Cities worldwide are incorporating blockchain and cryptocurrency projects into their growth and development strategies. According to reports, Buenos Aires will set up validator nodes for the Ethereum chain in 2023. At ETH Latam, a local event focused on Ethereum, Diego Fernandez, the city’s secretary of Innovation and Digital Transformation, reported this.
Fernandez made it clear that the city’s interest in running these nodes had an exploratory purpose and that they anticipated that doing so would provide them a greater understanding of the Ethereum chain, enabling them to control digital currency in a better manner.
The hardware to set up these nodes will be deployed by private companies, which will also partner to deploy the nodes. The secretary did not further disclose the number of nodes deployed or the precise date of this deployment program. Buenos Aires would become one of Latam’s first cities to host its bitcoin nodes with this decision.
There has long been a fascination with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies in Buenos Aires. Since the beginning of the year, Buenos Aires has been considering and putting out cryptocurrency-focused solutions. In April of last year, the city decided to let residents use cryptocurrencies to pay their taxes. According to reports, the project is a component of a plan to automate and digitize portions of the city’s operations.
TangoID
The government is also developing a platform to integrate citizen identities into a blockchain-based network. The TangoID platform has been under development since last March. The government of Buenos Aires anticipates that this system will be operational in January 2023.
The initiative supports the idea of self-sovereign identity and will function on top of Starkware, a layer 2 Ethereum protocol. A whitepaper for the project is already available for the public to read.
