Blockchain and Distributed Autonomous Community Ecosystems: Opportunities to Democratize Finance and Delivery of Transport, Housing, Urban Greening and Community Infrastructure

Abstract

This report investigates and develops specifications for using blockchain and distributed organizations to enable decentralized delivery and finance of urban infrastructure. The project explores use cases, including: providing urban greening, street or transit infrastructure; services for street beautification, cleaning and weed or graffiti abatement; potential ways of resource allocation ADU; permitting and land allocation; and homeless housing. It establishes a general process flow for this blockchain architecture, which involves: 1) the creation of blocks (transactions); 2) sending these blocks to nodes (users) on the network for an action (mining) and then validation that that action has taken place; and 3) then adding the block to the blockchain. These processes involve the potential for creating new economic value for cities and neighborhoods through proof-of-work, which can be issued through a token (possibly a graphic non-fungible token), certificate, or possible financial reward. We find that encouraging trading of assets at the local level can enable the creation of value that could be translated into sustainable “mining actions” that could eventually provide the economic backstop and basis for new local investment mechanisms or currencies (e.g., local cryptocurrency). These processes also provide an innovative local, distributed funding mechanism for transportation, housing and other civic infrastructure.