In Muri bei Bern, residents restoring wetlands, maintaining hedges and removing invasive species are now being rewarded with digital biodiversity vouchers built on the Hedera network, in what officials describe as Switzerland’s first live municipal blockchain initiative. The project reflects a broader shift in how distributed ledger technology is moving beyond speculative finance into public services, sustainability tracking and local economic incentives
Can blockchain technology help local governments reward citizens for protecting nature? In the quiet Swiss municipality of Muri bei Bern, officials are betting that it can.
The municipality, together with The Hashgraph Group, Swisscoast and Apps with Love, on Tuesday launched what they described as Switzerland’s first live municipal blockchain initiative, a digital biodiversity voucher built on the Hedera network.
The program, known as BIDI, short for Biodiversitäts-Gutscheine, is designed to reward residents who participate in biodiversity and conservation projects ranging from meadow restoration and hedge laying to wetland rehabilitation and the removal of invasive species.
The initiative follows Switzerland’s 2024 Biodiversitäts-Initiative referendum, which required municipalities to deliver biodiversity outcomes but did not establish a system for verifying or settling those activities digitally.
Under the new system, residents who participate in conservation work receive on-chain digital vouchers pegged to the Swiss franc. Each voucher can be redeemed for one Swiss franc at participating local businesses and service providers.
Municipal officials and project partners said the move digitizes a community program that had already operated for eight years using paper vouchers, while adding traceability and verification through distributed ledger technology.
“Previously, the Municipality of Muri bei Bern supported by BIDI, issued paper vouchers for eight years,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “The new on-chain digital vouchers are an environmentally friendly, innovative, and energy-efficient way to close the loop between ecological action and the local economy.”
The groups said the broader goal is to create a reusable template that other Swiss municipalities could adopt more quickly as environmental reporting obligations expand.
“Digitizing a trusted redemption voucher not only preserves an established social trust mechanism but also adds verifiable measurement,” the statement said. “While Muri bei Bern is the first deployment, the voucher template, workflows, and technical onboarding are designed so that additional municipalities can launch in a matter of weeks, not eighteen months.”
The BIDI system was built using Swisscoast’s digital Swiss franc stablecoin, HCHF, developed on the Hedera network, with The Hashgraph Group serving as ecosystem partner.
“We are proud to offer BIDI, an existing, trusted Swiss instrument, in collaboration with The Hashgraph Association,” Toni Caradonna, President of Swisscoast AG, told Impact Newswire. “For us, technologies such as DLT are the cornerstone not only of innovation, but also of conservation. We hope to expand the BIDI voucher to more municipalities, cities, and countries across Europe.”
Stefan Deiss, CEO and Co-Founder of The Hashgraph Group (pictured above), said the project reflected a broader shift in how blockchain technology is being applied beyond finance.
“We are proud to support Swisscoast as we see tokenization of assets moving from the financial sector into public services,” he said. “Public-sector instruments such as vouchers, claims, and reporting tokens will become verifiable, and BIDI demonstrates DLT credibility through provenance, not novelty.”
The organizations also emphasized Hedera’s environmental credentials, noting that the network reports a carbon-negative footprint through the purchase of offsets exceeding its energy usage and publishes sustainability reports supported by third party verification.
The project received backing from The Hashgraph Association through its Enterprise Accelerator Program, which supports enterprise and government applications built on Hedera.
Stephan Klaus, CEO, Apps with Love, told this reporter the initiative showed how digital infrastructure could support both local economies and environmental action.
“As a firm dedicated to digital transformation, we are excited to see how DLT can take a trusted, established community instrument like the biodiversity voucher and make it more efficient, verifiable, and environmentally sound,” he said. “This project shows how digital products can directly empower citizens and connect ecological action with local economic benefit.”
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Faustine Ngila is the AI Editor at Impact Newswire, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is an award-winning journalist specializing in artificial intelligence, blockchain, and emerging technologies.
He previously worked as a global technology reporter at Quartz in New York and Digital Frontier in London, where he covered innovation, startups, and the global digital economy.
With years of experience reporting on cutting-edge technologies, Faustine focuses on AI developments, industry trends, and the impact of technology on society.
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