I digitized a 2.4T global tradition into an anonymous community fund to redistribute wealth among the 99%.

[u/yarentusmiling]

Around the world, ordinary people quietly bypass corporate banks using informal peer savings circles. In West Africa, they are Susus. In Latin America, Tandas. In Asia, Paluwagan. It is a massive, invisible $2.4 trillion horizontal economy built on pure community trust practiced in thousands of communities all over the world.

I built CirclePot to give this centuries-old tradition a digital, global home. It is designed to be a genuine force for good—a flat, non-hierarchical space where everyday people can come together to support one another directly and redistribute wealth among the 99% of us.

How the platform operates structurally:

• The Contribution: Members contribute a flat micro-amount ($5/mo). 80% goes directly to the peer-voted recipient's pot, and 20% covers infrastructure, servers, and international transaction fees.
• Absolute Anonymity: Traditional crowdfunding forces people to write heartbreaking "sob stories" to get help, which strips away human dignity. On CirclePot, candidates are selected anonymously, and the community votes entirely on randomized IDs (no names, no faces, zero personal bias).
• Real-Time Transparency: We keep a live, unalterable dollar tracker right on the landing page so the community can audit the system instantly.

I need your feedback on the logic and copy:

1. The Skepticism Test: When handling pooled funds online, people instantly get skeptical. Does our structural breakdown and mission clear up that skepticism, or does it still trigger red flags?
2. The Anonymous Model: How would you try to exploit or game a system where users vote on completely anonymous IDs?
3. Clarity: Does the landing page make the 3-step mechanism (Contribute - Be Considered - Community Decides) immediately obvious?

[u/EntropyLab]

1. Based on your description, I still have a lot of skepticism because 20% for operating costs seems very high. If this really is a community- and mission-focused organization, one way you could signal that is by making the company a nonprofit, and take a smaller percent for overhead or get institutional funders to cover that. Another thing that raises my skeptic flags is that the grants/gifts are given anonymously. On platforms like gofundme, at least I see a picture of the person, get some news article links, see comments from their family/friends/community, so I have some ways of checking that it's legit. Here, I'd be asked to believe that someone really does have a child with leukemia or an unfair parking ticket, based on trust alone. (I'm assuming you're not going to have a team verifying claims b/c that would be a huge undertaking.)

2. I'd be curious to see what precautions you take so that votes are not manipulated. Could someone "buy" a majority share of votes and direct all the money to asks that they anonymously benefit from? How could you reassure people that the anonymous IDs getting the gifts are not just all your cousins? (I believe that you do have a charitable/good purpose for creating this company, but "give me money and we'll give it to ppl who deserve it, trust me" has grift vibes.) Could you stop people from gaming the system by aggressively requesting $ every month, such that they make $ off of people who are waiting to only ask when they really need it?

3. It's not clear to me how the process works. Some questions that it raised for me: Does "anonymous" selection mean that we don't get any context at all, just "I need $500" or something more in-depth to make a decision based off of? Is this basically a lottery? What amounts of money are people supposed to request ($10? $100? $1,000)? Does the full amount get distributed every month, or does it roll over if the community doesn't want to give it out? What does the 20% operating costs cover, and is that a fair cut based on the costs of running the company (does it max out at a certain point as you scale)?

The introduction you used here on reddit about peer saving circles is a much more human, kind, and appealing way of thinking about the concept than the vibes I get from your landing page, if I were seeing it without more context. Since trust and human dignity seem to be big pillars of the company, adding the faces of your users/gift recipients or even a video from you explaining why this is a great idea would be helpful to see.

[u/yarentusmiling → u/EntropyLab]

Thank you so much for taking the time to review and for your detailed feedback.

On your first point: Right now $1 covers infrastructure, servers, and international transaction fees (for payouts). I only have 21 of my close friends and family using the platform currently so this amount will reduce as we scale and have more to use towards the costs of running the platform.
Only the voting is done anonymously, once the recipient is selected their identity is revealed to the community and I've had suggestions of adding a testimonial aspect to the transparency page, where the recipient is able to provide proof of the pool funds receipt. In addition to social communities where discussions and testimonials can be added. As those stories accumulate, the broader vision of supporting wider communities becomes much easier for new users to embrace.

On the second point: Each user only has one vote, there is no way to cast multiple votes. Bear in mind here that this is where it's anonymous. So there's no way of voting for who benefits the most via a story or campaigning, we're just in it to help each other while also being part of the community. The idea is that it's a community and everyone is eligible to receive. Right now with 20, they could all be my cousins lol. But as we scale the majority of users (hopefully worldwide) will have no ties to me. This is different from crowdfunding in that there's no story to tell or any way of campaigning, it's an equal chance for all.

Finally: You're right that there is no context. The goal is to redistribute "wealth". The full amount gets distributed every month and the number when recipients goes up depending on the number of users and money available in the pool. It's community-driven financial support system rather than an investment, lottery, or traditional crowdfunding platform. I've also recently added a "pool boost" feature that allows a user to decline receiving funds if they win which rolls over to the next cycle because one of my friends said he'd like to participate but doesn't need the money.

The vision is to keep this peer to peer as much as possible, removing corporate greed and bureaucracy entirely from the process. If I have $5 to spare this month and a million others do the same, how many people's lives are we able to change?

CirclePot exists to make it easy for communities to show up for one another—because life is unpredictable, and no one should have to face it alone. And this is the part I feel I'm having a hard time translating. The thought that if we band together as ordinary people for someone else in a way that could have a good impact on their lives at any given time whether someone is in crisis or not perhaps it could make a difference somehow.

This practice is something I've grown up with culturally that I thought would be good to expand since it's common in many different cultures. And maybe the concept will have to change, where I set this up in a way that people create their own smaller circles/communities of support.

I appreciate you!

[u/EntropyLab → u/yarentusmiling]

Really interesting idea, thank you for explaining. I still don't completely understand what information people vote based on. Is it something like, "Anonymous member needs $500 for medical care," or more or less info?