Earn Crypto While Supporting Your Favorite City

CityCoins are cryptocurrencies that allow you to support your favorite cities while earning Bitcoin (BTC) and Stacks tokens (STX). 

We envision a future in which every city has its own coin with its own localized, community-led use cases. And we’re excited to see this vision come to life with the recent announcement of MiamiCoin as the first CityCoin to go live soon.

Sign up at citycoins.co for updates on the MiamiCoin launch.

How Do CityCoins Work?

CityCoins are powered by Stacks, a blockchain that enables smart contracts on the Bitcoin network. Aside from being programmable, CityCoins have two immediate functions upon launch: mining and Stacking. Through these functions, CityCoins also provides a crypto wallet for participating city governments, which can be used at their own discretion.

Mining

CityCoins are mined into existence, and there is no ICO, no pre-mine, and no pre-sale.. Each time a new CityCoin is launched, anyone can participate in the mining process to earn rewards. 

Miners forward their Stacks (STX) tokens to a specific smart contract for each CityCoin on the Stacks blockchain. The winning miner of each CityCoins block reward is randomly selected through Verifiable Random Function (VRF), which is weighted by the total STX forwarded by a miner. 

Of the STX forwarded by the miners to compete to mine a CityCoins block, 30% is sent to a secure crypto wallet that is reserved for the specific city (more on this below). The remaining 70% of the STX is distributed to users stacking CityCoins to earn crypto rewards.

Stacking

Participants in the CityCoins ecosystem who are not miners can still take part through the process of Stacking. Stacking is a unique mechanism within the Stacks ecosystem that lets token holders temporarily lock up their coins within the CityCoins smart contract in exchange for crypto rewards.

To Stack, users first purchase or mine CityCoins and lock them in the CityCoins smart contract for a voluntary amount of time. Over time, Stackers receive rewards in STX proportional to the amount of CityCoins they Stack over the length of time their funds have been locked in the protocol. The STX rewards distributed to Stackers originate from the STX that miners forward to the CityCoins smart contract to mine CityCoins.

Once a Stacker has earned STX as a reward for Stacking CityCoins, they can then further Stack their STX to earn BTC. This is done directly through the Stacks protocol, and the BTC reward is generated from Stacks miners competing to mint STX.

Crypto Treasury

As mentioned earlier, 30% of STX forwarded by miners is directed into a crypto wallet reserved for each specific city (i.e. miners who are forwarded STX to mine MiamiCoin are directing 30% of their funds to a wallet reserved for the city of Miami). Cities can elect at any point to accept their growing treasury and use the funds for their own purposes, including city improvements, community engagement, and more. City treasuries will begin to grow the moment mining for a CityCoin goes live, and at any point a mayor can accept the reserved wallet and spend the funds on any city initiatives they want.

Vote for your city to be the next for a CityCoin.

How Do I Use CityCoins?

Mining and stacking are just the tip of the iceberg, and the possibilities for CityCoins are endless. Since CityCoins are programmable and built on open-source software, they offer a new way for developers to create applications and experiment with innovative use cases. One of CityCoins’ underlying value propositions is providing users with a direct way to signal support for a city’s development trajectory and be rewarded for their participation. The more people use them, the higher the rewards, and the more that the collective network effect grows. 

CityCoins’ design makes it easy for communities to create new applications that can provide token holders with local benefits, access to digital or physical spaces, smart contract execution, and more. This, in turn, can incentivize a growing number of local organizations to offer various discounts and benefits tied to CityCoins. That being said, this project’s potential extends far beyond local business promotions. What we’re proposing is the formation of multiple cloud communities centered on specific urban centers, each with their own programmable token. By offering an effective way for CityCoin users to take part in building their city’s tech stack, we envision a new era of unprecedented community-generated utility. Novel use cases may include 24/7 capital voting for new project proposals, community-run co-working/living spaces, exclusive services for CityCoin holders, and atomic swaps with other CityCoins to decide on regional initiatives.  

And with institutions such as public schools, state parks, and non-profits largely funded by the municipal government responsible for allocating funds from their CityCoins treasury wallet, there are many reasons why they may take a lead in supporting the adoption and expansion of CityCoin-enabled services. And down the line, it wouldn’t be surprising to see city residents receive a break on their municipal tax bill as reward for signaling support for their city. After all, CityCoin miners indirectly contribute to their city by sending 30% of their mining earnings straight to their city’s wallet, and ​it’s not far-fetched to imagine that these mining contributions may one day become larger than the annual tax the city might collect from them. 

In other words, municipal pride is just one reason to invest in your city’s coin, and as the utility of CityCoins grows, the incentive for owning it increases commensurately. You don’t even need to live in a city to purchase its token and make life better for its residents while earning crypto rewards for yourself. 

Help Shape Your City’s Future

Crypto is increasingly transforming the way groups of people organize themselves, and CityCoins offer a new way for you to support your favorite cities while earning crypto rewards. Mining a CityCoin gives the city resources that could help balance local budgets or significantly contribute to expanded funding, while at the same time enabling new revenue streams and fundraising methods for local businesses.

We believe CityCoins are uniquely suited to help people find new ways to connect, collaborate, and unlock value. That’s why we’ve set out to create a new model that connects cities in the rest of the world, in a way that benefits local communities and token stakeholders alike. By participating in the CityCoins ecosystem, stakeholders and cities alike help raise the profile of the city, attract new residents, and unlock a new digital frontier that benefits everyone. We believe urban adoption will continue to snowball as new applications are built on top of CityCoins, and we’re excited to be on this journey with you.