I wanted to pop in here and share a local currency program we are actively developing in Kansas City and open it up for feedback and discussion.
We are in conversations with a public private organization called KCBizCare to pilot a city supported retail and commerce hub as apart of their Open Doors program (https://www.kcopendoors.com/). Our initiative program centers on launching a localized stablecoin called Kansas City Dollar ($KCD) powered by our L2 chain Locale Network, with an initial cohort of 10 to 15 local vendors operating out of a shared retail space.
All participating vendors would accept the local currency as payment. In return, vendors receive:
0% transaction fees
Discounted monthly lease costs
City supported retail space with no long term lease obligation
This initial retail hub acts as the economic launch point for the local currency. From there, we would run a merchant and consumer onboarding campaign to expand acceptance of the currency into surrounding neighborhoods, creating real circulation and local economic velocity.
This program is also the first real world deployment of our City Chain model.
Each City Chain is a localized Arbitrum based network designed specifically to support:
Local and community currencies
Merchant payments and settlement
Cooperative ownership and governance
Future civic and economic applications
Kansas City would serve as the first live City Chain, with the local currency as its primary economic primitive. Over time, governance and control of the currency transitions from the initial operators to a merchant and resident governed Civic DAO or cooperative, with our Arbitrum Orbit chain serving as the underlying settlement and coordination layer.
Because the city covers the retail space and our only hard costs are third party services, this is a low cost and low risk way to pilot a local currency system before decentralizing it and replicating the model in other cities.
Our formal pilot and operations are planned for early 2026. In the meantime, we wanted to share this here to explore alignment with the Localism Fund, gather feedback, and discuss potential collaboration or partnership documentation.
Would love to share/hear more about the design being pursued for the local currency. I am working on implementing a time dollar localized currency that works similarly
Amazing man! We’ve been studying parallel currencies for a long time. Time-based currencies have always been an interesting concept! Would love to chat about it sometime!
Just a quick update. In partnership with Arbitrum DAO, Cartesi Network, and Reclaim Protocol, Locale Network and Modern Society Labs just released our flagship dev tool, L{CORE}. Its an open source decentralized attestation protocol for verifying and supplying User and IoT device data to smart contracts while preserving both privacy through zkProofs and TEE, and trustlessness.
Take a look at how we plan to integrate it into our Local Stablecoin and City Chain project for micropayments to residents.
Just chiming in apologies on the delay have been so busy. @MSLabs and I had a great chat last year on integrating what is now L{CORE} into Green Goods to enable the input of IoT and sensor data.
We currently are also completing our Arbitrum grant and are currently integrating impact certificate minting via Hypercerts and then adding DeFi yield with Octant Vaults to create a soft by pressure for impact.
Here’s a brief article to read on the stack
@MSLabs look forward to connecting again in a couple months as we complete this phase of Green Goods then can start to explore integration here.
Cc @Coi would be cool for us to start exploring potential integrations and also @Djimo with Silvi finding synergies there with environmental data, feel we can weave something really beautiful
Much appreciated. & agreed! Amazing conversation we had about the intersection of DePIN and ReFi! Looking forward to connecting with you again now that we have our infrastructure in order.
For environmental data specifically, many of our tests included environmental sensors attached to a Raspberry Pi 5. The test scripts are available in the repo. We’re leaning heavily on cheap open-source hardware, so there are definitely some synergies to discuss.
Really exciting to see this continuing to take shape.
On the Tech and Sun side, we have been exploring how Locale Network and L{CORE} could fit into what we are building through our solar and internet hubs in Nigeria. What is especially compelling for us is not only the ability to bring real world data onchain, but to use the stack as part of education and incubation inside the hubs themselves.
A big area we are interested in is low cost IoT learning, where young builders can get hands-on experience with sensors, data flows, and practical robotics use cases. From there, we see strong potential in both energy and agriculture.
On the energy side, we are interested in monitoring solar generation, uptime, storage, and other infrastructure data in ways that can support transparency and stronger MRV over time. On the agriculture side, we are exploring how low cost sensors and related tooling could support monitoring around soil, weather, land use, and other farm signals, while also creating a stronger learning pathway for people building in that direction.
What feels especially strong here is the combination of education, monitoring, and verifiable reporting. It creates a path where the same infrastructure can help train people, support local experimentation, and make community infrastructure more legible to partners and funders.
Would definitely love to keep exploring where there is alignment here.
For anyone who wants more context on what we are building.
Weaving the above together the two initiatives complement each other strongly by combining education and innovation with economic adoption. These low-cost IoT and it’s learning program can equip young builders here with practical skills in sensors, robotics, and data systems, especially on areas we need them most in the country ( agriculture and energy solutions). Products of these learning programs can then be integrated into the ecosystem, where the local currency serves as a tool for real-world transactions and community adoption.