Cities have always shaped trade, money and trust. Now they shape the digital economy too.
bee smart city and AI bee smart city are convening cities to build public value on open, auditable digital infrastructure: verifiable identity, transparent registries, accountable regulated public finance. Be one of the first to co-found it.
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The Crypto Cities Declaration
Public value, verifiable by everyone.
A new layer of civic infrastructure is being built. Cities are the closest democratic institutions to the people, and we invite them to build this layer on open, verifiable and accountable terms. Cities should own it, not rent it.
- We believea city's digital infrastructure is public infrastructure: open by default, auditable by anyone, owned by no single vendor.
- We believethe value a city creates should compound in the city, not leak to platforms that neither vote nor pay taxes here.
- We believetrust should be verifiable, not assumed. A resident should be able to check an outcome without asking permission.
- We believeinnovation must stay reversible, with no lock-in a successor administration cannot unwind.
- We believecities move faster together, sharing standards, playbooks and evidence as a commons.
This declaration may be freely copied and translated in any form, provided it is reproduced in its entirety with this notice.
Rooted in the UN's smart-city framework
Crypto Cities is convened by bee smart city, a trusted global smart-city network whose partners include U4SSC, the United Nations' initiative for smart sustainable cities. Through that network, the initiative draws on the standards and public-sector rigour of the UN's smart-city framework, coordinated by ITU, UNECE and UN-Habitat and supported by 20 UN organisations.
The United Nations bodies behind U4SSC, a partner in bee smart city's global smart-city network.
Blockchain for smart sustainable cities
The United Nations' own analysis of distributed-ledger technology for public value in cities. A U4SSC deliverable, and the reference point for doing this responsibly.
Read it on U4SSCThe rails are arriving. Cities decide who owns them.
Public value is leaking to platforms that neither vote nor pay taxes where we live. Procurement is opaque and locked to single vendors. Systems make decisions residents cannot audit, and a first wave of "city coins" confused speculation with progress and left citizens holding the loss. The digital rails that fix this are being built right now. The only question left is who owns them: the public, or the platforms.
This is digital public infrastructure, not speculation.
Cities that sign commit to five concrete steps.
Belief becomes verifiable, measurable action. This is what makes signing meaningful, and where bee smart city helps cities deliver.
Put verifiability to work
Run at least one public service on open, auditable ledger or verifiable-credential technology within 24 months, and publish the results as a public good.
Guided onboarding to launch the first pilot.
Open the box
Publish the smart contracts, data schemas and decision logic you deploy in public services, so residents and successors can inspect and reuse them.
Open standards, no vendor lock-in.
Build interoperable, not captive
Adopt open interoperability standards so credentials travel across cities without vendor lock-in.
Interoperable by design.
Treat tokenization as public finance
Any digital or green municipal instrument is structured under established, regulated frameworks, never an unregulated "city coin," never at residents' expense.
Public finance, not speculation.
Keep an exit ramp
Deploy no system a future administration cannot audit, migrate or unwind, and report progress against a recognized public KPI standard, in the open.
Sovereignty is not something a city signs away.
Add your city
No city has signed yet. The first cities to sign become Founding Cities and set the standard the rest inherit.