Overview
Locale Network is building the infrastructure for community-owned digital economies. This overview explains the core components and how they work together.
The Problem
Centralized Control, Misaligned Incentives
Traditional financial and data infrastructure is controlled by large institutions whose priorities rarely align with local community needs. Banks make lending decisions based on standardized credit scores that systematically disadvantage underserved populations. Tech giants extract data from communities without compensation, using it to build products and services that primarily benefit shareholders thousands of miles away. Local governments and organizations that want to serve their communities are left without access to the very data generated by their own residents.
The Data Desert in Underserved Communities
This problem is especially acute in underserved areas. Researchers studying health outcomes, economists analyzing local markets, and policymakers designing interventions all face the same barrier: lack of granular, reliable data about the communities they're trying to help. Census data is outdated by the time it's published. Commercial data providers don't find these markets profitable enough to cover. The result is a vicious cycle—without data, it's harder to make the case for investment; without investment, conditions don't improve; without improvement, the data gap persists.
Meanwhile, residents in these communities generate valuable data every day through their devices, transactions, and daily activities. But this data flows to corporate servers where it's monetized for advertising, sold to third parties, or simply discarded—never returning any value to the people who created it.
Extractive Economics
When capital does flow into underserved communities, it rarely stays. Payday lenders extract wealth through predatory rates. National chains send profits to distant headquarters. Even well-intentioned programs often rely on external institutions that take management fees and eventually move on to the next initiative. Local entrepreneurs struggle to access capital because they don't fit the risk models designed for different economic contexts.
Opacity and Exclusion
Financial decisions that affect entire neighborhoods happen in opaque systems. Why was a loan denied? Why did insurance rates increase? Why was a business deemed too risky? The algorithms and committees making these decisions operate without accountability to the communities they impact. Residents have no voice in the infrastructure that shapes their economic lives.
The Locale Solution
Locale Network provides a complete stack for local economic infrastructure that addresses each of these problems:
Core Components
City Chain
Geographic Layer 3 rollups that give cities and communities their own blockchain. Each City Chain:
- Settles to Arbitrum for security and finality
- Has its own governance structure
- Can issue local currency and tokens
- Maintains sovereignty over local data
Locale Lending
Decentralized lending pools that connect local investors with local borrowers:
- Investors stake USDC to earn yield
- Borrowers get loans based on verified income (DSCR)
- All calculations happen in verifiable compute environments
- Geographic focus keeps capital in the community
Learn more about Locale Lending →
L{CORE} SDK
Integration framework for connecting IoT devices and real-world data to City Chains:
- Register and manage IoT devices
- Stream data with transformation rules
- Create on-chain attestations
- Bridge physical and digital worlds
Learn more about L{CORE} SDK →
Local Currency
Digital currencies backed by local economic activity:
- Pegged to stable assets or local baskets
- Earned through community participation
- Spent at local merchants
- Governed by community stakeholders
Technology Partners
Locale Network integrates with leading blockchain infrastructure:
| Partner | Role |
|---|---|
| Arbitrum | Layer 2 settlement and security |
| Cartesi | Linux-based off-chain compute |
| EigenCloud | TEE-based verifiable compute |
| zkFetch | zkTLS data attestation |