A Platform for the Aggregation of Blockchain-based Services for Municipalities and Smart-cities, Enabling Automatic Conversion based on Saved CO2 Units

• Emanuele, Napoli; Valentina, Gatteschi

• Proceedings of ACM GoodIT 2023

• In press

• 2023 September 6-8

In a world where sustainable and collaborative behavior is increasingly important due to climate change, environmental concerns, and social engagement, individual willpower may not be enough to sustain positive behavior for long-term sustainability. To encourage collaborative behavior, many blockchain-based applications are emerging that provide an incentive in the form of fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or reputation points. Existing services address specific solutions such as waste disposal, peer-to-peer energy management, and sustainable mobility. However, the tokens issued by these services generally can be used only by the services themselves and are not interchangeable with other tokens. This paper proposes a platform that aggregates different blockchain-based services, and that exploits a conversion mechanism enabling the user to convert a given service token with other service tokens. The conversion is not based on a monetary value, rather, it relies on the amount of saved CO2 a service token represents. The platform provides a token (the "sCO2" token) anchored to a fixed amount of saved CO2, that may be converted for token of other services or used to get a discount on various municipal services such as waste tax, parking, public transport, etc. The proposed system aims to increase the engagement and awareness among citizens and end-users, provide an accountable and transparent way to track people's sustainable behavior, and issue certificates to organizations based on how much CO2 their services have helped save.