What is Steem Basic Income (SBI)?

Steem Basic Income is a social experiment to bring a basic income to as many Steemians as possible. Members join by sponsoring others into the program. Steem Basic Income is delivered through providing regular upvotes to member content.

How do I join (or increase my shares)?

Just send 1 STEEM to @steembasicincome. Include the name of a Steemian to sponsor in the transaction memo (preceded by @). You and the person you sponsor will each receive 1 share in the program. You can sponsor any active Steemian, it does not have to be a current member of SBI.

To sponsor more than one member, or if you are unsure about how to join, please check our Full Transaction Memo Guidelines and let us know if you have any questions.

The official currency for enrollment is STEEM (STEEM Basic Income).
{We accept SBD at our discretion (usually when they're closely priced, or when SBD is stronger) but you do not receive extra value or any partial refund for paying in SBD instead of STEEM. If we choose to accept an SBD enrollment, we accept the entire amount. If we choose to reject it, we refund the entire amount and request you to send STEEM instead.}

You can trade between STEEM and SBD in your Wallet. Click the dropdown by STEEM or SteemDollars and click “Market”.

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I just sent a transaction sponsoring someone and I’m not seeing an upvote on my posts, did you miss my transaction?

A lot of the work is currently performed manually by @josephsavage. With over 2000 members, and more joining every day, it may take a couple days to process new enrollments. Rest assured your transaction will be taken care of soon. If more than 7 days go by, please drop us a message in our discord server and we will check the status.

How do I know how many shares I have?

Check your share counts and upvoting weight in our spreadsheet explained here. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments section or join us in our discord server.

How long do my shares last?

Shares represent your level of subscription to this upvote service. Your existing shares do not need to be renewed and will last as long as we can foresee, subject to our plagiarism guidelines and return policy. You can either subscribe to shares or be gifted by a sponsor.

Can my subscription be terminated?

We look at a regular report that shows flags from anti-spam and anti-plagiarism accounts. If a member starts receiving flags, we evaluate the situation and determine whether a member should be paused or have their subscription terminated. If we do terminate a subscription, enrollments may be partially refunded, subject to our refund policy. (See below under ‘other questions’)

Can I sponsor anyone I want?

Yes. Who you sponsor is entirely up to you, they do not have to be a current member of SBI. (just not your own @ name)

I'm very low on STEEM but I want to join, can someone sponsor me?

There are many contests on steemit giving away shares. These contests are re-steemed on our page frequently. Most people holding contests with SBI shares as prizes use the #steembasicincome tag to make the contest easy to find.

I know I am enrolled and I didn’t get an upvote!

1 - Check for an upvote from sbi2, sbi3, sbi4... etc. (Different pools are upvoted from different Steem Basic Income accounts)
2 - After checking for an upvote from sbi2, sbi3, sbi4... etc., if there still isn’t one, send us a message in our Discord. https://discord.gg/VpghTRz

Why am I in a different pool than the person I sponsored?

Pools have a 400 member limit. When you sponsor someone new, their share(s) are added to a pool with room, which may or may not be the pool that you are in. Your new share(s) from sponsoring will be added to your existing share(s) in your existing pool. If you exceed 100 shares, your new shares will be added into a different pool and you will then start receiving upvotes from both pool accounts. (ex: sbi 2 & sbi 5)

My upvotes seem to be worth very little!

Your weekly support value is divided by your posting rate. If you post once a week your vote will be larger. If you post multiple times a day, your votes will be smaller on each post. Either way, your votes will add up to be consistent with your number of shares.

We want to support all of our members posting styles so no one feels obligated to do a daily post.

If you change your posting rate, you will see an adjustment to the upvote weight on your posts.

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If you would like to get bigger upvotes on your posts, consider:

1 - Putting @steembasicincome on 100% auto upvotes to gain bonus weight.
2 - Participating in contests (resteemed by @steembasicincome and found under the tag: steembasicincome).
3 - Sponsoring more people into the program.

If I upvote @steembasicincome, do I get anything?

Upvotes given to @steembasicincome will increase your voting weight. It is easiest to get and keep this bonus by putting @steembasicincome on an auto voter such as steemvoter or steemauto.

See more in the Complete Overview under “Growing Your Steem Basic Income”.

Can I delegate STEEM POWER to @steembasicincome to get a bonus?

Yes, you get one bonus share for each 20SP delegated to @steembasicincome. When the delegation is removed, the bonus shares from delegation are removed.

See more about delegation here under “Delegation Bonus Shares”. If you delegate through the @minnowbooster delegation market instead, you do not receive bonus shares (as you are already compensated through their program).

What are the different types of shares?

• Standard Share is what you get when you sponsor someone, or they sponsor you. These represent your subscription level to this upvote service.
• Bonus Share is a temporary reward for delegation. They come from delegating SP. (see above)
• Management Shares are rewarded to the management team. They are set at 5% of existing shares. (i.e. for every 100 standard shares, an additional 5 management shares are rewarded to the management team. No management shares are rewarded for bonus shares.)
• Temp Shares are management shares that are temporarily awarded to members helping to improve the program. The term for temp shares is dependent on the agreement between those members and the management.

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Can I reach you on discord?

Yes. You can join us here: https://discord.gg/VpghTRz

I’m hosting a share giveaway contest. Do you have a banner I can use?

Yes, copy the code below and place it in your post.

<a href="https://steemit.com/basicincome/@steembasicincome/steem-basic-income-a-complete-overview" rel="nofollow noopener"><img src = "https://steemitimages.com/DQmYyGi4HvKXuvQJ7sWPQHH5W33ThfAE74dpsJgMJ6n8UiZ/SBI%20Promo%20Banner%20PNG.png"></a><br>

The banner will look like this:

What is your refund policy?

Members that are terminated for plagiarism or other illegal activity will still receive a partial refund of any enrollment fee they have paid (enrollments paid by the member, not enrollments where the member was sponsored). We calculate the total STEEM value of upvotes received (assuming 50/50 distribution and using STEEM/SBD ratio from the date of each payout and refund any enrollment value not returned through upvotes. (In effect, members terminated for plagiarism are not entitled to any profit.)

If there is a material change to the program, we will offer a partial refund to members that disagree with the new terms of the program. (For example, there will be material changes when we finish the automation project, and an official announcement will be published before the changes go into effect).
This refund option is only valid for enrollments received before the official announcement of the new terms. In this case, the member is entitled to 200% of the enrollment fees they paid, minus the total STEEM value of upvotes received, but curation earned by @steembasicincome would be removed from the total.
In effect, members refunded through this method are entitled to upvotes worth 200% of their initial subscription payment. If the member has already received upvotes worth more than 200% of their enrollment fees, they would not be entitled to any refund. There may be a delay in processing refunds of this type if there is a high volume of requests, and members requesting refunds will not receive upvotes while their refund is pending.

We do not accept refund requests from members for any reason other than a material change to the program. If you want to stop receiving upvotes, you can request your subscription value (shares) to be reassigned to somebody else, but you will not receive any refund.

This policy is currently under review (October 2018), so please watch our upvote feed for upcoming announcements.

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If you would like more information about the program, we have broken down the mechanics for how the program works in the complete overview.
https://steemit.com/basicincome/@steembasicincome/steem-basic-income-a-complete-overview

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Special thanks to @katysavage for all the hard work that she put into this FAQ, and to @kass-and-bax for providing an additional perspective from somebody that is not deeply steeped in discussion about Steem Basic Income on a daily basis