Internet of People, Blockchain, Social Coin, Incentivization, Engagement, Collaborative Processes, Citizen Science, Sustainable Development Goals

1. 1
Social Coin: Blockchain-mediated
incentivization of citizens for sustainable
collaborative processes
(co-authored by Diego López-de-Ipiña, Jorge El Busto, Daniel Lauzurica and Diego Casado-Mansilla)
6th International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (Splitech 2021)
8 – 11 September 2021, Virtual 2021, http://2021.splitech.org/
Dr. Diego López-de-Ipiña González-de-Artaza
dipina@deusto.es
http://paginaspersonales.deusto.es/dipina
http://www.morelab.deusto.es
@dipina

2. 2
Internet of People (IoP)
• A new Internet paradigm where humans & their personal devices are not seen
merely as end users of applications but become active elements of the Internet
– IoP promoting technologies seek more effective collaboration and behaviour change of
citizens and devices aiding processes where they intervene
– People’s personal devices and surrounding environmental objects easily become their
proxies in the cyber world, in addition to acting as a fundamental tool to sense and
change the physical world
• PROBLEM! To seek effective involvement and engagement of end users for process
improvement is not obvious and hard to achieve!
• Hypothesis: IoP & Blockchain can be used to promote sustainable incentivization
of community collaboration to pursue sustainable development goals
– Objective 1: Realize such a solution to illustrate how “Blockchain for good” can be used
– Objective 2: Assess the environmental impact and cost of deploying such a solution

3. 3
Internet of People (IoP)
Hybrid
Intelligence
Human
Behaviour-
change
Citizen
Science
Human in the Loop &
Semantic Interoperability
Sentient
Things
Internet
of
People
Situated IoT & Engaging
Interaction

4. 4
Motivation
• Research question: Can IoP paradigm through its enabling
technologies, e.g. Blockchain & Ubiquitous Web, enhance citizen
collaboration to meet social good goals?
• IoP entails mixing Human Collaboration + Emerging Technologies
– Continuous engagement of users in Smart Cities/Environments is hard to
achieve !!! Why?
• Self-motivation does not last for long
• Past techniques like gamification partly work
• Clear benefits have to be spotted by users to keep using those services
• Solution: Social Coin to audit and reward user collaboration!!!

5. 5
Citizen Engagement Approaches

6. 6
Engagement driven by Incentivization
• We want to improve citizen collaboration through
incentivisation (token economy) and recognition,
i.e., trustworthy recording of citizen collaborations
– Blockchain is used to deal with rewarding and recognition
aspects, i.e. active collaboration of citizens

7. 7
Blockchain

8. 8
Blockchain flavours
• Ethereum —an open source, public, blockchain-based distributed
computing platform and operating system featuring smart contract
(scripting) functionality
– Adoption of Ethereum has a cost, you need gas to record transactions
• costs related to the publication of goo deed transactions have to be considered
– Ethereum does not work in real-time:
• transaction duration on Ethereum depends on the gas price that the user pays when
performing a transaction
• Hyperledger Besu is an open-source Ethereum client that supports
operations across public Blockchains
– allows creation of permissioned Networks adopting distinct consensus
mechanisms
– operates according to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance standard

9. 9
Deusto Social Coin
• DSC aims to incentivize University of Deusto’s community to adopt more
sustainable living habits which contribute towards UN’s Sustainable
Development Goals (SDG)
• Deusto Social Coin – roles and features:
– Administrative organization (social coin minter) is concerned with social
reputation by promoting adoption of social good aims
– Campaign organizers launch campaigns promoting Sustainable Development
Goals according to an organization’s aims
– Campaign participants fulfil actions associated to campaigns which are traced
and rewarded
– Community members (participants) may use the gained credit to purchase
products within the university or transfer credit to other users.
• Exemplary good behaviour collaborative processes:
– enhancing recycling in the cafeteria
– enhancing active mobility among university’s community members

10. 10
Deusto Social Coin
“social recognition and rewarding as an incentive to encourage active long
run community participation in achievement of common objectives”
• IoP enablers used: Blockchain & Ubiquitous Web
– Blockchain network used to register as immutable transactions
completion of good deeds and receive rewards as execution of
triggered smart contracts
• Auditability through images verifying good deed actions stored in a
decentralized manner in IPFS peer-to-peer network
• Transparency and accountability features of Blockchain ensure that
honesty is encouraged, since your actions are exposed to scrutiny of
all the network users
– Ubiquitous web (QR codes) are used to trigger actions with real
world

11. 11
DSC Architecture
• Microservice based solution with hybrid client-server model and third
layer dedicated to external services used to offload operations either to
peer-to-peer networks (Ethereum and IPFS) or Cloud-based
microservices, e.g. Cryptocompare or Google Accounts

12. 12
Deusto Social Coin: Front-end
• DSC leverages from QR codes to foster real world interaction
• DSC leverages from PWA to provide device agnostic web interfaces which
are rendered both in browsers and mobile phones.
– QRCode is a Python library that allows the generation of QR codes in real time.

13. 13
Deusto Social Coin: Back-end
• Back-end logic is hosted in the cloud but uses decentralised networks for
file storage in the interplanetary file system (IPFS) and transactions
recording in Blockchain (Ethereum or BESU)
– RegisterAction.sol: records a good action by collecting the data: who
did it, what action, when, with what validation.
– GrantCredit.sol: contract that validates that a given promoter has
enough balance to pay for the good actions registered by a participant.

14. 14
DSC is Blockchain network agnostic
• Ethereum was first chosen for several reasons: public
permissionless nature, flexibility, ample adoption, and
excellent documentation.
– BUT … its associated energy consumptions are very significant; it
requires 75 KWh per transaction
• DSC’s internal architecture gives rise to the possibility, of using
alternative DLT technologies to reduce these emissions
– Hyperledger BESU offers lower level of trust, but it is faster and much
more energy efficient

15. 15
Deusto Social Coin: Evaluation
• Qualitative comparison:
– Ethereum uses Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm where miners have
to solve a mathematical challenge to win the right to record a new transaction
and gain the associated credit.
• Energy consumption is very high since large number of CPUs/GPUs are constantly
consuming cycles
• The use of gas ("transaction fee") is necessary to carry out transactions
• Between 5 seconds and 5 minutes on average, depending on the gas used and
network traffic
– Hyperledger Besu behaves like an Ethereum client that allows the creation of
Proof of Authority (PoA) networks using Ethereum functionality, as well as
connecting to its MainNet
• Energy much lower since in PoA there is no "competition" to mine the block
• It is possible not to use gas
• It is possible to perform around 35 transactions per second

16. 16
Deusto Social Coin: Evaluation
• Quantitative comparison: Cost comparison
Cost comparison Ethereum public network Besu private
free gas
network
Function/
deployment
Fast: 65 gwei Average: 58
gwei
Slow: 37 gwei
Deployment of Register
Action smart contract
21450000 gwei
45,3842 €
19140000 gwei
40,4967 €
12210000 gwei
25,8341 €
0€
Deployment of Grant Credit
smart contract
23400000 gwei
49,51 €
20880000 gwei
44,1782 €
13320000 gwei
28,1826 €
0€
registerAction 2028000 gwei
4,2909 €
1809600 gwei
3,8288 €
1154400 gwei
2,4425 €
0€
sendCoins 1560000 gwei
3,3007 €
1392000 gwei
2,9452 €
888000 gwei
1,8788 €
0€

17. 17
Deusto Social Coin: Evaluation
• Quantitative comparison: Energy consumption comparison
System: AMD Ryzen
5 2600
(6 cores, 12 threads,
3.4GHz base speed),
16GB of RAM
%user %system %iowait %steal %idle
Proof of Work
(PoW) network
9.08% 0.37% 0.02% 0.00% 90.38%
Proof of Authority
(PoA) network
0.49% 0.25% 0.02% 0.00% 99.16%
Idle computer 0,32% 0.24% 0.03% 0.00% 99.41%
PoW consumes approximately 51.53 times what PoA consumes (in a
Besu, Ethereum-based network).

18. 18
Conclusion
• Blockchain technology allows to create a tool to incentivize contributors
of social good actions in a trustable manner
– DSC solution allows deployment of social coins in organizations willing to
motivate their communities to collaborate and achieve their sustainable
development goals
• Deployment of DSC in two blockchain networks has been tested:
– Ethereum is a public permissionless blockchain network widely adopted but
requires high running costs and involves important energy consumption
– Besu is a blockchain network compatible with Ethereum which minimizes
energy consumptions, eliminates miner costs, but requires trust on the
organizations deploying the set of nodes that compose the network
• Future work will consider the deployment of the solution in the
University of Deusto during an academic year

19. 19
Social Coin: Blockchain-mediated
incentivization of citizens for sustainable
collaborative processes
6th International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (Splitech 2021)
8 – 11 September 2021, Virtual 2021, http://2021.splitech.org/
Dr. Diego López-de-Ipiña González-de-Artaza
dipina@deusto.es
http://paginaspersonales.deusto.es/dipina
http://www.morelab.deusto.es
@dipina