What are the ‘crypto cities’ Vitalik is talking about?
Days after Facebook unveiled their big rebrand to Meta, the buzz around the concept of a metaverse took off. Many cryptos pumped massively off the news, such as Sandbox and Decentraland. Everyone has their own idea of what actually is a metaverse, and Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, weighed in with an essay titled Crypto Cities.
In the essay, he discusses the rising interest of localities and governments experimenting with crypto and cutting-edge technologies; no better example exists than that of MiamiCoin, which we have covered here. MiamiCoin has already generated millions for the city, and opens the doors to ‘city futures’, and a whole new level comprising of crypto + civic engagement.
Recommended: Why Miami Coin is a Big Deal
Other cities have floated the same thing, in Reno, Nevada, and New York City, New York. The mayor-elect of NYC has said he has “taken note” of what Miami and Mayor Suarez have done and vowed to explore an NYC coin similar to Miami’s. Vitalik noted this growing adoption and said in his essay:
“Another interesting trend of the last year has been the rapid mainstreaming of crypto ideas such as coins, non-fungible tokens, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). So what would happen if we combine the two trends together? Does it make sense to have a city with a coin, an NFT, a DAO, some record-keeping on-chain for anti-corruption, or even all four?”
However, the project that impressed Vitalik the most was the CityDAO project in Wyoming. It is a little-known project, but the concept is to “build a city on the Ethereum blockchain”. Their website states: “It all starts with collective governance of a real parcel of land in Wyoming on-chain.”
While this project is in its infancy, it appears to be an inverse of the metaverse, in that CityDAO seeks to take a real parcel of land, and build a crypto city in real life. This use of crypto, in the real world, is much less dystopian to many, and much more interesting than Zuck’s concept of “plugging in” to the borg.
CityDAO is “building a city on-chain, starting with a piece of land in Wyoming. Each parcel of land is an NFT that can be owned collectively by the DAO collectively or by individuals. It is a DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, meaning it is managed by the community.”
Vitalik noted two use cases that he is focusing on when it comes to crypto cities, namely 1. “using blockchains to create more trusted, transparent, and verifiable versions of existing processes” and 2. “using blockchains to implement new and experimental forms of ownership for land and other scarce assets, as well as new and experimental forms of democratic governance.”
He claims there is a “natural fit between blockchains and both of these categories.” He goes on to explain how blockchain-based systems are more efficient than paper, and the public verifiability is superior to centralized computing systems which are not. Vitalik ties it into voting, saying blockchain tech could allow for citizens to “give high-volume real-time feedback on hundreds or thousands of different issues.” Mainly, it appears transparency is the real fulcrum of decentralized ledgers, and this could help bridge a trust gap between citizens and government.
And this is what he is getting at–improving transparency, efficiency, and trust. “This system could easily be extended. For example, procurement processes for choosing which bidder wins a government contract could largely be done on-chain.” He talks about asset registries, certificates, and other recordkeeping which could be on-chain. This is exactly what El-Salvador seeks to do in their partnership with Algorand.
Suggested Read: El-Salvador Signs Agreement to Develop Blockchain Infrastructure on Algorand
Vitalik then concluded by posting a sci-fi image of what our cities could look like if “if real-time quadratic votes could set subsidies and prices for everything.” Vitalik sees a pragmatic use for government to adopt crypto and blockchain on top of the existing city infrastructure, but also a radical view of crypto cities, build from the ground up, like what CityDAO is doing. One thing is for sure, I like the idea of physical crypto cities far more than the notion of plugging into the digital metaverse from a pod.
The post What are the ‘crypto cities’ Vitalik is talking about? appeared first on CryptosRus.
Text source: CryptosRus
