In laboratories in Silicon Valley, artificial intelligence is learning new skills at an astonishing speed; in factories in China and Germany, robots are assembling cars and electronic products around the clock. Technological progress should have benefited all of humanity, however, the dividends of this revolution have not been shared equally. Instead, the global wealth gap is widening, with many ordinary workers losing their jobs due to automation, and survival pressure in developing countries is increasingly severe.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence, especially the popularization of large language models, is reshaping the global labor market. Experts predict that in the next five years, hundreds of millions of people may lose traditional jobs due to automation. This impact is not limited to manual laborers; lawyers, accountants, data analysts, and other professions previously considered "safe" are now facing competition from intelligent systems.
Universal Basic Income: The Latest Path to Alleviating Crisis
Facing potential large-scale unemployment, Universal Basic Income (UBI) is seen as a solution. UBI advocates providing a fixed income to every citizen, regardless of whether they work. Recent small-scale trials in Finland, Canada, and Kenya have shown that this policy can indeed improve social stability and encourage people to explore new career choices. In the Kenyan experiment, people receiving UBI not only experienced reduced economic pressure but were also more willing to try entrepreneurship.
However, UBI still faces unavoidable challenges: it requires massive fiscal expenditure, and existing pilots mostly rely on government budgets or charitable funds, making global implementation difficult. Harvard economist Amartya Sen points out: "UBI is an attractive ideal, but realistic resource allocation and political considerations make large-scale implementation challenging."
To solve the financial unsustainability of traditional UBI, at the recently concluded Token2049 Dubai, the technical team from modular blockchain Meta Earth offered a new approach: a decentralized, self-driven global UBI model.
Can the Next Generation Internet Bring Fairness?
We typically believe that Web3's transformation is not just a technological upgrade, but a rethinking of power and control methods. Web3's core promise is to break the monopoly of traditional banks and tech giants on wealth and data, allowing users to regain control.
However, this picture is not without flaws. Blockchain networks currently face issues of slow speed and high fees. More worryingly, Web3's early stage seems to be repeating existing inequalities: a few early investors hold large amounts of tokens, making it difficult for ordinary users to enter this new world, with wealth still concentrated in the hands of a few "whales". Supporters argue that Web3 is a correction to internet monopolies; critics warn that it might just be a different form of capital game. Regardless, this transformation has begun, and its success will depend on how technology is implemented and who benefits from it.
In the current controversial Web3 world, Meta Earth is trying to take a different path. Its founder Patrick Oerer previously held senior management positions at top investment banks like UBS and served as the European Managing Director at Boston business bank BMFN, with 21 years of experience in traditional finance, deeply understanding the rules and limitations of traditional finance. Now, he turns his gaze to blockchain, hoping to break down wealth distribution barriers through technology. Meta Earth's goal is to build a modular public chain and an entire infrastructure and ecosystem, including blockchain wallets, decentralized communities, decentralized exchanges, decentralized identities, cryptocurrency-based payment systems, and even a new virtual world capable of supporting the migration of social media, entertainment, consumption, and financial services to Web 3.
Meta Earth: Achieving Sustainable Global UBI through Modularity and DID
Meta Earth hopes to inject fairness and sustainability into Web3 through innovative technology and economic models. ME Network is Meta Earth's core infrastructure, using a modular design that decouples blockchain functions into independent modules, achieving high scalability and flexibility. Compared to traditional public chains like Ethereum, ME Network has significant advantages:
· High TPS: Through parallel processing and optimized consensus mechanisms, ME Network achieves TPS far surpassing Ethereum, sufficient to meet large-scale application needs.
· Low gas fees: Modular design optimizes resource allocation, significantly reducing transaction costs, allowing users to interact with the network at extremely low fees.
· Cross-chain compatibility: Supports seamless interoperability with other mainstream public chains, providing users with broader application scenarios and liquidity.
These features make ME Network an ideal platform for supporting large-scale Web3 applications, laying the technical foundation for Meta Earth's decentralized, self-driven global UBI vision.
Another unique aspect of Meta Earth is its ME ID system. Users complete KYC verification through the ME Pass application, using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK) to obtain a unique digital identity:
· FHE: Allows direct computation on encrypted data without decryption, efficiently utilizing data while protecting privacy.
· ZK: Users can prove identity or transaction validity without revealing specific information, enhancing security, preventing cheating, and improving efficiency.
With ME ID, everyone has an equal opportunity to participate. After ME ID certification, users receive 1 permanently staked MEC token, which cannot be withdrawn but will permanently generate daily income for the holder, becoming a new form of UBI. Oerer calls this design "on-chain permanent basic income". This design ensures global users can participate equally, breaking free from traditional UBI's dependence on central funding.
The total supply of MEC tokens is 20 billion, with half permanently staked in global regional nodes (Zones), and the other half gradually produced through a staking mechanism, with output halving each year to ensure long-term sustainability. Users can also earn additional rewards by participating in ecosystem interactions and share profits as the ecosystem gradually flourishes. Oerer stated in an interview: "We want to create a fair global economic system that allows all users to enjoy the economic dividends of Web3 and current technological revolution, not just a few investors."
Meta Earth's vision is not just about distributing tokens to everyone. It wants to establish a fair digital economy, which requires real applications and genuine participants to drive it. Their core advantages lie in modular design, fair participation, and economic self-circulation. The high performance and seamless scalability of the modular public chain support the implementation of large-scale Web3 applications. ME ID ensures each user has a unique digital identity, allowing every global individual to participate in the economic system equally, truly achieving inclusivity. Most importantly, the issuance and distribution mechanism of MEC tokens is designed for long-term sustainability, with users earning rewards through ecosystem interactions, and the ecosystem's prosperity, in turn, enhancing token value and user income, forming a self-sustaining, self-circulating economic system. Only when enough real applications run on Meta Earth will MEC tokens have actual value, and the income users receive can be converted into real income.
The Future of Technology: A Catalyst for Fairness or an Accelerator of Inequality?
Technological progress always comes with hope and concern. On one hand, it brings productivity improvements and creates unprecedented wealth for humanity; on the other hand, it is also reshaping the global economic structure and exacerbating wealth distribution imbalances. Attempts like Meta Earth may bring new possibilities for fair distribution, but their success depends not only on the technology itself but also on the collective efforts of policymakers, communities, and users.
At this critical moment, we need to consider a question: Is technology the driving force of social progress or an amplifier of wealth disparity? The answer does not depend on technology itself, but on how we choose to use it.
This allows us to look forward to the unconditional basic income that Meta Earth can provide for all users, which can truly be popularized everywhere in the world. When more ordinary people can automatically receive income every day, people will have a higher sense of happiness as a result.
In the next few years, this will be a key period to test this issue. It is time for us to jointly focus on and participate in this conversation.
