Circles is a new currency system based on personalized cryptocurrencies and social trust graphs between these currencies. The purpose of this monetary system is to distribute currency in a way that, over time, will lead to wealth equalization and function like a globally accessible universal basic income. When new users join Circles, new personal cryptocurrencies are created for them on a blockchain enabled with smart contracts. This currency is then regularly minted and added to their accounts, forming the basis of the Circles UBI attribute. Users can trust other users personal currencies, requiring them to view this personal currency as equivalent to any other Circles currency they hold. As the social graph becomes more interconnected, these individual currencies converge into a single global currency system.

Circles proposes to become a blockchain-native UBI currency system. It has its own built-in resistance to Sybil attacks (i.e., fake accounts), allowing anyone to join the network at any time without needing permission from anyone. Its design anticipates it will bootstrap in a completely organic and grassroots manner, yet it is scalable enough to allow any arbitrary governance system to run on top of the base protocol. Circles represents an entirely new way of looking at the nature of money and what value exchange means in a post-UBI era.