Frequently Asked Questions

Circles is a protocol reimagining the creation of and access to money. Imagine a financial system where everyone can exchange value freely through trusted connections, without needing banks or central institutions.

In Circles, you build trust networks, similar to how you might accept a cheque from a friend but not from a stranger. Over time, these trust relationships weave an expanding web of value that can be exchanged across communities and beyond.

Circles is a decentralised digital currency protocol that gives every participant the ability to create money directly. Unlike traditional currencies, there's no central authority controlling or gatekeeping access. Instead, each user creates their own CRC continuously, and trust relationships enable these unique tokens to become interchangeable.

Money has always been more than just a tool for exchange. It shapes how value and opportunity flow through society. Traditionally, the power to issue money has been concentrated in central institutions, creating economic imbalances and limiting participation.

With modern cryptography and decentralised technologies, it is now possible to design a new kind of money: one that distributes economic power more fairly and gives everyone equal access to currency creation.

Circles was created to explore this possibility. We believe that many challenges in today’s monetary systems, such as unequal access to financial tools and the concentration of influence, can be addressed through a system where:
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• Participation is open to everyone
• Currency issuance is distributed across all users rather than controlled by a single authority
• Every participant can meaningfully build wealth under fair conditions
• Communities can organise themselves to address their own economic needs and opportunities

Circles is our answer to the question: what would a currency look like if it were designed not to preserve existing power structures, but to invite voluntary adoption through fairness, resilience, and community-driven design?

Rather than imposing a new system, Circles offers an alternative that people can choose freely based on its values and the opportunities it creates.

The name "Circles" reflects both the circular flow of currency in the economy and the social circles of trust that form the foundation of the system. Each person creates their own currency, CRC, that connects with others to form an interconnected network, resembling overlapping trust networks and exchanges.

Free Access: Unlike most cryptocurrencies that require money to participate, Circles is free to join. Users can create CRC simply by being invited and registering.

‍Equal Distribution: Monetary systems have a degree of freedom regarding who can issue new money. For traditional fiat money, it’s governments and banks. For Bitcoin, it’s miners. For Circles, it’s everyone. Every Circles user creates CRCs at exactly the same rate (1 CRC per hour), creating a level playing field for all.

‍Trust Through Community: Circles builds on real social connections - your currency becomes valuable through your community relationships.

‍Designed for Use: Circles prioritises being a medium of exchange, thus ensuring a balanced supply designed for everyday use.

Throughout history, currencies have evolved and changed to meet the needs of their time. Before the US Dollar became dominant, there were the British Pound, the Guilder, the Spanish Dollar, the Venetian Ducat, and many others. Change has always been a part of how societies organise value and exchange.

Today, with advances in cryptography and decentralised technologies, we have the opportunity to design a more inclusive, adaptable model for the future of money, one that better fits the realities of a global, interconnected world.

Circles offers a new approach that complements existing systems while opening new possibilities:
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- It addresses structural inequalities present in traditional monetary systems
- It builds on social trust networks that naturally exist in communities
- It provides flexibility through group currencies tailored to community needs
- It gives everyone equal access to currency creation

As the world grows more connected, Circles aims to offer a scalable, inclusive, and non-partisan alternative that is designed to support a decentralised and collaborative global future. It reimagines money not just as a tool of exchange, but as a foundation for stronger, fairer, and more resilient communities.

Circles is built on four core principles:

‍Universal Access & Continuous Issuance: Anyone can join the network without gatekeepers. Each individual creates 1 CRC per hour.

‍Built-in Fairness with Daily Burn: All CRC balances are reduced by exactly 7% per year, ensuring that older balances reduce in value relative to freshly created CRC.

‍Peer-Based Trust: Users decide whose CRC they are willing to accept by creating trust connections with people they know and trust, thus enabling the sending and receiving of CRCs between such connections.For example, if Alice trusts Bob and Bob trusts Carol, Alice can now receive CRC from Carol through this chain of trust, even without knowing Carol directly.

‍Group-Based Trust: Users can convert personal CRCs into a fully fungible group currency for local trade and other purposes, enhancing everyday usage and integration with local vendors for services.

Personal CRC creation: Each user automatically creates 1 CRC per hour that has to be collected daily, with the option to collect creating retroactively for up to 14 days.

‍Daily Burn Adjustment: All balances are reduced daily (approximately 0.0199% per day, amounting to 7% annually) to ensure that newly created CRC always forms a significant percentage of the total supply.

Circles gives each user 1 CRC per hour to make sure everyone starts with a steady, fair supply of currency over time.

This rate was chosen for two main reasons:

• Predictability and simplicity: It’s easy to understand and keeps the system stable. You always know your balance grows at a regular pace.
• Fairness across a lifetime: Over about 80 years (an average human lifetime), this rate would add up to roughly 120,000 CRC, thus setting a natural limit that matches a person’s lifetime participation in the economy.

By tying the currency supply to time, Circles ensures everyone has an equal opportunity to participate, regardless of when they join.

Circles ensures long-term stability via daily burn. Daily burn is simply a small fee that applies to money over time, like a negative interest rate or a holding cost. In Circles, all CRC balances reduce by about 7% annually (calculated daily at 0.0199%).

This feature serves several important purposes in Circles:

- It ensures that the right to create 1 CRC/ hour continues to remains valuable
- It ensures that people who join later can still participate meaningfully without being left behind
- It ensures wealth concentration isn’t systemic

Since everyone receives new CRC at the same rate, active participants maintain their purchasing power while inactive holders gradually see their balances diminish. After about 80 years of continuous creation, a person would reach an equilibrium where their new CRC exactly offsets the daily burn on their balance.

This mechanism helps Circles fulfil its purpose of creating a fair currency system where wealth distribution remains balanced over time.

The 7% annual rate was chosen to encourage spending and engagement while preserving enough value in users' balances to maintain a stable supply equilibrium. This means that while new CRC is continuously created, the daily burn mechanism counteracts unlimited balance growth.

Yes. CRC can be swapped on Metri by users who are "Backers" or "Indirect Backers" (see question below). Swapping CRC is currently supported against stablecoins like USDC, xDai, EURe, or GBPe.

However, not all of the CRC you hold on Metri are fully tradeable. Instead, how many of your CRC can be traded depends on the composition of CRC that you currently hold, your trust connections, as well as what you have set as your affiliate group (see "What is an Affiliate Group?"). The fraction of your CRC that is tradable is shown to you in Metri.

Backing your Circles account means linking your personal CRC to a small reserve of stable assets, like USDC. This connects your personal currency to the Circles Reserve and signals alignment to the values of the protocol. It also unlocks additional functionality in Metri, like the ability to swap CRC for other tokens.

In order to become a direct Circles Backer, you must:
- Hold 48 of your own CRC.
- Deposit $100 worth of USDC into Metri.
- In Metri, select one of the following assets to back with: wBTC, wETH, GNO, or sDAI.
- Confirm your selection. Metri will automatically swap your USDC for the chosen asset and contribute it to the Circles reserve.

In Metri, profiles of backers are highlighted with a   visible “Circles Backer” badge..You can also become an "Indirect Backer" by having three backers trust you (and not being a backer yourself). This status is indicated by the following checkmark on their profile:Indirect Backers are also able to swap CRC in Metri, however, they will in general have a reduced capacity for trading compared to backers.

Backing your Circles account means linking your personal CRC to a small reserve of stable assets, like USDC. This connects your personal currency to the Circles Reserve and signals alignment to the values of the protocol. It also unlocks additional functionality in Metri, like the ability to swap CRC for other tokens.

In order to become a direct Circles Backer, you have to:

- Hold 48 of your own CRC and contribute $100 worth of USDC assets  to the reserve. You can choose which asset to back with from wBTC, wETH, GNO and sDAI)
- Get trusted by 3 existing Circles users

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In Metri, profiles of backers are highlighted with a visible “Circles Backer” badge.

You can also become an "Indirect Backer" by having three backers trust you (and not being a backer yourself). This status is indicated by the following checkmark on their profile:

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Indirect Backers are also able to swap CRC in Metri, however, they will in general have a reduced capacity for trading compared to backers.

In Metri, every user has, at all times, an affiliate group. This is a group that they do not necessarily need to be a member of and that can be manually updated to any other group, at any time.

To change your affiliate group, simply navigate to the group you'd like to change to, and click on the star in the top right corner

Affiliate groups receive 1/12th of the CRC that you create (so 2 out of the 24 CRC you can create per day). Since affiliate groups are changeable, affiliate groups effectively compete for users and, as such, we expect them to create attractive offers for users that choose them as their affiliate group. Moreover, users who can buy and sell CRC through Metri (see "Are CRC tradable?") will actually buy and sell CRC of their affiliate group. As such, the affiliate group you pick also affects the conditions under which you can trade CRC.

There are three different fees in Metri (other than the Daily Burn, which isn't really a fee as nobody receives is, see "How does Circles work?")

1. Metri Fee: 1/12th of the CRC you create. It goes to the team developing Metri.

2. Affiliate Group Fee: 1/12th of the CRC you create. It goes to the admins or orgnisation behind the affiliate group you choose (see "What is an Affiliate Group?")

3. Inviter Fee: 1/12th of the CRC you create. It goes to the account whose invite you accepted when creating a Metri account. It's limited to a year from whenever you accepted the invite.

All three of these fees are imposed through the use of Metri. They are not part of the core protocol of Circles and you can in principle bypass them by interacting directly with the Circles smart contracts. Circles is an open protocol and there are no secret leaks or fees implemented.

Each user's CRC is unique. You decide whose CRC you are willing to accept by establishing a direct trust connection with them. Indirect trust, where you trust someone who in turn trusts another, allows you to transact with people you don't know personally, making the tokens implicitly fungible. Think of it like a chain of introductions: if your friend vouches for someone, you're more likely to trust them too.

It’s important to only establish trust connections with people you genuinely trust. Trusting someone untrustworthy means they may extract value from you and your network. Building a reliable trust network is essential for both yourself and the network.

Members of a group can convert their personal CRC into a group currency, which is fully interchangeable within that community. This feature increases daily usability and supports increased exchanges within your community.

Registering a group provides several advantages:

It can represent shared values, whether geographical, interest-based, or purpose-driven amongst members, and can thus serve as a platform for people with similar values to come together to form a collective identity.

- It creates a unified, fully fungible currency for your community, allowing for members to be able to transact between one another easily.
- It allows for economic governance tailored to your community's specific needs.
- It provides stability through pooled trust, making the currency more resilient.
- It creates a collective identity for economic activities, strengthening community bonds.
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Users can build their own economic ecosystem with customised membership criteria and programmable incentive structures which makes it easier to reward members for specific activities that benefit the group.

It is an opportunity to create a sustainable revenue stream for the group, via group membership fees that would be paid by members to the group’s treasury.

To register a Circles group, follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have received an invite and have an active Metri account: https://app.metri.xyz/circles
2. Install Rabby / Metamask
3. Open https://app.aboutcircles.com/ and deploy a new Safe
4. Create your first group
5. Add members to your group (via)

When configuring your Circles group and members you’d like to have, having clear criteria helps maintain your group's integrity and purpose.

Regularly review and adjust these settings as your group evolves.

Yes. You need to migrate to Circles v2 to continue using Circles. We encourage you to use a mobile device to start the migration process:
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1. Go to circles.garden/seedphrase and copy the 24-word seedphrase.
2. Launch app.metri.xyz and click on import Circles. Use the seedphrase copied from Step 1.
3. Create a passkey for your Metri account and set up avatar.
4. Share your profile on X to get invited to Circles v2.

If you need more support, reach out to us on Discord: discord.gg/aboutcircles

Users don't need to have a technical background to use Circles. While it uses blockchain technology behind the scenes, user-friendly interfaces make it accessible to anyone comfortable with basic smartphone apps.

The technical complexity is handled by the protocol, allowing users to focus on building their trust network and using the currency.

Getting Started:

1. Get Invited to use Circles: https://app.metri.xyz/circles
2. Get trusted by 3 users you know
3. Voila! You’re now set to send and receive CRCs.

Preventing Spam Accounts:

‍Circles uses an invitation system where existing users must invite newcomers, paying 96 CRC while the invitee receives 48 CRC as a welcome bonus. This maintains network integrity and acts as a barrier to prevent the creation of spam accounts.

Yes. Circles is designed to grow from local trust networks into a global ecosystem. As users connect across communities and borders, CRCs can flow through this expanding web of trust. What you can buy depends on the goods and services offered within your network, but as more people and groups adopt Circles, the range of things you can exchange CRCs for will grow too.

Since CRC is meant to be used as money, the usual rules about the malicious use of today’s major currencies also apply to CRC. This might mean knowingly providing false information about one’s balance or that of others, scamming other users, etc.

Circles is meant to become a currency that is fairly and equally created by humans that are active in the Circles economy. As such, the basic principles to assess the integrity of a user’s (or a group of user’s) actions are this:

1. One human, one account: On Circles, every active human participant should, at all times, have one and only one personal account that is used to create CRC.
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2. The human behind the account cannot change: An account associated with one human should never become associated with another human. Otherwise users might end up trusting people they don’t intend to trust.
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3. CRC creation is exclusive to humans: The basic monetary policy of Circles is that the total supply of CRC should be roughly proportional to the number of active humans in the economy. As such, only humans should be able to increase the supply of CRC. Non-humans, such as institutions or groups of people or AIs should use Group and Organisation accounts.

Behaviour that is incompatible with these principles is considered malicious or dishonest and the Circles team will actively work on identifying such behaviour and excluding malicious users from the network.

Of course, it is possible for behaviour that is compatible with these principle to still be considered unethical or unsocial, but this does not automatically imply that the Circles team considers such behaviour malicious.

Yes. In general, we think it is non-malicious behaviour for legal guardians (parents or otherwise) to create an account for the people they represent and to actively create CRC from that account, as it does not conflict with the ‘one human, one account’ principle. This account and the CRC created should be used within the mandate of the guardianship and be transferred appropriately in case the guardianship ceases.

No. Once a person leaves the network (in the sense that they stop actively creating new CRC and transacting from the account), this account should not be actively used anymore, especially not for creating new CRC. This is because it would break with the principle that the human behind an account cannot change.

That said, it is perfectly fine for the existing CRC of the above account to still circulate in the economy and be spent. As such, it is perfectly fine for the CRC balances of the ceasing account to be distributed among active accounts. For example, a person deciding to leave could send all their CRC holdings (those created by themselves and others) to their friends, or the CRC holdings of a deceased person could be distributed to heirs.

It depends. They can stop creating CRC from the account they currently use and create a new account from scratch. However, they cannot take over another person’s account as this would mean that they inherit the trust network of another person (which would imply that there are users that trust an account that is controlled by a person they might not actually trust and never intended to trust).

Yes, there is no limit on the number of groups or organisations a single person can create. This is because one cannot increase the total supply of CRC from using such accounts.

AI agents, and non-human entities, are allowed to create group and organisation accounts. However, they’re not allowed to create personal accounts. The intention is to link the total supply of CRC to the number of humans in the system.

A smart wallet is a new type of crypto wallet powered by smart contracts. Unlike traditional wallets, which rely on a single private key, smart wallets can offer powerful features like multi-signature security, account recovery, gasless transactions, and automation. This makes them more flexible, secure, and user-friendly—especially for people new to crypto.

Metri is built on Safe, the leading smart account infrastructure on Ethereum. That means when you use Metri, you're interacting with a self-custodial smart wallet that gives you full control over your funds—without needing a bank or centralized exchange. Smart wallet features in Metri include:🔐 Multi-signature security (shared or solo control)

🧩 Modular design for future upgrades

🚫 Gasless transactions (where supported)

🔁 Easier recovery options compared to traditional wallets

Learn more about Safe: docs.safe.global

Metri is non-custodial, meaning you own your keys, and only you can access your funds. Your wallet is deployed as a smart contract on Gnosis Chain, and no one—not even Metri—can move your funds without your approval.

Metri uses Safe’s smart account model, which is trusted across the Ethereum ecosystem. Your wallet operates through a smart contract that can be configured with multiple signers, transaction policies, and built-in protections. In short: it's a wallet built for safety and sovereignty.

Metri operates on Gnosis Chain, an EVM-compatible blockchain that combines low fees with decentralization. This makes transactions fast, cheap, and secure—perfect for everyday use in the Circles economy.

Metri puts the Circles economy in your hands. With your smart wallet, you can:

- Receive a steady stream of CRC tokens (1 per hour)

- Build trust connections to expand your spending network

- Send and receive CRC with others in your trusted web

- Participate in a community-powered economy—on your own terms