We’ve been banging on pots and pans since January that we intended Arcade City to be the decentralized, Ethereum-based answer to Uber.

In April we laid out our multi-stage path to complete decentralization over time, then announced plans to submit a DAO proposal — oops! — and just recently added a crew of experienced Ethereum developers who’ve built a functioning Ethereum ridesharing prototype in record time.

In the meantime we’ve made substantial progress ‘on the ground’ in cities all over the world, with our flagship ridesharing network in Austin giving tens of thousands of safe rides in a completely decentralized manner.

Now we’re ready to combine our decentralized organizational model with the solid decentralized tech that can propel our project further into the mainstream.

Resources

What is Arcade City?

Arcade City is a decentralized global community of peer-to-peer service providers and consumers. The core technical offering is an Ethereum-based app for web, Android and iOS. Arcade City features an open ecosystem with forthcoming APIs to enable developers and entrepreneurs to easily create their own apps and service offerings as part of the Arcade City network. Initial service offerings focus on the ridesharing industry, with plans in motion for peer-to-peer deliveries and short-term home rentals.

Arcade City aims to reinvent the sharing economy by combining the power of blockchain technology, open-source development, platform cooperativism, and a decentralized ‘swarm’ organizational model open to all.

A hackathon, you say?

Assuming our token sale sells out by the end of November, we’ll be throwing an online hackathon open to any Ethereum developers, with a minimum of $100K USD value in prizes, payable in ETH or ARC.

We’ll announce super final details about start and end dates, judges and such, after the sale, potentially as soon as the first week of November.

The basic idea of the first hackathon will be to build out the functionality described in the Arcade City Infrastructure section of the whitepaper: the offers, disputes, guilds, referrals, reputation, and assurance systems, with a likely priority on the reputation system.

We intend to crowdsource the majority of our Ethereum development via multiple hackathons with everything open-source on GitHub.

Check out the eye-popping revenue projections in our whitepaper! Then imagine the majority of that revenue flowing into the Ethereum community by way of incentive prizes to accelerate the decentralization of the sharing economy…

Some press

Team Bios

Christopher David — Janitor

Christopher David founded Arcade City in December 2015. A former Uber driver, Chris initially envisioned Arcade City as a decentralized, driver-run competitor to Uber. As a blockchain enthusiast and proponent of radical decentralization, Chris was the first to recognize the larger potential of Arcade City as an unstoppable engine of mass peer-to-peer transactions across countless industries and countries all over the world. Using skills acquired during years of grassroots political organizing, he led the growth of Arcade City from an idea into a global movement on a shoestring budget. After much trial and error, he somehow managed to attract an amazing team of talented visionaries passionate to fulfill on the greater vision of Arcade City to ‘decentralize all the things’. Chris has a bachelors degree in international relations, a black belt in tang soo do, and a really loud mouth. And he thinks you should read Swarmwise and Freedom(tm).

Jennifer Williams — Vice Mayor

Jennifer Williams is a founding member of the Arcade City Swarm and has served as the Director of Support since February 2016. She contributes on a full-time basis to expanding operations globally with the other founding members. Together they give new members the necessary tools and resources needed to efficiently and effectively navigate the Arcade City ecosystem. Her primary motivation is to guide, educate and liberate individuals by making information accessible through email, social media, and the Arcade City Help Desk that she designed. After her studies in graphic design and holding several corporate managerial positions she decided to exit the proverbial ‘hamster wheel’ and pursue her entrepreneurial goals which led her to ridesharing. Jennifer has 2.5 years of rideshare experience, has mentored 400+ new drivers, and served as a marketing coordinator, brand ambassador and recruiter, which has given her extensive knowledge of the industry. Through her work with Arcade City she has gained interests and insights into cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, and she believes that implementing the latest technologies will help Arcade City supercede the ridesharing competitors by eliminating the middlemen and allowing drivers to earn fair wages and build stronger communities while saving riders from price gouging.

Lauren Slade — City Manager

Lauren Slade is an accomplished operations and support professional with over four years of direct experience providing tactical strategies ranging from small startups to large scale teams operating globally. As a forward thinking tech leader she believes in pairing laser-focused user observation with a great amount of drive to constantly improve ways of operating as the most definitive route to unstoppable success. Lauren is steadfast and committed to collaboratively solving meaningful problems with a team who values getting things done. She joined Arcade City full-time in June of 2016 to direct the V2 integration of decentralized management systems and develop operational growth processes. Lauren looks forward most to ensuring Arcade City becomes a self-sustaining business model, free of a central governing council from the top down. Her passion for process-minded management and developing teams inspires her to successfully scale and balance hyper growth within talent and project recruitment. As a natural planner she enjoys getting down to the detail on performance and tracking metrics.

Kristien De Wachter — City Planner

Kristien De Wachter has over 10 years of experience in project management and operations. In the beginning of 2015 she reinforced A-Labs, the City’s digital innovation lab. As lead of A-Labs, making the bridge between experiments and the “outside world”, tackling all problems that obstruct the way towards a good end-product, making sure all team members can work and think freely towards the common goals. Working on decentralization for more than a year. She joined forces with Arcade City on the 23th of September, as a liaison between the dev team in Antwerp and the swarm and swarm leaders, making sure all the cats run in the same direction, always with respect for everyone’s individuality and strengths. Believes Arcade City will bring freedom to every individual.

Stefaan Ponnet — Engineer

Stefaan has 15 years of experience in software development, design and architecture. He managed a software company for 6 years and worked for large companies as well as emerging start-ups. Interested in the possibilities of decentralized systems, he was an early Ethereum follower. Since september 2015 Stefaan has been full-time involved in developing Ethereum prototypes for government in the city of Antwerp. Stefaan has a passion for open source methodology and loves to solve technological problems.

Stefaan and the Antwerp team joined Arcade City in September 2016 by publicly pledging our support to the community. Stefaan will add his expertise by developing all necessary building blocks — like Smart Contracts , Dapps, APIs, and anything else needed to make this new economy a reality.

Michael Thuy—Construction Worker

Michael Thuy has been studying and working on decentralized technology for the past 2 years, mostly from within the City of Antwerp’s digital innovation lab ‘A-Labs’. In the past year he has been working on concepts like Blocktube and Locals World. From a strong ideological and technical background he manages to mash up cutting edge technology to come up with all-round concepts. Meeting Arcade City, he felt he had no other purpose in life than to contribute to Arcade City’s swarm. Michael is co-authoring the Arcade City whitepaper/concept and building on the Polymer/Ethereum prototype. With Arcade City, Michael wants to make sure his kids grow up in a different economic model than he did. He also would like Arcade City to be the de facto economic model on Mars.

Ben Adriaenssen — Brand Architect

Ben Adriaenssen after finishing his studies in ‘Visual Arts — Graphic Design’ found that working in advertising agencies or graphic studios was not fulfilling his strong urge to do something good for the world and the people in it. Applying his skill-set to communicate about random services or products wasn’t enough; he wanted to make a difference. Working for the City of Antwerp was a big step in this direction. While starting and working in the City of Antwerp’s digital innovation lab ‘A-Labs’, his lifelong passion for creating digital interactive things has been reignited. Focusing on blockchain-technology was another big step to combining the love for design with the passion for people. Ben is thrilled to be able to contribute his value to a project like Arcade City. Working in this innovative decentral way, with like-minded people in a swarm structure, is for Ben a dream come true. He hopes Arcade City can put the power, literally and figuratively, back into the hands of the common man.

See also