CityCoins improve a city’s health, wealth, and happiness by expanding its state capacity.

CityCoins expand state capacity

State capacity describes the ability of a government to provide the things its citizens need. This includes public goods and services, law and order, property rights, and economic opportunity and growth.

CityCoins don’t replace or remove a city’s government. They augment and expand your city’s state capacity, particularly when it comes to aspects like taxation, providing public goods, and fostering economic growth.

Public goods and services

CityCoins expand state capacity by creating an open-source ecosystem that empowers apps and services for a city.

CityCoins are programmable. Developers can make them do all sorts of things for token holders. The most useful applications align with CityCoins north star: improving the health, wealth, and happiness of a city.

The CityCoins ecosystem is permissionless, so anyone can begin their project without getting mired in bureaucracy. It’s also open-source. Everything is built transparently, collaboration is easy, and anyone can build on and improve the foundations set by another project. The community is always building new things for your CityCoins to do, like:

• Minting and buying NFTs with CityCoins
• CityPacks: NFT collections that fund Miami public schools
• Syvita Mining Pool: the most effective way to mine CityCoins as a team
• Frens: create and grow Web3 communities.
• BlockMo: earn CityCoins while participating in community events and activities
• Stacks Degens: the first play-to-earn racing game in the Stacks/CityCoins ecosystem
• Dework: Trello-style product manager with token payments, credentialing, bounties and more
• 1Huddle: a gamified approach to educating communities on CityCoins
• Miami Voice: A MiamiCoin app that allows MIA hodlers to propose ideas and vote on how Miami should spend their funds raised by MiamiCoin. Developed by community member Drew Falkman.
• Denizen: An app that enables coworking spaces to grant access to CityCoin hodlers, starting with Miami. Developed by community member Timothy Carambat.
• ‍Miami Beach & Miami Vice: Miami-themed NFT collections
• ‍Memes become movements become markets: 6-of-6 MIA-inspired NFTs from Jack Butcher.

The Stacks × CityCoins Accelerator program has also kickstarted community projects with up to $100,000 in funding, as well as training and mentorship from a world class roster of experts.

Economic opportunity and growth

Growing the wealth of a city is a natural consequence of simply using CityCoins.

Building utility with CityCoins adds value to the tokens. The more useful they are, the more people will own them. And the more CityCoins that are out there doing useful things, the more desirable, and thus more valuable, they can become.

That “value” isn’t just theory. Mayor Francis Suarez recently vowed that Miami will send the BTC yield from MiamiCoin directly to citizens. In this way CityCoins can create wealth not just for governments, but for residents, too. As a bonus, everyone using CityCoins, no matter how little prior experience they have, is getting an intuitive and hands-on education in crypto.

In January 2022 Miami made history again by transacting $5.25 million from its CityCoins wallet into funds that will go directly into running the city: The Miami government voted to use the disbursement for their Rental Assistance Program, reducing the cost of rent for vulnerable citizens during a period of increased housing demand and 7.5+% USD inflation.

Taxation and fundraising

CityCoins expand state capacity by unlocking a new funding channel for cities: crypto.

Municipal governments raise the money they need to run cities by taxing citizens. The amount a city can raise via taxes is the primary determinant in state capacity: the more people a city can tax (and the higher the taxes), the more money it can collect, and the more it can do.

When Miami accepted MiamiCoin's reserve wallet in September 2021, the city instantly unlocked $4.3 million for their treasury. In the next three months MiamiCoin generated tens of millions in new funds for the city. (Less than a month later, NYCCoin did the same for New York City.)

CityCoins raise money for a city by a process called mining. You don’t need to understand the technical details of CityCoins mining and stacking to take part in the ecosystem and support your city, but here’s how it works:

• Mining CityCoins is performed by forwarding STX tokens into the smart contract in a given Stacks block, and is a one-way process. Miners are rewarded with newly minted CityCoins tokens.
• 30% percent of the STX forwarded by miners are sent directly to the city’s secure reserve wallet.
• The remaining 70% is distributed to the holders that stacked their tokens, thus rewarding both the city and its supporters
• People who choose to stack their CityCoins (voluntarily lock them for a pre-defined period of time) receive a portion of the Stacks (STX, the underlying tokens that power CityCoins) transferred by miners as part of the mining process

CityCoins modernize city governance

CityCoins empower municipal governments to better serve their constituents. They provide fundraising and a permissionless, open-source ecosystem to help a city become healthier, wealthier, and happier. CityCoins are not a replacement for city halls around the world—they’re a way to help them do more.

Do you have a new idea for how CityCoins could expand state capacity? Or are you interested in CityCoins and want to keep up to date? Join the thriving CityCoins Discord community.