I spent some time this morning thinking through how someone could go about actually deploying a local cryptocurrency to their neighborhood. It wouldn’t be easy.
It might become necessary.
Give this analysis a read to understand what's coming. We're potentially facing a global financial collapse that hasn't even been dreamed of before, but we now have solutions which just might work.
I'll start with an example from my own neighborhood of what might be possible. I live in a gated community where everyone has an ID card with their picture on it. A registration site could be built where they upload a scan of their card along with a picture of them holding the card and a note with today’s date. That would prevent a Sybil attack, but getting people to actually do it would be tricky. The central HOA office would have to push for it or make it "mandatory" for it to reach critical mass in the neighborhood.
A community on Hive could be created for the neighborhood and the onboarding process could give everyone Hive accounts. If I started using my resource credits for this, I could start saving up account creation tokens to make this possible as nothing on a blockchain is free. I could delegate Hive Power to an account controlled by the HOA office for the community which could then vote up posts by members so they could start earning Hive tokens (currently worth about a quarter each).
A portion of the HOA fees could go to creating an endowment for the neighborhood to buy up more Hive tokens to increase the voting power of the main account to increase the portion of the Hive rewards pool going to the neighborhood per vote.
As part of the onboarding process, each neighbor could write an introduce yourself post which explains what things they do to add value to their society. It wouldn’t just be their "job", but everything they are passionate about and everything others might be interested in rewarding them for. For example, maybe they grow a lot of cucumbers and have extra for sale. 🙂 Maybe they cut hair. Maybe they have children’s clothes they can sell. Maybe they do consulting. Maybe they give massages. They would put it all out there along with their rates for the services they provide.
It would kind of be like a Nextdoor app but with cryptocurrency built in (Nextdoor isn’t availability in Puerto Rico). Using Hive’s escrow system, they could start a local marketplace. Imagine how many interesting people with great skills are right here in this neighborhood, but we just don’t know about each other? We could finally fulfill this original vision that got me so excited about this blockchain in the first place.
You could even take it a step further and create your own neighborhood token via the Steem Engine system. Each registered person could get a distribution of tokens and could offer their services at a discount if partially paid for in that token. Each validated trade (via community upvotes) involving the token would then release additional tokens to both parties involved in the trade. Before joining the market place as a buyer or seller, a bond would have to be put up (meaning tokens locked into a smart contract) which would be lost if they tried to defraud the system with fake transactions just to earn the bonus. Upvotes, downvotes, and comments could be used to build a reputation score within the community. Those who expose any fraud would earn the bond and the accounts involved in the fraud would be banned from the marketplace for a period of time. If they write an apology letter to the community, over time, they can join back in with a higher bond.
I know this all sounds complicated and the chances of it happening are very low, but consider the alternative in a full financial collapse, hyper inflation situation. Imagine there is no work and money itself has no value (see Venezuela and similar examples throughout history). Either people get desperate or they learn how to work together. In an extreme situation, people could rip up their lawns and grow food for sale in tokens.
This image shows the true reality of financial value:
It’s shared story telling.
What if our local communities started believing new stories they directly impact with their efforts and skills?
What if they built on Hive?
If this idea interests you and you think you could actually pull something like this off within your neighborhood, please leave some additional thoughts in the comments or make your own posts and link to them. If you're serious, I might even consider sending some delegations your way to get the project started. Let's come up with a hashtag for is well. Something like #HiveToSurvive or #HiveNeighbors or #HiveBailout.
Get me some ideas flowing in the comments.