The capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires, is looking for new ways to innovate in the technology sector and seek innovations for the city. With this, the city will be one of the first cities in the world where the government will manage Ethereum validator nodes. According to the information, the city will inaugurate Ethereum validation nodes from 2023, as reported by Diego Fernandez, secretary of innovation and digital transformation of the city, made the revelation during the ETHLatam conference in Argentina. Speaking to CoinDesk, Fernández stated that the plans have “exploratory and regulatory” purposes and will help the city, which has more than 3 million inhabitants, develop and adapt adequate regulation for cryptocurrencies. He did not say how many nodes the city will install, but said they will be housed in high-end data centers already owned by the Buenos Aires government, indicating there will not be a huge investment in hardware for this effort. but an adaptation of teams that are already under the control of the city. Fernández also clarified that this will not be the first time that Buenos Aires has decided to experiment with cryptocurrencies. In March, Fernández told the news portal that the city began work on a blockchain-based digital identity platform, called TangoIDwith the aim of giving city residents control over their personal data.
According to Fernández, this system will be operational as of 2023, coinciding with the experiments with the Ethereum validation nodes. In addition, the Buenos Aires administration also announced this year that the city will allow the payment of taxes using cryptocurrencies through alliances with platforms to carry out the conversion. Apparently, Ethereum is in the final steps towards completing the Merge, which will change the blockchain from a consensus algorithm like Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. With this, the Argentine city seems to be preparing to be among those who will be part of the initial structure of this great change. It is also important that the Argentine government study the regulation and use of the crypto market in order, perhaps, to find a more assertive solution to its inflation problems that have been considerably harming the country in recent years. In general, it is interesting to see that a country in crisis is not seeing cryptocurrencies as a threat, but as something to study.
