Vitalik Buterin Proposes “Crypto Cities” Days After Facebook’s Meta Reveal

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder released a paper titled “Crypto Cities” where he talked about the growing interest of various governments to experiment with new technologies especially crypto. Buterin proposes to combine the best of these local governments with emerging crypto techs to build crypto cities. He said,

“Another interesting trend of the last year has been the rapid mainstreaming of crypto ideas such as coins, non-fungible tokens, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). So what would happen if we combine the two trends together? Does it make sense to have a city with a coin, an NFT, a DAO, some record-keeping on-chain for anti-corruption, or even all four?”

Buterin also cited examples of several cities which are already undertaking various crypto integrations be it Miami coin, a crypto token build on Bitcoin that would be used for the development of the Miami city. Similarly, Reno is experimenting with RenoDAO and NFT projects.

The proposal for crypto cities comes just days after Facebook rebranded itself to Meta with a focus on building a truly digital world using blockchain technology. On the contrary, Buterin proposes to use decentralized tech in existing cities to make them true crypto cities. The metaverse promises to be the future where people can interact and do everything they currently do in a virtual avatar. However, the idea wasn’t well-received among the masses, given Facebook’s history of mismanaging user data.

Vitalik Buterin in Awe of CityDAO

The Ethereum co-founder also made note of one particular project that seemed to have impressed him the most. The project called CityDAO unlike other cities such as Miami and Reno is not currently in existence but is being built from scratch. CityDAO a DAO with legal status under the Wyoming DAO law trying to create entirely new cities from scratch.

Vitalik Buterin claimed while these experiments certainly show the growing influence of the crypto market, many cities can also incorporate blockchain in their existing systems. He particularly focused on two use cases namely,

1. Using blockchains to create more trusted, transparent, and verifiable versions of existing processes.

2. Using blockchains to implement new and experimental forms of ownership for land and other scarce assets, as well as new and experimental forms of democratic governance.

The discussion around Metaverse is soaring, but Buterin’s crypto cities proposal could prove to be a practical solution in the short term.