Unleashing America’s First City-Backed Blockchain in Reno

The City of Reno is creating America’s first city-backed blockchain ledger, the Biggest Little Blockchain. Unlike other blockchain platforms, the server will not store digital currency, but digital data.

The city’s Register of Historic Places is a list of buildings that are considered historically significant and worthy of preservation. If landowners want to alter registered buildings, they must request what is called a “certificate of appropriateness.” Nic Ciccone, with the city manager’s office, explained what data will be available to users.

“First, our development services team identifies that someone has submitted a certificate of appropriateness,” Ciccone said. “After that, the historic resources commission votes on it, then the city council will confirm that decision, and it will eventually become part of the public records through the clerk’s office.”

Reno historian Alicia Barber sounded the alarm via Twitter that the municipality did not cooperate with the concerned department before they announced this initiative. City officials confirmed that the Reno Historical Resources Commission was not consulted during the registry’s planning phase.

City of Reno Register of Historic Places

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With the project’s launch, the public will have access to all information about these status changes. Over the past few years, Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve has drawn national attention for her public endorsement of cryptocurrency, NFTs and blockchain innovation. She wants to encourage more blockchain companies to take root in Reno to help diversify and recession-proof the local economy.

“Gaming is incredibly important,” Schieve said. “But I also thought that it’s really important that we attract companies that are outside of gaming so that when we see a downturn, we have a much better opportunity to succeed – that really got us into trouble in the recession.”

BlockApps is the company that built this platform over the past year, and at no cost to the city. Jeff Powell is the director of sales, and he said that Reno is particularly fertile ground for blockchain projects.

“The city of Reno — which is a very forward-looking entity and is very interested in being a technology hub and driving technology in the city — became interested in exploring what it would be like for them to put some of their municipal records on the blockchain and make them accessible for the public,” Powell said.

City officials have declared that Biggest Little Blockchain is not related to any alternative currency, although the platform uses ethereum, which was created to support the cryptocurrency ether.

“What we are is a platform built from ethereum on the blockchain that companies use to build solutions or they hire us to build solutions for them,” Powell added.

The current crypto crash may be a symptom of the public’s declining faith in decentralized finance and the technology designed to support it. Nate Jones is an alternative currency instructor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He said that when he teaches, he has to change the definition of what a blockchain is every few months. Jones wonders if some government can responsibly engage with technology that is changing so rapidly.

“Right now we have a huge problem with trust in our digital landscape, our digital society,” Jones said. “There is a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt in these computers and in the people behind them.”

Although alternative currencies have shed more than a trillion dollars this year, the technology developed to track and trade their valuation may be here to stay. But Jones said it’s important for users to know that the information stored on the blockchain can stay there forever.

“The actual data itself will more than likely be retained on their servers,” he added. “If you commit data to the ledger, it never gets anywhere.”

Looking to the future, Jones said he is concerned that government exploitation of this technology could lead to a privacy nightmare scenario. While the EU has regulations on digital platforms that protect a private citizen’s right to be forgotten, US courts do not yet recognize this concept.

“If people were to commit sensitive data to the blockchain that shouldn’t be there, it’s not going to go anywhere,” Jones said. “It’s just one of those double-edged swords. It’s a very powerful tool, but you have to use it properly.”

Reno is widely seen as a place where people come to take chances — whether it’s at tech startups or blackjack tables. Schieve believes blockchain technology has a lot of promise, but she doesn’t dismiss its shortcomings either.

“Not everything is going to work, right?” Schieve said. “But I think when you stop trying is when you fail.”

Pending the success of the project, Schieve’s administration looks to expand the scope of Biggest Little Blockchain and add more features to the network, such as regular maintenance, permissions and licensing.

The image included in this story is licensed under Flickr Creative Commons.