Neighborhood Self-Governance Through Blockchain Technology: a rough whitepaper
What if we could influence the social process of town construction through a localized cryptocurrency that facilitates transaction of land, municipal bonds, and equitable voting systems?
Publishing early for community input. See the original proposal here.
The general idea is this:
airdrop (deposit for free) coins to verified residents of a given neighborhood willing to participate on a D.App for voting. These coins will be used as voting power and will eventually be liquidated to fund real world projects within that neighborhood. I believe an app for such functions could be built on top of the Steemit or Bitshares ecosystem.
The process would go something like this (assuming the app is already built):
- Create the crypto coin for neighborhood X.
The initial dollar amount would be a predetermined goal (based on coin supply/divided by the estimated number of residents per neighborhood) that would be reached through a crowd funded ICO. The coin supply would be divided among all verified households in a predetermined neighborhood boundary.
People in the neighborhood will be responsible for crafting a vision and mission statement plus promotional media that will attract ICO investors. These investors should be motivated by the prospect of a coin's [neighborhood's] appreciation potential, based on their trust in the neighborhood's mission statement. Most places have hard working people; I believe generous investors, plus efficient, small-scale governance could facilitate growth for communities who suffer from economic blight and high poverty rates. Most poor people have smartphones, so a mobile app that allows residents to spend "free money" on their community's betterment will be a huge incentive for mass adoption.
- Set up smart contracts within a test neighborhood.
The necessary data for each neighborhood will be obtained from existing municipal record-keeping. It will then be "uploaded" to the STEEM blockchain to facilitate small-scale neighborhood self-governance without extortion!
For instance, one smart contract will delineate what one must do to certify their residence (i.e. provide documents to prove one's residence at a specific address/ existence of representative(s) for a household entity). Each household will receive the same amount of tokens, which will then be divided evenly among verified residents.
If/when the ICO gets fully funded, people in each household will be invited by mail to join the platform, verify residence, and receive voting tokens. They will be invited to download a mobile app where they can log in and actually receive their tokens. They will then be able to use the tokens to vote on proposals they want to see happen. There are a lot of holes in how that might work, but the general idea is there. Please don't hesitate to point out problems--that's how these things move forward.
Landlords and AirBNB residents (or otherwise absentee landowners) would have proportionally less voting power than more permanent residents. Tenants would be required to hold proof of x amount of time as a resident (method for proof TBD). The smallest voting unit is one household instead of one vote per person. Thus, the app would take the majority vote of each household as one vote.
Anyone in the world will have access to the dApp, a decentralized app built on the STEEM blockchain, which displays neighborhood data/ voting proposals/how money is being spent, project progress. Anyone can post project proposals; however,only people who can prove residency will receive airdrops and thus real voting power. A resident's STEEM identity as a resident of X neighborhood will be public but their personal information anonymized. Personal info is only used to fulfill smart contracts and get airdrops.
The people’s choice vote is simply a poll taken alongside the vote that allows public participation. This could be in the form of upvotes that would determine post visibility (think Reddit stack overflow); however, upvotes on a proposal's promotion page are not the same as the tokens used to vote on the actual proposal i.e. upvotes would not affect the proposal's outcome or the money put towards the project.
One potential application for this dApp is for neighborhood residents to obtain collective landownership (i.e. public space). One class of proposals could be written as a smart contract to buy property under a collective legal entity--land that would otherwise be owned privately.
Let me know your thoughts.
-Nikolai