The CityCoins community is looking for civic-minded developers to participate in MiamiCoin Maker’s Month – a virtual hackathon that gives you a chance to win $25k for building a blockchain app for the city of Miami. Register here!
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge an uncomfortable fact: many crypto projects can be detached from the real world at this stage in the ecosystem’s evolution.
At first glance, CityCoins may seem no different. The project’s goal is to “revolutionize civic engagement” and “create more positive feedback loops between cities and their communities.”
Good luck with that, right?
Actually, it turns out that good projects don’t need much luck to succeed. CityCoins is already making a tangible difference in the world, and the project’s first city-specific token, MiamiCoin, has generated about $3M reserved for the city of Miami since launching on Aug 3rd. Sure, $3M isn’t enough to plug all the holes in a city’s budget, but there’s something to be said about creating this much real-world value for one of America’s most vibrant cities in just a few weeks.
So where is this $3M coming from, and who gets to access these funds? To answer these important questions, let’s take a step back and see what CityCoins actually is.
What Is CityCoins?
CityCoins is an open-source project built on the Stacks blockchain that allows anyone in the world to launch their own city-specific token. These tokens have programmable utility, meaning you can build any new product or service on it using the Clarity programming language. In other words, these tokens make it easy for developers to create new applications that can provide token holders with local benefits, access to digital or physical spaces, community-run services, and more.
This means that, when it comes to CityCoins like MiamiCoin, anyone can start creating new decentralized applications without asking anyone for permission. Of course, this feature isn’t unique to CityCoins. What separates CityCoins from other projects, however, is the fact that 30% of the funds spent mining new city-specific tokens like MiamiCoin are automatically sent to a dedicated crypto wallet that only that city’s officials can access. In other words, as each city’s “crypto treasury” grows alongside network usage, local officials will be increasingly incentivized to support their local CityCoins token and ensure the project’s success.
This is exactly what’s happening in Miami right now. The city’s mayor, Francis Suarez, has publicly embraced MiamiCoin and its positive potential, and only Suarez and his team can access their city’s rapidly growing crypto fund (convertible to USD). These funds have zero strings attached and can be used at their discretion, so it’s no surprise that other cities around the world are beginning to take note.
In other words, CityCoins isn’t some obscure moonshot – the project is already making waves far beyond the crypto world and has been covered by a wide range of mainstream media outlets, ranging from Motley Fool and Newsweek to Vice and Rolling Stone.
How Can You Get Involved?
CityCoins gives everyone a reason to participate, because your local officials don’t have all the answers to their city’s woes, and chances are you don't either. However, everyone has great ideas worth building on, which is why the CityCoins community is working so hard to establish more impactful, positive feedback loops between you and your city.
MiamiCoin Maker’s Month is an open invitation to help us make a difference.
This hackathon runs through Sep 26, 2021, and there will be a total of $25k in prizes for the top three submissions, paid out in Bitcoin. The CityCoins community has already worked on some neat work-in-process projects, including:
- MIAmining.com: an MIA mining dashboard that shows the results of each block, including the winner of each round, reward payouts, and the amount of STX committed. (created by community member Jamil).
- Catamaran swaps between BTC ↔ MIA: an experimental UI that lets MIA holders execute trustless swaps for BTC (created by community member Friedger).
- Proof of hodl physical location access: a proof-of-concept that allows users to auth into a physical space using MiamiCoin (Created by community member Tim).
- Miami Voice: a demo app to demonstrate how MIA holders could propose and vote on civic ideas for the city of Miami to spend their protocol rewards.
CityCoins Are Built To Last
There are a ton of crypto projects spouting lofty goals right now, and it’s EXTREMELY difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. That’s why the CityCoins community is looking for builders, not shills, who love their cities but want to change them for the better.
In short, the possibilities enabled by CityCoins like MiamiCoin are endless, and the project is meant to empower all types of creators – from those of you who already have a clear vision of how to redefine civic engagement to people who simply want to experiment with a fun idea. Some may find this ambiguity intimidating, but CityCoins is meant for those of you who view the world as a blank canvas.
If any of this resonates with you, we encourage you to sign up for the MiamiCoin Maker’s Month hackathon for the latest updates.
CityCoins is the embodiment of some very big goals, but just because you think big doesn’t mean your head is in the clouds. Everything the CityCoins community has accomplished so far is a testament to this fact – and we’re just getting started!