Four years after the European Capital of Innovation award (second after Amsterdam ahead of Milan and Paris), Turin is a finalist for the European “EIC Horizon Prize ‘Blockchains for social good'” award: it competes with 22 other candidates for one of the 5 awards from 1 million Euros. The finalist project is called ‘CommonsHood’, developed by the University of Turin together with the citizens of the collaboration agreements born from the common goods regulation, within the social inclusion plan, the network of houses in the neighborhood, the Turin Voluntary Association – Vol. .To, and institutions like ASCOM and VisitPiemonte, as well as some realities of solidarity in Athens, Greece. CommonsHood’s goal is to offer the community a Blockchain platform to support the local economy: a platform based on an app that acts as a wallet containing different types of ‘tokens’.
“CommonsHood is a wallet app that not only allows you to exchange the coins (called tokens) that live on the Blockchain” – says Professor Guido Boella, project coordinator and Director of the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin – “but also allows anyone to create new types of these tokens. These digital tokens represent local financial instruments, such as crowdfunding proposals, marketing tools such as prepaid cards, cashback, group buying, points and discount coupons, but also real complementary coins, or they represent digital certificates and receipts and ‘digital collectibles’ . It is therefore not about global speculative tools like Bitcoin and other ‘cryptocurrencies’, but about financial inclusion tools to support the community and are managed locally. We want to make this type of tool more democratic by enabling everyone to create it. This is what we mean when we talk about the Blockchain’s ability to eliminate intermediaries “.
“Our goal is to launch a technological revolution comparable to that produced by Web 2.0” – says Claudio Schifanella, researcher at the head of the working group of the Department of Computer Science – “which allowed anyone to publish multimedia content on the Internet without having technical skills . Similarly, CommonsHood allows everyone to create cryptographic tokens through a simple app, without knowing anything about Blockchain technology and without having programming skills, and using them for their own purposes. The CommonsHood app is integrated with our local civic social network FirstLife, based on an interactive city map. ”
To “launch” the nomination for the final and show that the CommonsHood project is actually a common good of the territory (in addition to being open source), in the presence of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Councilor for Innovation and the Rector of the University, University of Turin and Municipality with Torino Social Impact are organizing a morning of presentation and discussion on how Blockchain technology can have a social impact and how it can innovate the ICT industry in the area, at the Open Innovation center of the City of Turin in Piazza Teresa Noce, 17 on 5 February at 8.30 am.
The various experiments of CommonsHood will be presented, starting from the distribution of almost 400,000 € of the Solidarity Purchase Networks project of the Social Inclusion Plan to about 1,000 families and people in difficulty using the app as a “social purse”, and the various European and Regional projects who funded the University in the development of Blockchain technologies (Co-City, CO3, ge.CO, Blinc, Pinin and Tech4Milk), as well as entrepreneurial experiences on the Blockchain and the Torino Wireless observatory on the subject.
There will be the opportunity to experience the “wallet app”, before the event, because to enter the event after registering online you will need a special token on your wallet app.
Website for registration for the event: http://bc4good.commonshood.eu
CommonsHood project website http://www.commonshood.eu