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AUSTIN — At SXSW 2022, it seemed similar any presentation with blockchain in the title was guaranteed to exist at full capacity. Cryptocurrency mania has been at a fever pitch, with tales of overnight millionaires who invested in Bitcoin or Ethereum or others. But much like the internet IPO nail of the late 1990s that created enormous wealth – until it came crashing downwardly – the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies, blockchain (like the web technologies of the late 90s), may well class the basis for a secure, distributed awarding platform that may be less dominated past a few major players than the internet is today.

I managed to go both smart cities and blockchain into the championship of this slice. Bear with me; at that place are some good concepts here that nowadays an alternative view on the utilise of blockchain for communities and cities. This isn't a primer on blockchain, cryptocurrencies, or smart cities; hither's a good piece on how and why yous might employ blockchain in applications. But if you lot desire to read nigh how blockchain-based technology might be used to empower cities, read on.

Mike Cartwright, CTO of Digital Town, a visitor that bills itself as building the give-and-take's largest smart metropolis network, discussed the visitor's view on how blockchain technology tin can grade the building cake for smart city services. At that place are many definitions of "smart city," and each metropolis volition change it to reflect its major goals and challenges. But this definition, roughly paraphrased from Wikipedia, incorporates many of the common concepts: "A smart city incorporates information and communication technologies to enhance the quality and performance of urban services, such as energy, transportation and utilities, in order to reduce resources consumption, wastage and overall costs. The overarching aim of a smart city is to heighten the quality of living for its citizens through smart technology."

One area that Cartwright delved into was the consequence of secure digital identity. As he correctly pointed out, the internet was developed without any sense of a provable personal identity. Identity on the internet today may exist something that reasonably identifies you, such as a Facebook ID, or a Google, Microsoft ID, or Apple tree ID. In reality, despite Facebook's efforts at getting you tot provide enough personal information that identifies you, as many as 2-3 percent of the social network'due south profiles may be imitation. In that location is really nothing in terms of a digital ID on the cyberspace that is portable and usable beyond a wide variety of sites and services.

What if the DMV issued non only commuter license cards but as well blockchain-based IDs? With blockchain's open ledger and smart contracts, you could accept a secure way of proving that yous are who yous are on the internet, while controlling who gets access to your ID information and how it can be used. It can exist used to show residency, age, and identity that are backed by a trusted authorization. Contrast that to the use of Social Security numbers as a unique identification for way besides many purposes, a poor excuse for a universal ID.

Digital Town aims to create a smart city platform that focuses on "giving ability back to the people" via a distributed platform that is under community command. What does that hateful? The company presents an culling engineering science platform to what it calls the "extraction economy." The extraction economic system is embodied past services like Uber and Airbnb, that offer a platform for finding and purchasing local services, but extracts its percentage and sends that profit outside the community. Google's local search services tin can be considered function of this, as well equally a payment service like Venmo. The premise is that communities (towns, cities, and so on) can control their ain destinies and promote local commerce – as well equally keep more than of the economic value they generate. To enable this, Digital Town offers services like Smart Search, Smart Wallet, and Smart Web, so that communities can substantially brand their ain markets and economies for goods and services, without the fees from the multinational internet services. In essence, Digital Town want to provide a platform for cities to be their ain local Google, Expedia, Amazon, Airbnb, et al, for their citizens.

The platform is ambitious, aiming at integrating local search, lodging listings, dining listings, retail listings, job listings, classifieds, transportation options, events, and much more, under the command of the community rather than some internet service. Think about how many services today have a slice of those local pies: Facebook, Google, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, HomeAway, Yelp, OpenTable, Indeed, Booking.com, Expedia, Craigslist, Eventbrite, Amazon, and many more. The concept backside this is similar to what draws some people to cryptocurrencies; a applied science that (presumably) lets yous control your own destiny past not being controlled past any i large entity. Blockchain provides the secure, distributed underpinning for peer-to-peer transactions, payments, and identification services and pretty much whatsoever else yous can enable through its smart contracts.

From the point of view of a metropolis aiming to do good its residents, some of what this type of platform enables could be extremely useful. What if the city of Austin, for example, wanted to promote h2o and free energy conservation in the summer months (it does today via some incentives and disincentives). What if the city wanted to develop its ain currency for this purpose, which are essentially credits to spend on local dining and entertainment equally a reward for meeting certain conservation goals? In Digital Boondocks's integrated metropolis platform, it would be relatively piece of cake to implement.

As a practical matter, competing against that vast array of giant cyberspace businesses is a daunting task, for either a urban center or Digital Town. The Net's so-called Network Effect creates a relatively small handful of winners that achieve huge scale and corresponding market valuations. But sometimes those big winners can become unwieldy. If a network doesn't maintain a loftier level of useful content, or connections, or trust – then the reverse network effect tin ensue, where users flock to other services. Call back about former loftier flyers like MySpace, or the large amount of scammers that accept turned people off to Craigslist, creating opportunities for competitors. While blockchain's distributed nature and its potential for enabling secure identities may engender trust, that does non return it immune from other network effects – the needs for a level of curation of the offerings, some standard of quality to be on the network, and a personalized and pleasant user feel. That's the devil-is-in-the-details part of creating whatsoever great platform — centralized or decentralized.