily Wallet balance is insufficient.
5 permanent community funds built into every node from day one. Cannot be created, modified, or deleted by any participant, administrator, or institution. Funded automatically every day by hours remaining in every participant's Daily Wallet at 23:59:59 and by the 1-hour overflow payment at each tier expansion.
Participant-created contracts for specific declared purposes. They are pipes, not buckets — designed for flow, not accumulation. Cannot exist in perpetuity. Maximum duration: 1 year.
Any transfer of time from one layer to another. Denominated in hours, minutes, and seconds. Full protocol format: HHh MMm SSs. Precision preserved at every step. Nothing rounded. Nothing lost.
Every transfer carries a feedback signal from the sender — a satisfaction percentage (Blue) and dissatisfaction percentage (Red), always totaling 100. Reputation builds naturally through the community over time. Blue Time is not a reward. Red Time is not punishment. It is a mirror.
The architectural ceiling. Maximum Vault capacity = 99 hours. Daily floor = 24 hours. Ratio just under 4:1. Named after Plato's proposal in The Laws (~360 BC) that the richest citizen should hold no more than four times the wealth of the poorest. In this system, it is not a rule. It is a fact of the architecture.
The Daily Flow
Every day follows this sequence for every participant.
Daily Wallet
The giving layer. The floor beneath every participant.
At local midnight, every participant receives exactly 24h 00m 00s. This is not earned. It is not conditional. It arrives because you are alive.
Hours can be transferred to other participants in exchange for goods or services, given as gifts, or contributed to Circles. The Daily Wallet does not accumulate. At 23:59:59, any remaining hours flow automatically to Universal Circles — funding the community passively, every day, simply because people are living.
Hours in the Daily Wallet cannot be moved into the participant's own Time Vault. Self-deposit does not exist. The only path between Daily Wallet and Time Vault runs through other people.
Time Vault
The savings layer. Holds time received from other participants through work, exchange, gifts, or community distributions.
Cannot self-deposit. Only grows when another person transfers time in. System draws from Daily Wallet first for all outgoing transfers. Vault only accessed when Daily Wallet balance is insufficient.
Tiers & Overflow
The Time Vault has 4 tiers, each adding 24 hours of capacity.
| Tier | Capacity | Unlock condition |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 – 24h | Default. Open from registration. |
| 2 | 25 – 48h | Cumulative overflow reaches 1 full hour. |
| 3 | 49 – 72h | Next 1-hour overflow above Tier 2. |
| 4 | 73 – 96h | Next 1-hour overflow above Tier 3. |
Tiers are not permanently open. A tier stays open only as long as the Vault balance at 23:59:59 remains above the threshold that activated it.
When all 3 tier unlock payments have been made (3 hours total to Universal Circles), the system returns the 3 hours as a capacity bonus: ceiling rises from 96 to 99 hours. Final maximum.
Overflow settlement
Time received that exceeds current Vault capacity is settled at 23:59:59 daily. If overflow is less than 1 full hour, it flows to a Universal Circle. If overflow is 1 full hour or more, exactly 1 hour flows to a Universal Circle as a tier unlock payment; the remainder stays in the Vault as the opening balance of the new tier.
You cannot be made poorer by receiving more.
Universal Circles
5 permanent community funds built into every node from day one. Cannot be created, modified, or deleted by any participant, administrator, or institution.
Funded automatically every day by: (1) hours remaining in every participant's Daily Wallet at 23:59:59, and (2) the 1-hour overflow payment at each tier expansion.
How each circle distributes its funds is decided at the node level, by the community that operates it.
Community Circles
The operational layer — the tool that allows participants, projects, and organized groups to manage the flow of time for a defined goal.
Required fields at creation
Recipient Handle — who receives the settlement
Stated purpose — what the circle funds
Percentage — of incoming transfers to route into the circle
Settlement cadence — daily, weekly, monthly, or annually (maximum 1 year)
Cannot exist in perpetuity. Cannot be repurposed without a new declaration. If the circle reaches 99 hours before its settlement date, it releases immediately to the declared recipient and resets automatically. At expiry, remaining time flows to the declared recipient or Universal Circles.
Example: a café
| % | Circle | Cadence | Recipient |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20% | Coffee Supplier | Weekly | Supplier Handle |
| 10% | Goods | Monthly | Goods Supplier Handle |
| 20% | Staff Wages | Daily | Staff Handles (equal split) |
| 5% | Holiday Fund | Annual | Staff Handles |
| 45% | Owners | — | Owner Vaults |
The supply chain flows visibly: consumer → café → wholesaler → farmer → farm workers. All trackable. All transparent. No contracts, lawyers, invoices, or disputed charges anywhere in the chain.
Handles
The participant's unique identity address.
Format: slot1:slot2:slot3. Three slots, each containing a word, number, or any combination of characters (including spaces), chosen freely at registration. Each Handle is unique system-wide.
No geographic information, no national identity, no personal data is embedded. The routing node is invisible. You are just you. Like an email address — you don't think about the server. You just have an account.
Blue Time / Red Time
Every transfer carries a sender-set feedback signal.
Positive feedback signal. Satisfaction percentage set by the sender. 100% Blue = complete satisfaction. Accumulates across all settlements and contributes to reputation.
Negative feedback signal. Every settlement carries a Blue/Red split totaling 100%. Red Time is information, not a penalty. The system does not act on it automatically. The community reads it and draws its own conclusions.
Accounts that only transact in closed clusters develop thin reputations — visible naturally. No algorithm enforces this. The community holds up the mirror and everyone can see what's in it.
Settlement
Any transfer of time from one layer to another. Denominated in hours, minutes, and seconds.
Full protocol format: HHh MMm SSs. Precision preserved at every step. Nothing rounded. Nothing lost.
When making transfers, the system draws from the Daily Wallet first. The Time Vault is only accessed when the Daily Wallet balance is insufficient.
The Plato Ratio
The architectural ceiling.
Maximum Vault capacity = 99 hours. Daily floor = 24 hours. Ratio just under 4:1.
Named after Plato's proposal in The Laws (~360 BC) that the richest citizen should hold no more than four times the wealth of the poorest. In this system, it is not a rule. It is a fact of the architecture.
Business Participation
Business participants stake 1–4 hours daily from their Daily Wallet to unlock earning potential.
Maximum stake of 4 hours unlocks up to 96 hours (4 × 24) daily in potential Vault earnings — the Plato ratio enforced by architecture, not by rule.
Revenue exceeding participants' combined earning capacity automatically flows to Universal Circles.
Anti-Fraud Design
Structural, not policed.
Multiple accounts are structurally disincentivized rather than policed. You can only give from one place at a time. 24 hours arrive tomorrow regardless of how many accounts hold them. The ceiling is 99 hours per Vault — in a system where basic needs are covered by Universal Circles, this is abundance, not constraint.
Closed-cluster transacting produces thin reputation profiles, visible naturally. There are no luxury goods priced in Time. The anxiety that drives hoarding under capitalism does not exist in the same form.
Federation Protocol
Federated like email — any node can route to any other.
No central authority. No master node. No headquarters. Every node is sovereign. A node in Nairobi does not need permission from a node in Berlin. Nodes are interoperable via shared protocol. A participant's Handle works across all connected nodes.
Front-End Interface Options
The system can be accessed through multiple interfaces:
Web interface — standard browser access
Telegram bot — global reach
LINE chatbot — Southeast Asia
USSD *UBI# — works on any basic phone, no internet required. The accessibility path for communities that smartphones have not reached.
Mobile app — standard smartphone access
Build a Node
A node is an independently operated instance of the system. Any university, NGO, community organization, or group of motivated individuals can run one.
What a node does
Maintains participant accounts. Issues daily allocations at local midnight. Processes transfers. Manages tier expansions. Governs its own Universal Circles. Connects to other nodes via the federation protocol.
Technical requirements
A standard server environment. The implementation target is deliberately modest — the system is designed to be built by a university student team with faculty guidance and existing academic server infrastructure.
Front-end options
Choose the interfaces appropriate to your community: web, Telegram bot, LINE chatbot, USSD (*UBI#), mobile app — or any combination. USSD is the critical accessibility layer for communities without reliable internet.
Federation
Connect your node to the federation via the shared protocol. Your node is sovereign. It does not need permission from any other node to operate. Participants on your node can transfer time to participants on any connected node.
Full technical specification and protocol documentation is published at ubi.vision.
Design Principles
Architectural facts, not policy positions.
The Book
This system is described in full in Time for UBI — How Capitalism Broke the World and How Time Can Fix It. The book argues that capitalism structurally produces extreme inequality, traces how every previous alternative failed because it used the same currency, and proposes replacing that currency with time.
Connect
University pilot programs
The path to the first implementations. Student teams, faculty guidance, server infrastructure already available in academia. If your university is interested in building a node, reach out.
NGO partnerships
Organizations already working in underserved communities fund the infrastructure. They do not fund or control the currency. The system is sovereign. The partnership is logistical.
Contribute code
The specification is open. The protocol documentation is published at ubi.vision. Developers are invited to build implementations, front-end interfaces, and node infrastructure.
No patent. No owner. No investor who needs a return.
Every previous proposal reached into someone's pocket. Time reaches into nobody's pocket.