How may one use cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and blockchain technologies to create sustainable, participatory projects in our communities. A hypothetical example using decentralized hydroponics urban farm will be used to consider implementation for funding and economically sustaining a "food grid" (analogous to the energy grid) that benefits everyone in the collective membership. Presented to Slow Money South Bay on August 4, 2015 by Evelyn Rodriguez.

1. Food as Distributed
Commons
Cryptocurrencies as Slow Money
SLOW MONEY SOUTH BAY presentation
by Evelyn Rodriguez
@eve11 and @win6village
crossroadsdispatches@gmail.com

2. Why now?
Not too early to plant seed.
Start musing decentralized,
peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies,
like Bitcoin, and their
associated technologies such
as the ledger, Blockchain.
Amazon.com website in 1994.
Few believed every business
would one day have a website.
Saw Internet as a “fad.”

3. There is a
learning
curve
Take heart: a seasoned
blockchain developer told me
it takes months to get it. Not
linear learning--but a spiral,
he added.

5. Nature and Networks
"These plants are not really individuals
in the sense that Darwin thought they
were individuals competing for survival
of the fittest," says Suzanne Simard in
the 2011 documentary Do Trees
Communicate? "In fact they are
interacting with each other, trying to
help each other survive."

6. Decentralization
The Internet is a
decentralized architecture.
Bitcoin and its ledger,
Blockchain, is decentralized.
Homestead Hamlet in Lincoln,
Nebraska is decentralized.

7. What is Money?
"At its essence, money is a
ledger, a system used by
society to keep score of who
and what and when and
where. Money is our way of
recording distributed
memory."
- Stan Stalnake, essay in From Bitcoin to
Burning Man

8. What is Bitcoin?
"I've been working on a new electronic
cash system that's fully peer-to-peer,
with no trusted third-party." - Satoshi
Nakamoto
First sentence from Satashi Nakamoto to a cryptography experts email list in
2008

9. Analogy to lockbox on gold nugget
Xavier Hawk on
funding
permaculture
eco-village with
“PermaCredits.”
(At 22:00 on
Bitcoin.)

10. Blockchain is a decentralized ledger
"The simple genius of this technology is that it cuts away
the middleman yet maintains an infrastructure that allows
strangers to deal with each other. It does this by taking the
all-important role of ledger-keeping away from centralized
financial institutions and handing it to a network of
autonomous computers, creating a decentralized system of
trust that operates outside the control of any one
institution.” - The Age of Cryptocurrency

11. Blockchain as universal ledger
“At their core, crytocurrencies are build around
the principle of a universal, inviolable ledger,
one that is made fully public and is constantly
being verified by these high-powered
computers, each essentially acting
independently of the others.” - The Age of
Cryptocurrency

12. Blockchain ledger replaces need for
trusted middleman
“The network-based ledger--which in the case
of most cryptocurrencies is called a
blockchain--works as a stand-in for the
middlemen since it can just as effectively tell us
whether the counterparty to a transaction is
good for his or her money." - The Age of
Cryptocurrency

13. City Blooms Modular Hydroponics
City Blooms makes
modular, portable,
sensor-monitored
hydroponics units =
“easy,” decentralized
farm. Could fund
traditionally through
Barnraiser, etc.

14. Think of fresh food like a Solar Grid
“When most people think about the
role of solar, they think of it as a
substitute for other sources of energy.
The unique point of solar
photovoltaics is that it’s a
form of distributed energy.
Solar energy can be installed over a
wide range of areas that other
sources of energy can’t–on top of
homes, on farms, at airports,
harbours and anywhere off-grid. And
that makes it special. It means that
anyone can install solar energy.
Anyone can participate.”
- Atsuhiko Hirano, Director of Solar
Frontier

15. Incent Others to Join Food Grid
How do we structure something so other
people are incentivized to be part of
something larger than themselves? This is
where Bitcoin (or alternative like Ethereum
and its blockchain come in).
Imagine an energy grid. How to encourage
others to add their own solar panel
(metaphorically) to the grid.
What would be equivalent in food system?
Add a container garden on your disused
driveway in peri-urban San Jose. Add a
hydroponics unit to the rooftop of your
warehouse loft in Oakland. Be part of a
membership organism. Call this urban
agriculture grid or federation The
PopupFarm Grid.

16. Hypothetical urban farm on disused
land food grid Landholder gets token-credit, FreshCoin.
Purchaser of City Blooms unit gets token-
credit, FreshCoin.
Enthusiast-supporter (armchair gardener)
gets FreshCoin in exchange for Bitcoin.
Volunteers tend plants get FreshCoins
(trade for food which has a FreshCoin value,
or they can exchange FreshCoin back into
Bitcoin).
Food distributed first to local members for X
FreshCoins tokens (debit).
Excess food is sold. Profits are credits rolled
back into the PopupFarm membership
network and food grid. Thus, FreshCoin
“backed” by value of food.
Anyone can sell their City Bloom cluster (or
a container garden) entire or a share in one
through selling of these token-credits.

17. Beyond Debt/Credit: Smart Contracts
Meet Stephanie of
NOMADGardens.
From April 2014-2016 temporary
urban community garden at to-
be-developed site in Mission
Bay, San Francisco.
Imagine more roaming gardens:
Plus Membership token-coin, for
Developer/Landowner the
“Smart” Contract on blockchain
ledger spells out conditions of
temporary lease or loan.

18. CryptoCitizen: Collaboration, Coops
and Democracy
“The crypto-citizen mentality is more
self-responsibility-taking; designing,
iterating, and participating in community
sustainability initiatives, including self-
defining what makes economic sense to
me to participate in this.
The PopupFarm Grid DCO (Distributed Collaborative
Organization) helps on-board all of these users and use
cases. Land permitted until 2018, great--let's set you up with
a PopupFarm Grid smart contract to already start earning
community participation FreshCoins against that.
Kids’ paper routes is now container maintenance for
neighbor's urban food unit.
A series of smart contracts to onboard and offboard the
diverse use cases.” - Melanie Swan (private email
exchange)
The Agora in ancient Greece was
both a market AND a participatory
citizen’s democracy gathering space.

19. Group Currency
18 families in a farm. Each person has an
individual coin, or currency. Plus part of a
larger group currency, FarmCoin.
FarmCoin itself nested within larger
MarketCoin (ex. all CUESA Farmer
Markets participating vendors).
Trade--like any local currency--also a
MINIMUM basic income insured by pool of
members. Possibly tap into group funds, as
in moai, for new ventures.
Can envision group currencies as tokens
for an “arcade” of services and products
produced by the collective.

20. Book resources

21. Resources
White Papers: Satoshi Nakamoto white paper
YouTube:
Xavier Hawk interview on self-sustaining ecovillages,
permaculture, and Bitcoin -- https://m.youtube.com/watch?
v=MUVqKfbG8ao
PermaCredits, Cryptocurrency for permaculture -- https://m.
youtube.com/watch?v=VZS9ODmZXsU

22. Resources: Articles
Homestead Hamlets, by Tim Rinne, http://www.motherearthnews.
com/homesteading-and-livestock/sustainable-farming/neighborhood-gardens-zm0z14amzsor.aspx
Plants Have a Hidden Internet, BBC.com, http://www.bbc.
com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet
What if Everything Ran Like the Internet, by Dave Pollard,
http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2013/05/26/what-if-everything-ran-like-the-internet/
How Society Will be Transformed by CryptoEconomics, by
Noah Thorp, https://medium.com/@noahthorp/how-society-will-be-transformed-by-crypto-
economics-b02b6765ca8c

23. Resources: Local People
Ari Eisenstat, Draem Ventures, “The Future of Financial Technology:
Impact Quantum Cryptoequity”
Joel Dietz, DCO (Distributed Collaborative Organizations),
Swarm.fund (Palo Alto)
Martin Koepellmann, Circles (Palo Alto)
Evelyn Rodriguez,meetup.com/Silicon-Valley-Urban-Village
(San Mateo)
Eric Smalls, Manna (Menlo Park)
Melanie Swan, author Blockchain, Institute for Blockchain
Studies see http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga (Berkeley)

24. Resources
GROUP CURRENCY
Group Currency white paper, www.GroupCurrency.org
An implementation is Circles by Martin Koeppelmann (Palo Alto), see http:
//ourbasicincome.wordpress.com/
Sunday September 6 Meetup, Basic Income on and off
the Blockchain: Köppelmann, Waldman, Slepak - http:
//www.meetup.
com/EthereumSiliconValley/events/223221435/