I-Corps: Blockchain-based Digital Timebank

Award ID: 2131394

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will be a blockchain-based timebank that results in a shared empowerment system that leverages students strengths and addresses the corresponding potential obstacles. If successful, this empowerment system may promote tangible employment skills, improve trust and relationships, and develop social capital within participants. The proposed timebanking system may help channel the collaborative spirit at universities and foster communities that are actively engaged. In addition, it also may offer students an avenue to practice leadership skills while experimenting in a convenient low-risk setting. The proposed technology may provide students with an opportunity to gradually build up confidence for transitioning from a market incubator environment into a real market. This tech-based system could also serve a broader set of participants such as homemakers and elderly communities. This I-Corps project will be a borderless, digital timebanking system built upon blockchain, in which the participants interchange skills through their time rather than money. Using the proposed technology, participants leverage their unique skills to provide services to other members of their social network and are compensated with a time-credit for future services provided by other members of the network rather than with money. With the proposed blockchain technology, the goal is to create a trustworthy system in which users credentials are proved via a traceable and decentralized ledger while the meaningful contributions of the participants may be credited for the value they offer. The technology may improve the trust and transparency between users and their skill statements, diminishes the chance of fake reviews and late transactions, and facilitates participation growth by incentivizing individuals to contribute services to the social network. A novel cryptographic protocol called zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) will be applied in this skill-exchange network. With ZKP, ethical behavior is enforced while privacy, secure anonymity, and the flexibility of sharing identities will be maintained. This protocol allows users information to be validated without the need to expose their data. It also may help users to interact with digital services that they can trust. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ruth Shuman