City Coins: More Than Just Money
As a citizen of the world, what do you care most about? The planet? Inclusivity? The place where you live? All of the above?
I was born in a relatively underdeveloped area of Tel Aviv, and stayed there for the first 20 years of my life. My father earned a living by operating a small convenience store selling soft drinks and sweets. My childhood and teenage years were infused with stories of neighbors who, despite their lack of means, joined together to get things done and make neighborhood life better. This made a profound impression on me.
As I grew older, I learned that people care about different things. My experience working with cities taught me that citizens are increasingly tuned into finding ways to make urban life better, and local community leaders are keen to promote new initiatives to improve urban life (such as supporting local businesses). Connecting the two brings the community together and makes it thrive.
For those of us who live in urban communities (villages, towns, cities), mixing with other residents has a profound effect on how we experience daily life. Most of us want to spend less time stuck in traffic, breathe cleaner air, have great neighbors, and live close to friends and family whom we love.
The pandemic has shown us the value of having a strong, engaged community on our doorstep, and reminded us that local involvement offers a powerful source of cohesion and renewal. So how can we tap into this source, to ensure communities evolve — and thrive?
Driving Change That Lasts
When you care about the planet, for example, you might want to promote sustainability; however, “sustainability” has all sorts of layers to it. It can mean daily recycling or reducing carbon emissions by walking or cycling (instead of driving). Or it can mean other actions that will ultimately help to save humanity. But it’s never enough to do it alone; change at scale needs collective action. You need your friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues to take action and drive change.
The key is to encourage people to do more than press the LIKE button on social media. This means taking people through the three layers of community engagement: from awareness to an expression of interest, to taking action.
One of the most fulfilling ways of taking action is to join a social change movement — and tap into a groundswell of long-term engagement that generates a genuine sense of pride in accomplishment.
So let’s think about those communities on our doorstep. When it comes to improving life in urban spaces, getting residents engaged is crucial. The best recipe for engagement combines a good cause, incentive rewards, and shared ownership. These three pillars look like this:
- A good cause encourages people to get involved, even when they’re constrained by time or resources.
- Incentive rewards remind people that their actions are valued, and repay them for the time they invest.
- Shared ownership is a vital element to grow community connectivity and drive involvement.
Each of these pillars will, by itself, motivate a proportion of the community to participate. To scale community action, it’s important to tie in all three pillars of engagement.
When we began searching for the right technology to drive community engagement using these three pillars of engagement, it quickly became clear that blockchain technology was the go-to solution.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency enable everyone who’s active in the city and helps make it a better place to live to share ownership of local coins and reap the rewards of their success. Blockchain and cryptocurrency empower us to lay claim over our economies, participate in them, influence them, and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
At UrbanChange, we believe locals are best positioned to understand local issues, inform changes in their own communities and realize local aspirations. Our goal of driving local community engagement is based on a simple principle: community engagement is the most powerful way for community members to drive change in the cities where they live.
That’s how the Urban Change Protocol was born.
The Goals of the UrbanChange Protocol
At UrbanChange, we envision vibrant, inclusive, and connected cities, where local people drive local prosperity. Where growth and opportunity are nurtured by shared ownership, and residents, organizations, leaders, and local governments work together to foster engagement and create a real sense of belonging.
UrbanChange presents a paradigm shift in incentivizing and measuring local engagement. Our Dual-Token model incentivizes residents to take actions that support their community and helps local community leaders set, track and achieve their goals while promoting civic participation and giving residents a true sense of ownership.
Our revolutionary protocol uses a Dual-Token economic model: LocalCoins and ImpactTokens:
- The LocalCoin is a daily-use, shopper-friendly currency. Residents are encouraged to earn LocalCoins by participating in community initiatives supporting sustainable living, education, wellbeing, diversity, or simply local shopping.
- Spending LocalCoins to buy goods and services at local businesses merits ImpactTokens, which assign voting and governance rights to members of the community and provide access to exciting benefits. ImpactTokens can also be traded on the open market. Ultimately, ImpactTokens reflect the prosperity and level of social engagement of every urban community.
Sharing In Prosperity
The magic of the UrbanChange protocol is its Proof-of-Stimulation.The mechanism creates a ‘cyclical’ solution that connects engagement and local economic stimulation. Put simply, it rewards residents according to their level of engagement (ie level of local stimulation). For every member who is active in the community, the higher their level of activity, the greater their level of shared ownership. The greater their ownership, the more active they become in the community — and the more they stimulate the local economy.
Shared ownership is a vital element when it comes to the (often challenging) goal of driving community involvement. Shared ownership in the community creates a strong, engaged group of people who are motivated to act and willing to participate in initiatives that promote good causes.
The Dual-Token model and Proof-of-Stimulation enable the community to implement a system that combines the use of a shopper-friendly coin alongside a token whose essence is shared ownership.
Plugging Into The Future
UrbanChange Protocol connects the physical world (where we live) to the digital world, by linking our real-life, everyday actions to the blockchain. In addition, the protocol is a unique way to plug communities into the future of DeFi, without any complex technical action needed from them.
As an open-source protocol, UrbanChange allows contributions from developers, enabling them to collaborate and share in its success.
I invite anyone who cares about their community’s city officials, local leaders, urbanists, and residents to join our community and help drive Urban Change.
Join us on Discord: discord.gg/kz76DKX8yC
Check our website: urbanchange.com
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/UrbanChange_
