+12QDOZ
@maria.l drove four neighbors to the polls and back, including one who couldn't have made it otherwise.
The currency of kindness
The coinyou cannot buy.
QDOZ is a different kind of currency — one minted by acts of kindness, recognition, and real-world impact. You don't trade for it. You earn it. And every coin carries the story of how it was given.
- Cannot be bought
- Only earned
- Backed by
- Human kindness
- Built for
- Communities, not whales
What we believe
If money is a story we agreed to tell, let's tell a better one.
— The QDOZ Manifesto
A currency that remembers who you are.
Most money is anonymous — that's its trick. A hundred-dollar bill says nothing about the person who handed it to you, the labor that produced it, or the trust it stands on. QDOZ is the opposite. Every coin is minted from an act somebody did for someone else, and the receipt is the record.
We're not building a token to flip. We're building a way to keep score of the things humans do for each other and have nothing to show for. The teacher who stayed an hour late. The neighbor who fixed your fence while you were sick. The kid who organized the cleanup. QDOZ is for them.
- Earned through verified acts of kindness — never sold on an exchange
- Each coin carries the story of how it was given
- Redeemable for goods and perks, not cash
- Community-witnessed, transparently issued
Six paths to a coin
Ways to earn QDOZ.
Kindness isn't one thing. We've grouped it into six shapes that any community can recognize — small or large, public or quiet. Issue these locally; witness them globally.
Show up for a neighbor
The unglamorous help. Carrying a stroller up the subway stairs. Walking a friend's dog while they're in the hospital. The kind of thing nobody asks for and everyone needs.
e.g. A neighborhood circle issues 5 QDOZ to a member who covered a friend's school pickup for two weeks straight.
Teach someone what you know
Mentorship, tutoring, sharing a craft. Every time you give someone an hour of your hard-won experience without sending an invoice, you've moved kindness forward.
e.g. A maker space mints 10 QDOZ for each volunteer hour spent teaching beginners on Saturdays.
Build something for the commons
Open-source code. A free zine. The community garden. Anything you build whose value belongs to everyone who shows up to use it.
e.g. An open-source maintainer is awarded 25 QDOZ by the community after shipping a long-requested accessibility patch.
Speak up when it costs you
The hard kindness. Telling the truth in a room that doesn't want to hear it. Standing with someone who has no leverage. The form of courage that makes others safer.
e.g. A workplace cohort awards 20 QDOZ to an employee who flagged a safety issue that took two weeks of follow-through to fix.
Repair something that's broken
Not just objects — relationships, processes, institutions. The patient work of making something work again that almost everyone else had given up on.
e.g. A nonprofit mints 15 QDOZ for a volunteer who spent six months rebuilding their volunteer onboarding flow.
Welcome someone new
The first person who said hello. The teammate who walked the newcomer through the lunch line. The friend who took the call from a stranger and made room.
e.g. A meetup organizer is granted 8 QDOZ each time a first-time attendee marks them as the reason they came back.
The ledger
Kindness, recorded.
Every coin minted carries the story of how it was given. Here's a glimpse of what the QDOZ ledger will look like — small acts, large ones, anonymous ones, all on equal footing.
+30QDOZ
@kw.gardens organized eleven volunteers to rebuild the playground after the storm.
+20QDOZ
@old.river spoke up at the city council meeting about the cracked crosswalk; it got fixed the next month.
+35QDOZ
@dr.sun mentored a first-time founder through their entire fundraise; no fee, no equity, just hours.
+12QDOZ
@maria.l drove four neighbors to the polls and back, including one who couldn't have made it otherwise.
+30QDOZ
@kw.gardens organized eleven volunteers to rebuild the playground after the storm.
+20QDOZ
@old.river spoke up at the city council meeting about the cracked crosswalk; it got fixed the next month.
+35QDOZ
@dr.sun mentored a first-time founder through their entire fundraise; no fee, no equity, just hours.
+25QDOZ
@dev.benji shipped an accessibility patch the community had been asking about for six months.
+18QDOZ
@quietnight sat with a friend through the worst week of their year. No advice, just presence.
+8QDOZ
@vee.b welcomed every new member of the climbing gym personally for the first month they joined.
+28QDOZ
@cale.t rebuilt the village's volunteer onboarding so newcomers actually stick around.
+25QDOZ
@dev.benji shipped an accessibility patch the community had been asking about for six months.
+18QDOZ
@quietnight sat with a friend through the worst week of their year. No advice, just presence.
+8QDOZ
@vee.b welcomed every new member of the climbing gym personally for the first month they joined.
+28QDOZ
@cale.t rebuilt the village's volunteer onboarding so newcomers actually stick around.
+40QDOZ
@tia.r tutored three high-schoolers in algebra every Tuesday for the entire school year.
+22QDOZ
@jordan.b translated school documents for newly-arrived families across three different languages.
+14QDOZ
@finn.k covered the morning shift at the food bank when the regular volunteer was hospitalized.
+50QDOZ
@anon paid off the lunch debt for an entire elementary school. Asked the principal to keep it quiet.
+40QDOZ
@tia.r tutored three high-schoolers in algebra every Tuesday for the entire school year.
+22QDOZ
@jordan.b translated school documents for newly-arrived families across three different languages.
+14QDOZ
@finn.k covered the morning shift at the food bank when the regular volunteer was hospitalized.
+50QDOZ
@anon paid off the lunch debt for an entire elementary school. Asked the principal to keep it quiet.
Pre-launch — these are illustrative entries from pilot communities. The live ledger begins with our founding witnesses.
Where we are, where we're going
From idea to circulation.
We're building QDOZ in the open, with the communities who'll mint it first. Here's how the road looks from here.
2026 · Q2In flight The Founding Witnesses
We're gathering the first cohort of community leaders, neighborhood organizers, makers, and educators who'll define what a QDOZ-worthy act looks like. No public sale, no token-gen event — just the people who'll be the first to hand a coin to someone else.
- Witness list opens
- Issuance principles drafted
- First story-led ledger entries
2026 · Q3Up next Pilot circles
Five real communities — a school district, an open-source project, a maker space, a neighborhood association, and a workplace cohort — begin minting QDOZ on their own terms. We watch, we learn, we refine.
- 5 pilot circles onboarded
- Witness tooling shipped
- First redemption partners signed
2026 · Q4Planned Open the ledger
QDOZ becomes a public, witnessable register of kindness — searchable, citeable, story-rich. Any community can apply to become an issuer. The coin moves, but never through a buy order.
- Public ledger goes live
- Issuer applications open
- Redemption network expanded
2027Planned A circulating economy of recognition
Hundreds of issuing communities, thousands of witnessed acts, redeemable for local goods and meaningful perks. A working answer to the question: what would money look like if it were grown from generosity instead of extracted from labor?
- 100+ issuing communities
- Public-good redemption catalog
- Annual Witness Report published
Founding witness program
Be one of thefirst to give a coin.
The founding witnesses are the people who get to issue the very first QDOZ — to neighbors, mentees, collaborators, strangers. No purchase. No waitlist deposit. Just a quiet promise to use the coin the way it was meant to be used.
Pre-launch · cohort cap 500
Get in touch
Founding witness applications, story submissions, or just a hello — write us a note.