Incentivized network and localized services growth with blockchain-based community inclusion tokens
In this ISOC funded project, we ask if decentralized blockchain-based economic systems combined with mesh and localized cloud services can incentivize vulnerable communities to create and grow their own networking infrastructure, services, and content and hence become more resilient.
Our hypothesis is that lack of widespread establishment and growth in bottom up community driven infrastructures, services and content is linked to (1) the lack of immediate financial reward intrinsically linked to personal effort at any scale (2) simplicity and low-barrier of entry to expand infrastructure and services. We believe that moving towards an Internet system to one that embeds Web 3.0 thinking; being open, trustless and permissionless on both the network and financial layer can create more opportunities for low-income communities.
We postulate that a financial-reward system intrinsically integrated with installing and operating networking equipment and deploying services and content will incentivize users to learn the basic skills to install equipment, and create and run local servcies and content in poorly serviced communities.
Blog posts
The journey begins, 7 July, 2021, David Johnson
Kenya hackathon, 26 September - 7 October, 2021, Senka Hadzic and Keegan White
Musing on community networks and economics, 12 December, 2021, David Johnson
Kenya network installation and decentralized philosophizing, 17 - 27 March, 2022 David Johnson
Workshops on community currencies in Ocean View, February - May, 2022, Senka Hadzic
A community inclusion voucher is born in Ocean View, Cape Town, September, 2022, David Johnson