MyChain - The Decentralised Autonomous Organisation for Housing & Renovation
Do you want to have access to affordable housing regardless of your social status and identity? Do you want to be more circular and have less impact on the environment while saving money? MyChain is here to help you! You can now join housing projects, create your own chain of community, propose ideas for the improvement of your living environment, vote for the proposals, gain and exchange tokens, share your goods, and more!
Regional
Belgium
Brussels Capital Region
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Imperfect Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Moujan Last name of representative: Mahdian Age: 26 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Gender: Female Nationality: Iran Function: Co-Founder Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Avenue des Courses 12 Town: Ixelles Postal code: 1050 Country: Belgium Direct Tel:+32 478 65 10 03 E-mail:info@imperfect.city Website:https://www.imperfect.city
Climate change, lack of principal resources, and global crises have led to an increase in housing and construction costs, rejecting an important number of dwellers in search of affordable and durable housing. In this regard, a value-sensitive design (VSD) to consider human values in creating new technologies, is a way to tackle the challenges. Blockchain technology can reduce the costs of a project by removing intermediaries and promoting new sustainable models and value chains. On the other hand, the engagement of citizens can play a critical part in local initiatives for global challenges.
MyChain platform's mission is to redefine the housing and renovation market by empowering the citizens and promoting circular economy and social sustainability. We believe that every inhabitant must be able to have access to affordable housing and circular economy and freely participate in the decision-making process regardless of their identity and social situation. Our goal is to create a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation for housing and renovation, with a disruptive model enhancing affordable housing and circular construction and renovation.
MyChain platform is considered a soft investment to change the mainstream, costly and complex housing market and administration. Within the My Chain platform is it possible to define the appropriate smart contracts and relationships between the different stakeholders of the housing and renovation market while using AI to generate results.Thanks to its deep tech innovation, the avoidable intermediaries are removed creating a new citizen-centered ecosystem. MyChain also offers the opportunity for citizens to initiate sustainable actions via their community (chain) and find simultaneous construction projects to reuse existing resources in a circular way. MyChain platform is replicable and scalable according to context and challenges.
MyChain platform is an infrastructure for promoting sustainable actions and making a cultural change in people's living patterns in the long term. By taking control of our living environment, we expect to become more responsible for the future of our planet.
MyChain can contribute to environmental challenges in terms of the limitation of gas emissions and overall energy consumption but also waste management in several ways:
1.Occupant behavior on the building level and community: MyChain platform enables citizens to have control over their living environment and triggers occupants' behavior by encouraging sustainable, low-impact, and circular actions via incentives and disincentives. In this way, a cultural change will be implemented in the long term for the protection of the environment. Some examples of such initiatives are:
- CO2 emission token, based on the areas of the property, EPB characteristics, and...
- Circularity token, based on the rate of re-used or repurposed components in new construction or renovation projects
The users who consume fewer tokens can exchange the remaining ones with the inhabitants with a higher carbon footprint, creating a new digital local market.
2.Energy Communities: MyChain has created a suitable environment for decentralizing the energy provision from unaffordable, capitalist, and polluting suppliers to creating responsible local energy markets. The artificial intelligence embedded in the MyChain platform enables also significant changes in the tracking of energy consumption patterns and its community management infrastructure enables energy sharing.
3.Circular strategies: MyChain seeks to reactivate existing resources and contribute to waste management by promoting reverse logistics, repurposing ideas, and circular strategies. Its construction and renovation model is based on the synchronization of simultaneous construction sites to enable maximum component sharing and promote circularity and life cycle thinking.
MyChain's goal is to empower the users by promoting self-managed communities. In this way, citizens will become proactive users, experiencing a new relationship with their living environment. Therefore, the sense of belonging to the community will increase and every inhabitant will feel considered becoming more responsible for their actions.
The local governance of citizens and local stakeholders over themselves is a way to promote local and cultural actions in a collective manner which will enhance the identity of housing districts as well as individual buildings.
When a project is designed and governed with a bottom-up approach, it is for sure that the aesthetics of such a built environment is more humanistic and more appropriate to the daily life and diversity of its inhabitant. Furthermore, such buildings will have the capacity to be flexible over time and change based on the appropriation of their inhabitants.
Moreover, MyChain enables components sharing and the reuse of materials, opening a new perspective in architectural design on different scales, from landscape design to the design of construction details. The outcome of this new methodology is an assemblage of re-used components, giving new identity not only to the objects themselves but the entire building. Therefore, MyChain opens the opportunity for architects and consultants to opt for a participative and more sustainable design that represents its future occupants.
MyChain is a socially driven initiative to fight discrimination and aim for spatial justice by promoting diverse communities and inclusive decision-making. The platform is open to everyone regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, level of income, and social status. Through its deep tech features, MyChain uses digital democracy to empower citizens and promote a proactive engagement of inhabitants. Therefore, anyone can become part of affordable and sustainable housing communities, creating diverse dwellings and fighting gentrification and homogenous and gated communities.
Contrary to the traditional system of urban services, the MyChain model prioritize citizens by removing unnecessary intermediaries, establishing a better relationship between private and public stakeholders, and creating added values for citizens. Moreover, the simple and user-friendly environment of the platform brings more clarity and, eventually, more assurance for the user rather than a complex bureaucracy.
Thanks to the features of Blockchain that make it possible to define a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation, users are able to access more affordable procedures with total trust and transparency.
When using MyChain for housing search or improvements, users can freely participate in the decision-making process, feeling heard and included as well as propose ideas, vote for proposals, and start crowdfunding for their ideas. The probability of participation in smart contracts is 100 percent, meaning that a citizen's vote will certainly be considered in the decision-making. Therefore, vulnerable groups and minorities will have equal access to the proposals and voting system without the need to trust several organizations.
Positioning ourselves on the ladder of participation of Arnstein, MyChain seeks to promote "partnership" and "delegation" to reach the "citizen control" step. We enable a so-called "shift" where citizens become project initiators, financial investors, and eventually policymakers. MyChain proposes three main ways to participate in the projects depending on the purpose of the users:
1. The person is looking for affordable and inclusive housing opportunities: Citizens can via the MyChain platform search for new or ongoing collective housing projects and join the community. From the early stages, future inhabitants are able to vote for decisions and express their ideas via proposals. In comparison to the current market, MyChain proposes a new business model that is citizen-driven and brings added value to the users. The future inhabitants can expect an affordable price range for their housing contribution, public premiums as well as ownership.
2. The person wants to create a community to initiate sustainable change: MyChain brings the possibility for dwellers to create a chain of neighbors and local stakeholders to propose sustainable initiatives for their living environment. In this case, citizens can propose ideas (smart contracts) and invite other users to vote for the project. They also can start crowdfunding and create a participative budget for financing the projects.
3. The person is involved in a new construction or renovation project and looking for circular and affordable solutions: My Chain has created a new model to promote circular, accessible, and affordable construction and renovation by connecting the appropriate construction sites together. The entire idea is based on the input of citizens on their ongoing or future projects. Users are able to share criteria of their project such as location, timeline, total budget, components, and so on, and search for other compatible projects and begin a circular workflow.
Imperfect is a social innovation SME that is interested in creating a better relationship between stakeholders of urban services. MyChain project is now at TRL 2, meaning that it is on its way to developing a proof of concept. So far, the concept has been developed internally within Imperfect and has been introduced to involved regional organizations in Brussels. The added value of their engagement for MyChain is a more appropriate development of MyChain, considering the realities of the market of housing and renovation in Brussels.
Firstly Homegrade.Brussels, is a renovation entity established in the Brussels Capital Region for assisting citizens in their renovation projects. They have contributed to the project by providing us with on-site data on renovation rates and have introduced us to a network of local communities for urban regeneration, Réseau Habitat, for future on-site co-creation with the citizens and demonstration. This is also a potential to attract local construction businesses into the project.
Homegrade also introduced us to the Renolution initiative, which is a premium for renovation demanders. In the future, we will continue our discussion to include this premium directly through MyChain as a reward for sustainable actions.
Next, we presented the idea to Ecobuild.Brussels, a cluster of Hub.Brussels specialised in circular construction. They have already considered our project as a promising initiative for promoting circularity in Brussels and are willing to register us as a member of Ecobuild network. In the future steps, Ecobuild will be our promoting platform within the construction sector to attract consultants and architects to the MyChain project as well as investors such as Belspo.
In the next steps of the project, we expect to form a collaboration with Logement.Brussels, the urban entity in charge of the housing of Brussels to implement My Chain in the procedure of accessing affordable and sustainable housing.
Imperfect has developed a new model for housing and circularity challenges in Brussels via the MyChain platform with the help of its urban specialists and sustainable strategists. Imperfect is also collaborating with a tech company, MayanTech, in order to develop deep tech solutions based on Blockchain, AI, IoT, and,...
Imperfect has also started consultation with Brussels urban entities and the NCP of Brussels on the company structure and MyChain business model and look forward to more financial assistance for the transition of the project to a more sustainable, circular, and inclusive system.
Imperfect seeks to start a collaboration with SSH researchers in the field of citizen engagement and digital democracy, to enhance the participative and inclusive aspect of the MyChain platform. Moreover, we foresee assistance from administrative entities and law specialists in the process of pre-defining smart contracts for housing and renovation projects in Brussels. In addition, we also envisage a collaboration with Innoviris.Brussels for co-creation opportunities with all the stakeholders around the table.
The added value of such collaboration is the creation of a holistic deep tech model for affordable, inclusive, and circular housing and renovation that is human-centered and can draw the best relationship between engaged stakeholders with benefits for each of the participants.
MyChain is a disruptive social innovation as it transforms the existing market by introducing a new business model and incorporating new technologies. We permanently seek to discover new values for existing users and eventually attract new users.
MyChain's framework is self-efficient, containing key integrated resources from the users, meaning that it is considered a bottom-up service rather than mainstream top-down services proposed by urban entities. Unlike complex bureaucracy and administration, citizens have the power to intervene in the process and make changes accordingly. Participating as a member of My Chain is also more affordable than the traditional approach toward housing and renovation as it uses an innovative model that prioritizes citizens over intermediaries while bringing financial benefits for the users. For instance, in the context of Brussels, citizens will be able to reach affordable housing faster than available options and with benefits such as ownership and premiums.
The architecture of My Chain is based on deep tech platforms such as Blockchain and DAO, and therefore it is adaptable to its era and context compared to low-tech approaches. In addition, the AI feature is tractable enabling various results for various challenges. In Brussels, for example, compared to the network of dissociated and centralized organizations, MyChain proposes the implementation of smart contracts for decentralized governance and participative design and development.
The overall actions in the MyChain platform are more sustainable than common ways to acquire housing, initiate a community, and start a renovation project, as with the help of embedded incentives, also known as tokens, users are encouraged to take responsible decisions toward the environment. Concerning the construction and renovation sector in Brussels specifically, MyChain has created a simpler methodology for circular actions and eventually more affordable projects.
The idea behind MyChain is context-less, permission-less, and flexible; therefore, it can be adapted to different administrative setups and urban policies. Its technical infrastructure is based on the Internet, creating easy access from any point of the world. The platform technology also provides borderless collaboration beyond geographical boundaries, enabling the share of knowledge and global networking.
MyChain is run on a set of smart contracts that are implemented on the Blockchain Etherium, therefore according to any context or challenge, the contract can be adapted and modified. The AI implemented in the platform can also be trained for new predictions and results. The main business model of MyChain is a coherent and flexible assemblage of stakeholders that can respond to various political and administrative systems.
MyChain has also the capacity to be implemented in rural areas in order to contribute to smart villages and create a new ecosystem of collective housing, energy communities, and circular renovation based on the social, economic, and environmental challenges of such areas.
My Chain enables the implementation of global measures for global challenges in order to impact the culture of living. In addition to previously described goals for the New European Bauhaus, The project has also taken into account the SDGs in the development of its concept. For example:
- SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities: My Chain fights against discrimination and has developed an inclusive approach toward urban services.
- SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities: My Chain believes that by targeting occupants' behaviors, long-term sustainable action can be implemented in the everyday life of citizens, therefore it can contribute to the creation of sustainable districts and communities.
- SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production: One of the main values of My Chain is to rethink our consumption pattern by implementing circular initiatives.
- SDG 13 - Climate Action: Contributing to the future of our planet is crucial for us, therefore we have thought about incentives and disincentives to control our impact on the climate.
- SDG 17 - Partnerships for the goals: With its innovative model, MyChain intends to create efficient relationships between stakeholders and tries to include all actors around the table.
My Chain specifically dedicates a part of its activities to the Renovation Wave (EU), by firstly raising the rate of renovation, prioritizing low-income households by offering affordable and circular alternatives, and creating incentives to reach the energy performance standards and fight energy poverty.
This platform is also a tool to reach the Green Deal's first climate target plan for 2030 by defining CO2 tokens and having an impact on people's behavior to reduce the emission footprint of households. Moreover, My Chain is an infrastructure for the circular economy, contributing to the Circular Economy Action Plan of the Green Deal.
