Zenbit.eth is a digital lab that enhances urban coordination and utility by promoting the development of public goods. Founded in 2019, it introduces Web3 Cities as an alternative to smart cities, focusing on customized city design, creating digital public goods, and regenerating urban spaces. Based on these pillars, Zenbit.eth has identified four key user experiences to create a modular urban data system: digitizing data in public spaces, coordinating urban governance activities, decentralized e-commerce, and incentivizing emission-free mobility and logistics. Collaborating with global talent through ETH Global hackathons¹, Zenbit.eth has implemented and tested various public goods and prototypes in Mexico, Colombia, and the United States.

We are committed to the development of public and open-source projects, with a strong focus on design and development principles. To ensure the sustainability of their efforts, Zenbit has actively participated in various public goods funding initiatives, such as quadratic funding rounds at Devcon Colombia², the quadratic funding rounds for the Filecoin Impact Builders³ and the retroactive public goods funding through Optimism⁴.

Check our Report #1 for details⁶

Throughout the development process, Zenbit has been actively involved in collaborative analysis to identify the dimensions of sociotechnical impact and to improve project development, participating in the ReFiDAO circles to refine their modular functionality and accelerate public goods projects⁵.

Now we are focused on the development of 3 public goods that enables users and communities mint and verify public places, small business and the urban governance:

1. Ciudades DAOs⁷ / SpacetimeDAO⁸

In an effort to explore tokenization of data in public spaces and urban governance interactions, a decentralized urban data system was integrated into the western part of Querétaro City, Mexico. A pilot test was conducted in the Santa Mónica 2 neighborhood, with residents participating in the development of a protocol to collect relevant public data. This led to the exploration of web3 tools to address identified issues and the introduction of web3 tools to more than 600 residents.

Several agreements established the foundations of zenbit.eth, including implementing the DAO model for neighborhood governance, promoting creative talent through digitized urban art as NFTs, digitizing local businesses, and using web3 protocols to incentivize citizen participation. This resulted in the development of Ciudades DAOs, an urban governance application that facilitates the registration of proposals and references on public right-of-way needs.

The project was documented in the México Transparente No. 2 magazine⁹ and received an honorable mention in the 2022 Innovation in Transparency Contest organized by INAI and other institutions¹⁰.

Ciudades DAO had an update with SpacetimeDAO to become a data DAO that take leverage of storage deals made on the Filecoin EVM to enable the storage of additional content on each proposal, add evaluation phases for the governance process with two kind of moderators: on one side representants from public organizations and on the other technical or government stakeholders.

2. Punk Cities¹¹

Punk Cities is a collaborative game that explores gamification of data in public spaces through collecting and verifying NFTs of these spaces, helping users understand complex concepts like digital collectibles, staking, and geolocation. Developed during the Build Quest 2022 hackathon, it has since expanded into various applications including recreative tourism¹², regenerative tourism¹³, gamify net-zero mobility¹⁴, and privacy layer to proof location on rides without revealing personal data on-chain¹⁵. These applications promote decentralized content creation, regenerative tasks, zero-emission mobility, and user privacy through innovative features and incentives. Punk Cities has received recognition and support from various organizations, including being inducted to he Filecoin Hall of Fame¹⁶ and prizes from ETH Global hackathons.

3. Zenbit DeCo¹⁷

Zenbit Deco is a decentralized commerce application leveraging NFTs (ERC721) to empower small business owners to create and manage their stores across various categories. Integrating Aave and the stablecoin DAI, the platform enables seamless commercial transactions and revenue management. Developed during Hack Money 2022, Zenbit Deco has received support from Filecoin¹⁸ and the contracts have been deploy on different testnets¹⁹. To enhance the user experience during web3 tool adoption, the team also developed POAPcet²⁰, a customizable faucet application that simplifies the distribution of test ether for gas fees, fostering a smoother introduction to web3 applications.

Funding needs and usage

All the funds will be used on the following activities:

1. Complete the development of the current web3 cities public goods including: a. Punk Cities / Bright Forest (verifiable data on urban places and mobility between them) b. Deco (Decentralized Commerce) c. Ciudades DAO / SpacetimeDAO (urban governance) d. POAPcet (web3 onboarding) e. 3D models for public places, small business and other city assets.
2. Develop a Public Places API with the minted places and business for modularity with other projects and protocols
3. Public test on LATAM, starting in Querétaro city with the collaboration of local governments, Ethereum LATAM communities and city labs working on LATAM cities.