Proof of Witness Presence: Blockchain Consensus for Augmented Democracy in Smart Cities
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Smart City data intensive urban environments are becoming highly complex and evolving by the digital transformation. Repositioning the democratic values of citizens' choices in these complex ecosystems has turned out to be imperative in an era of social media filter bubbles, fake news and opportunities for manipulating electoral results with such means. This paper introduces a new paradigm of augmented democracy that promises citizens who actively engage in a more informed decision-making integrated in public urban space. The proposed concept is inspired by a digital revive of the Ancient Agora of Greece, an arena of public discourse, a Polis where citizens assemble to actively deliberate and collectively decide about public matters. At the core of the proposed paradigm lies the concept of proving witness presence that makes decision-making subject of providing evidence and testifying for choices made in the physical space. This paper shows how proofs of witness presence can be made using blockchain consensus. It also shows how complex crowd-sensing decision-making processes can be designed with the Smart Agora platform and how real-time collective measurements can be performed in a fully decentralized and privacy-preserving way. An experimental testnet scenario on sustainable use of transport means is illustrated. The paramount role of dynamic consensus, self-governance and ethically aligned artificial intelligence in the augmented democracy paradigm is outlined.
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