Open abonn opened 7 years ago
Disclosure: I have a relationship with the author of this district proposal through academia and other collaborations related to sustainability and governance.
From what I've seen of District0x proposals so far, this is by far the most impactful and the one with the greatest potential for success. People have long been talking about the possible match between the challenges of sustainability and blockchain based solutions. Some have moved beyond proof-of-concept and into real world application-- see the work that provenance.org is doing for sustainable fishing and ethical supply chains.
While there is still room for specificity in this proposal, I think the possibilities are quite numerous and promising. Cities are looking for ways to both become more intelligent, and more sustainable. There are always more opportunities for capturing underutilized or wasted resource flows-- whether material, liquid, gaseous, thermal, or even space and labor. District0x's structure and governance seems quite fitting for such urban applications.
I look forward to following this proposal, and others as they come to fruition! Good luck!
So glad to see this!
Side note: I've been considering how smart contracts might be used to address climate change. The first thing that came to mind was a carbon marketplace and where smart contracts can be used to gain efficiency in carrying it out. A very preliminary idea which doesn't stand up the rigor of your proposal.
This is a great idea! Very concrete and ambitious solution to share information and connect different actors for the Circular Economy. This could a be a very feasible alternative to bring together all types of industries and other stakeholders in a practical way by sharing information, resources and realizing the benefits of integrating CE into their processes and sourcing.
I think the proposal is very well structured and answers in very concrete ways to the question of funding while clearly aknowledging potential issues to which should be paid attention.
This looks really intriguing, the circular economy concept is new to me and will have to do some more reading so I can understand it a bit better.
That said the proposal left me wondering about the following two things:
Are there any centralized alternatives that offer this function in production now? Have they been successful in generating a network effect? Why/Why not?
"The nature of District0x, as an Ethereum application tied to the blockchain, provides a robust and transparent platform for the trading of resources" and "Flagging mechanism for takedown removing spam and non relevant content." Presents a particular challenge, how does the community go about flagging content for removal without a central authority? Are there incentives that might cause one organization to try and censor the posts of another? What about one organization saying they have more resources than they actually do? This concept in particular it seems that the quantity of resources being tracked in the system is very important, so the moderation impact might have a very tangible effect on participants, perhaps moreso than simply hiding information.
Both of these question could likely be applied to many of the district proposals, but this one in particular looks like a lot of thought has gone into the details and the specific economics of the participants. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the specific benefits of this concept being decentralized versus centralized, and how moderation would work in a decentralized context.
@lkngtn, thanks for your comments! In regards to the Circular Economy concept, I recommend checking out the Circular Economy Overview link I included in my proposal or, for a bit more history on the concept, checking out this article: http://sci-hub.cc/10.1007/s10551-015-2693-2
Currently, there are general initiatives underway in a number of cities which aim to reduce and reuse various waste streams. Additionally, there are consultancies which specialize in CE analysis to help businesses find opportunities to increase the efficiency of their supply chains and product use cycles. However, this is on a case-by-case or sector-by-sector basis. This also includes the mapping out of economic actors in different regions to better understand the flow of wastes/materials. However, as of yet, there is not a platform for stakeholders to participate in which gives the functionality I envision with this proposal. A hurtle in making this happen is a lack of awareness and a policy environment which doesn't necessarily push stakeholders towards more integration of their economies, i.e., their supply chains or product cycles (though this is beginning to change, in fact China's current 5 year economic plan alludes to Circular Economy as an important concept in both growing and greening their economy). Additionally, as stated in the proposal the city of Amsterdam is moving ahead with the CE concept quite rapidly, though much of their initiatives currently involve mapping the possible integration of supply chain and resource-use cycles.
I agree with both of your concerns in the second point. Initially, I thought about the flagging mechanism as an answer to how participants could remove content which was clearly not aligned to the interests of the district (spam or users which clearly communicated false information about the resources they have available or are seeking). It's a good question as to how this would play out in practice though. It's true that multiple registered users could bully others out of a particular market. At this point, I'm not sure which mechanisms could be used to prevent this but it is something I plan on looking into.
A big challenge is the linkage between physical goods and the digital system. Again, part of solving this could be flagging/ranking users. Successful transactions and partnerships would lead to an established reputation, the same way that many e-commerce rating systems work. Perhaps users who complete a certain number of positive transactions would be given additional weight to their ratings, and thus in a way become power-users. If power-user privileges were continually delegated to a specific % of the total user population it could ensure a balance between regular and power-users. I'm curious if you have any insights here based on past projects where successful rating systems were developed, as I'm sure I can keep running down this rabbit hole and finding issues that could occur.
The decentralized vs centralized question in this proposal is one that I think comes more down to the autonomy of stakeholders and their ability to shape the district rather than functional differences. A central authority could design such a system and seek out participants - but I think this precludes a certain level of freedom by the stakeholders in choosing how the system will work. A central authority might forbid certain businesses from joining if they aren't a certain size, or if they are outside of a particular spatial zone (This already happens in certain product certification schemes where small businesses aren't able to compete because the costs placed on them by a central certifying body are too high) . The premise here is that a decentralized district is better able to scale and adapt when compared to a centralized district with a single authority.
Hey @abonn
I'm not sure if you're aware but we recently launched a new bounty to migrate your proposals to the actual District Registry: https://registry.district0x.io/
We're replacing the old voting app with the registry. Let me know if you need help but I would love to see you migrate this over so you can claim your DNT.
It does take a 10,000 DNT submit to submit your proposal but this gives you an extra 2000 you can stake in the registry beyond the deposit amount.
Hit me up on Telegram or Discord if you need help or have questions.
Telegram: https://t.me/district0x/75217 Discord: https://discord.gg/P9RQejv
PS, please excuse the canned response. I am encouraging everyone here to start migrating so they can claim their 12000 DNT.
slack name: a.bonneau Name: Circular Economy Platform: Data Infrastructure for Increased Resource Flow Efficiency Purpose: This Circular Economy (CE) district is designed to fill a void in circular economy development by providing a digital infrastructure by which resources can be traded more efficiently. In order to frame the purpose of this district and the utility of District0x in meeting these demands, a brief background on the circular economy concept will be provided.
The linear way of producing and consuming goods is under pressure. As the population approaches nine billion people by 2050, and, as cities continue to urbanize and become increasingly important centers of innovation and economic output, their demand for resources will increase. This demand, combined with a finite supply of resources, will likely lead to increased scarcity and damaging price fluctuations. As such, more and more companies are opting for the transition to a circular economy, which offers opportunities for innovation and the export of new business models and production techniques. The core tenet of the Circular Economy concept is the preservation and enhancement of natural capital via optimized resource yields and increasing economic system effectiveness through efficiency improvements. This last point, regarding the economic efficiency of a system, is where District0x provides tremendous utility.
Currently there are numerous resource streams which go unused in our urban environments (e.g., material wastes in the construction sector, food and other biological wastes, etc) due to incomplete market information on production and process outputs. By providing a digital layer to the economy which provides information on the availability of these resources, opportunities arise for the reprocessing and re-purposing of these underutilized resource streams.
Description: Two core modules are necessary to utilize District0x as an infrastructure for a circular economy initiative:
The CE district provides a portal through which stakeholders can post the availability of resources along with information on pricing and other characteristics. Opportunities for business creation can be realized by tagging available resources by location (value creation in areas by locating available resources). Searches aided by filtering should be designed to produce results for such queries as, “find 2 waste plastic suppliers and plant-based biowaste within a 10km radius of X.” Additionally, this module would include functionality to rate and rank users of the system based on the quality and accuracy of the received goods.
Material Marketplace: Platform by which entities can trade resources. Stakeholders must be able to search for specific resources and their availability as well as connect with traders to exchange these resources. Here, registered users can access the database of available resources and place an interest via token deposit held in escrow for the seller. This will initiate a communication opportunity whereby buyer and seller work out the details of the transaction - including the transfer of the resource. Confirmation by both the buyer and the seller of a successful transfer will result in the token being taken out of escrow and distributed to the parties involved. While exact functionality is of yet to be determined, it will be reliant on District0x’s capabilities as a platform for sending invoices and collecting payments.
Expandability and adaptation through a governance procedure whereby new modules can be implemented. The utility of Aragon in this regard would be to manage a voting system for users of the district, including the submission, voting, and timeline procedures for district initiatives.
A number of auxiliary modules could address other opportunities that arise when economic intelligence is increased regarding resource flows:
Resource statistics - computes the usage of resources registered in the system and their associated flows. This information has the potential to aid policymakers when developing strategies to reduce waste and increase the sustainability of their regional economies.
Environmental Performance - automation of environmental indicators such as carbon footprinting can be built into resource transactions such that sellers can certify savings and carbon offsets due to the recycling of wastes.
Flagging mechanism for takedown removing spam and non relevant content.
Currency exchange automation, whereby transactions can be done in ETH and exchanged with the local currency of the physical district. In this case there is potential for partnering with altcoin exchanges.
Ultimately, a CE district powered by District0x provides an avenue by which core tenets of circular economy can be realized. The nature of District0x, as an Ethereum application tied to the blockchain, provides a robust and transparent platform for the trading of resources. Should hierarchical functionality be integrated, it is possible that physical regions (e.g., Amsterdam metropolitan area) are nested within larger districts (e.g., the EU). This would allow the overall system to capture a greater percentage of the economic market and increase the network effects of its impact. For the purposes of this district proposal, an initial district would make the most sense in a region where fundamental support already exists. Therefore, a district for material waste flows in Amsterdam provides the best test case for this technologies utility.
Regarding the question of how funds will be raised to maintain this system and pay for new development, there are two main avenues that I can currently envision: 1) Purchasing of a network token to join the district (The incentive being that joining a network will provide valuable market intelligence). Such tokens could be purchased by individual stakeholders (i.e., businesses, individuals, etc) or purchased by city governments for distribution to test of the efficacy of this system. I encourage readers to check the resources below, particularly the paper on current circular economy initiatives in Amsterdam to really appreciate the momentum behind initiatives like this. There are currently multiple calls for proposals in the EU for digital platforms with functionality that District0x can provide. 2) Trading fees or fees to access modules which provide additional functionality (such as environmental performance calculators or modules which provide data on resource flows in a friendlier format than can be gauged from the blockchain alone).
Potential Issues: The strength of this district, as with any, is the networking effect of the users in creating value. In this case, it is heavily dependent on stakeholders utilizing the system and sharing their information regarding resource availability. However, there is considerable political inertia behind the circular economy concept. Cities such as Amsterdam are already implementing policies which seek to create a digital economic intelligence layer to increase the resource efficiency of their regional economies.
Maintaining system use after initial contact. Should two entities set up a valuable partnership in trading resources, would they still be active in the CE district? It’s a possibility that there could be a dropout of stakeholders after setting up an initial business relationship unless new and attractive offers continually emerge. Dynamism in regards to the material registration and marketplace activities is thus critical.
The relationship between a digital district and the physical world is one that may at first seem abstract and daunting to potential stakeholders. An inviting user interface is important, as is security and streamlining the system for payments. Blockchain technology in general still lies within murky waters for most of society; that being said, a well developed CE district would undoubtedly be an asset in showcasing the value of such systems.
Resources: Circular Economy Overview: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/overview/principles Amsterdam Initiative: http://www.circle-economy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Circular-Amsterdam-EN-small-210316.pdf District0x White Paper: https://district0x.io/docs/district0x-whitepaper.pdf