Liger Digital Currency also known as LDC is my first exploration in this fifth year at Liger. I was feeling so animated because it was the first exploration that I got a chance to participate in technology and learned with other, professional coders which were my friends. There were 10 students including me in this exploration and we knew that this exploration would be so special for us. Therefore, we were ready to work through any tasks and discuss about any problems with everyone of us which we could find a suitable solutions.
Liger Digital Currency is an exploration that intentionally to create a digital system of exchanging our originated digital currency, “Pedro.” This digital currency will be used by Liger Senior Cohort and it will be used with the two main functions which are exchanging and transferring. Every student will receive their personal account and an apartment account. The students will use this system for paying their expenses including catering, maintenance, electricity, water, and other types of payments which are relating to transferring. For exchanging, it will function as the students exchange the money from Pedros to dollars or Riels.
For the first of this significant project, our learning facilitator, Alli, started the class by dividing all of us into small groups and letting all of us to research the history of currency or money. We did research the history of Cambodian currency which was Prak until Riel, the official currency we use in our daily lives. After we were doing a research about a standout digital currency which is Bitcoin. As we know, Bitcoin is the first decentralized currency that everyone can participate with and it is a digital coin which we can send through internet. In addition, this digital currency system works by a free software called “Bitcoin Miner,” and all the Bitcoins store as in the digital wallet permanently and anonymously in the internet, but i can verified by miner which also mean a user or the owner.
There is a lot of differences between Bitcoin and a normal physical currency. The one difference is that there is a limitation of money you store in Bitcoin, where the paper currency, there’s no limitation. There is this unique function in Bitcoin, and it is transaction. Transaction is a place in the digital currency system where you can check all the history of your payments. It’s really helpful that the system allows user to see their past payments for the benefits of the use. It helps them to manage their budgets mainly. Another difference is that Bitcoin also allowing every user to access their virtual banking without the government controlled. One last cool difference between Bitcoin and paper currency is the Bitcoin can be divisible up to 0.00000007 where our money only can be divisible up to 0.01 which is a penny.
It may seem Bitcoin is a really full-functioning digital currency, but there’s always disadvantages. The first point is that Bitcoin is still developing. It’s really a full-functioning system, but sometimes, there’s might be mistakes reveal in the software which we can called “bugs.” Also, it is really difficult to do your payment where sometimes, it wasn’t able to do your payment. Another point is Bitcoin is totally a new system that got introduce to everyone. There’s might be a lot of people who don’t know how this system functions or circulates digitally. In other perspectives, there’s possibility of the user’s wallet lost without any reasons and there is nothing that can done to recover it.
Back to our exploration, after getting to learn about those background knowledge of currency, we were starting to discuss and brainstorm all the functions that we can include our original digital currency. We came up to include the exchanging and the transferring functions. After awhile, we decided to implement the transaction system in our digital currency which is remarkable to allow students in our school to access their past payment in individual and apartment. I started to design the interface of the system including the logos for each function, the currency, and every pages of the system. There will be a login/signup page, homepage, exchanging function page, transferring function page and transaction log page. Here are some of the improved designs.
Further than, we weren’t just designing and discussing about the layout and all the functions that should be listed, we were also communicate to each other in depth about each detail of the systems in each function. For example, exchanging function, we set a plan of how the students going to exchanging the money, the schedule of exchanging, and the acceptable reasons of students should exchange the money. Of course that the systems will update throughout new discussion in team over the period of times. Here is the current instructions and rules of exchanging system:
Currency Exchanging System
The process of exchanging
Exchanging from paper notes to Pedros or Kips
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- Students go to meet the admin with paper notes
- They will give the money to the admin
- The admin then takes the money and retain in a secured place (ex:vault)
- After retaining the money, the admin will transfer Pedros/Kips to the student’s account; could be apartment account or their personal account using the transferring system.
Exchanging from Pedros or Kips to paper notes
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- Students go to meet the admin with their Account ID and their computer
- The admin will ask for the purpose of exchanging and the amount of money he/she wants to exchange
- The students will then transfer their money online (Pedros/Kips) to the admin account
- After receiving the money from the student’s account, the admin will give the actual paper notes to the students
Rules of Exchanging: General Rules
- Weekdays only
- Exchanging must have purpose
- Can’t exchange more than $25 per person per week
- Exchanging must be approved by someone (by adult)
- On Friday can’t exchange more than $10
- Limit amount of exchange per day
- Each student can only exchange once per week
- In the weekday they can exchange from 4:00pm until 4:45pm
All of these ideas that the team transformed into a viewable product, had been shared to audience beside the Liger community. We presented through the Sharation and at Impact Hub, Phnom Penh. In addition, we presented this product of our school founder, Trevor who started the idea of digital currency for Liger. He was extremely proud of us and thanking us for working on this task. The team was really happy to receive the positive reaction and feedback from him. Last, this project of developing the digital currency is still continuing throughout the year of Liger.