CommonsHood

The “Internet of Values 2.0” revolution for social innovation in communities.
In collaboration with: UIA, Metropolitan city of Turin, thanks to the European Regional Development Fund

The goal of CommonsHood

CommonsHood is a blockchain based wallet app aiming to provide communities with instruments for financial inclusion and to support the sustainability of the local economy.

Advantages of using Blockchain

In the context of financial inclusion, Blockchain, and more generally distributed ledger technologies (DLT), are promising not only for reducing times and costs or for providing a trust layer, but, above all, for their ability to tokenize assets.

Towards an “Internet of Values 2.0”

By “Internet of Values 1.0” is meant the interoperability among different Blockchains to transfer values instantly without intermediaries, as it is nowadays possible.
The “Internet of Values 2.0” goes over that, allowing everyone to issue new types of tokens representing assets of value and to distribute them using the Wallet app.

We are focused on the communities

In the same way as most complementary currency initiatives, we are focused on the local community level.
CommonsHood is integrated with the local civic social network FirstLife, also developed by the University of Turin.

Sustainable Development Goals

CommonsHood is aimed at contributing to several UN’s Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular:

- Goal 10: Reducing inequality within and among countries
- Goal 11: Making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
- Goal 12: Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns

CommonsHood Wallet App: some use cases

CommonsHood is a web App that runs on every browser, desktop or mobile.
Below we describe several use cases including different stakeholders that will use the wallet App by creating and distributing different customized tokens to sustain a large group of activities.

Prepaid cards

Rather than asking for donations or bank loans, merchants and commons can create their own pre-paid cards, getting money in advance that can be invested in improving their service.

Discount coupons

Local retailers can attract customers by distributing discount tokens to the neighbourhood as a mean of shopping incentives.

Crowdfunding

Associations and groups can raise money creating crowdfundings without intermediaries. CommonsHood allows for an easy setup of the goal, deadline, and participation rights.

Access rights

Access tokens allow to sell access time to places, facilities or paticular services. They are mintable tokens, so owners can “print” more of them whenever needed.

Group buying

Artisans and local activities (ie: a gym) may sometimes need to reach a minimum number of clients to start a particular service. They can now issue their own crowdsales as group-buying option for their customers.

Time banks

Volunteering networks can issue their own kind of fureai kippu tokens and give them to volunteers for each hour of service. It will promote active engagement between people, as well as provide them with credits for care assistance whenever needed.

Gift cards

Since most of the tokens are freely tradable between users it's possible to offer or donate them as digital gift cards.

Library of things

Urban commons often share their tools to the citizens. They can track them issuing a single token for each of the tools, so to set up a simple check-in/check-out digital procedure.

Welfare support

Municipalities or other institutions can issue tokens as coins and distribute them to people in need. Only choosen retailers will accept these coins, therefore restricting the usage to only basic goods or services, and preventing unwanted behaviour from the recipients.

Cashback rewards

Local networks of retailers can setup their own cashback programs by sharing a common token and giving it to customers when they shop. Such tokens can then be spent in any shop of the neighborhood.

B2B currency

CommonsHood’s tokens in many of the above use cases can be considered as complementary currencies, and more complex smart contracts for coins could be added to model complementary currencies designed with more complex behaviours

P2P micro lending

crowdsales can be used of this aim by issuing coupons representing the commitment of the beneficiary of the crowdsale to repay the amount of money at a certain date.

Who we are

CommonsHood has been developed by the University of Turin in collaboration with citizen grassroot initiatives, based on the requirements they provided, initiatives such as the urban commons formed by citizens with the Municipality of Turin within the legislation on Collaboration Pacts with Citizens and the Network of Neighbourhood Houses in Turin.

Moreover, to cross validate the approach in other contexts, the CO3 and ge.CO project partner Open Lab Athens (OLA) will participate with Sociality Coop to make an experimentation in Greece. The collaboration of the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin with its Law Department, Economics Department and Political Science Department has allowed us to take into consideration legal, social, economic and human factors.