Built in Zug · Piloting in Zürich

大善

A neighborhood sharing economy. Built on deposits, not promises. Settled in Zürich.

Philosophy

Great goodness.

大 dai — great 善 zen — goodness

The name 大善 DaiZen joins two Japanese characters — 大 (dai), "great," and 善 (zen), "goodness." A principle, not a brand: trust built without intermediaries, by people who already share a neighborhood.

DaiZen is a peer-to-peer sharing economy for the things your neighbors already own — bikes first, then tools, apartments, cars. The platform holds nothing. Funds, agreements, and reputations live on a public blockchain. We're the gardeners, not the gatekeepers.

Build trust without middlemen. Resolve conflict locally, by people who understand the asset. Make the whole arrangement transparent enough that the rules can outlast us.

Read the longer thought →

For the good

What we believe.

A sharing economy can be many things. It can be a fleet on a sidewalk, an app on a phone, a rental disguised as a community. We are building a different one. These are the lines we will not cross.

The bike already exists. Someone already bought it. They live two streets away.
We don't own the bikes. We don't want to. The bike should belong to a neighbor.
A deposit you can see is more honest than a hold you can't.
When a chain comes off, the person who knows the bike should decide who fixes it — not a call centre.
Money that stays in the neighborhood is the only kind that builds one.
We will not always be here. The record should be.

Read the longer thought →

Where we start

Bikes in Kreis 4. Then everything else.

A sharing economy works when the bike, the lock, and the renter are all on the same street. So we are starting in one neighborhood of Zürich, with one asset class, with one hundred owners.

The bikes are not ours. They never will be. A hundred neighbors already own a hundred good bikes — bought once, parked most of the day, ridden for a few of its hours. That is the asset. We are not adding a fleet to the city; we are connecting the bikes the city already has.

Once bikes work — really work, with strangers, in winter, at night — we add tools. Then apartments. Then cars. Each one carries the same trust layer underneath, which means the second category is faster than the first, and the third is faster than the second.

Read the plan →

Beyond the bike

The plumbing is the same.

Bikes are where we start because bikes are where the trust layer can be tested in winter, at night, with strangers. Once it works there, the same mechanism — a deposit, an agreement, a public record, a guild that knows the thing — carries to anything a neighbourhood already shares informally. The list below is not a roadmap. It is what the same plumbing looks like in nine other rooms.

The ride to Oerlikon.

A neighbour drives to the same office park twice a week. Two seats sit empty. The deposit covers a no-show; the fare clears when the car parks at the other end.
The drill in the basement.

A Bosch hammer drill, two doors down, used twice in two years. Borrow it for an afternoon. The deposit equals the price of a new one — refunded when it comes back working.
The Tuesday slot.

Reserve the washing machine in the Hinterhaus for six in the evening. A small deposit holds the slot against a no-show. The machine logs the cycle; the deposit clears at spin end.
The Lastenrad and the sofa.

A cargo bike strong enough to move a two-seater across the canton, owned by the family on the ground floor. Three hours, one deposit, one careful afternoon.
A corner of the Keller.

The cellar two floors down has space the owner is not using. Store winter tyres in it until April. The deposit is small; the agreement is monthly; the key is on the chain.
The flat while away.

An Erasmus semester in Lisbon. The flat in Wiedikon sits empty for four months. The sublet posts a month's rent as deposit, a guild member walks through on arrival, the keys hand over without a custodian in between.
Skis in March.

A pair of touring skis that lived in a closet for fifty weeks of the year. A neighbour wants them for the long weekend in Andermatt. The deposit is sized to the boots, not the brand.
A Schrebergarten mower.

Thirty allotments share one lawnmower across the season. A small co-op of gardeners runs the booking. Damage and fair wear get sorted by the people who actually know the engine.
A cello for one month.

A student needs a full-size cello for a March recital. The instrument lives the rest of the year with a retired player in Enge. The deposit reflects what the instrument is worth; the rental ends when the recital does.

The contract holds. The street decides.

Read the longer thought →

Process

Four steps.

List

An owner posts an asset, a price, and a refundable deposit.
Reserve

A renter agrees to the terms; the deposit and fee are held until the rental ends.
Use

A blockchain-issued key opens the lock for the agreed window.
Settle

The asset comes back, the deposit is refunded, the fee goes to the owner.

See the on-chain receipt for each step →

After 四, both sides rate. The record on both sides →

After the return

A record on both sides.

When the bike comes back, neither of you walks away anonymous. Renter rates owner. Owner rates renter. Each rating is signed by the same wallet that signed the booking, and the record lives on a public chain. It cannot be sold, transferred, or laundered. Recent rentals weigh more than old ones, and the record you build is the only reason your next deposit is allowed to be smaller than your last.

Both sides.

Renter rates owner. Owner rates renter. The platform rates no one. Two signed ratings per rental, both written to the same record, neither contingent on the other being kind.
Bound to the wallet.

The record is fixed to the wallet that built it. It cannot be transferred to a new account, sold to a stranger, or scrubbed before the next rental. A clean record is earned. So is the other kind.
Recent weighs more.

A careless month two summers ago counts for less than a careful one in March. The protocol is patient about old mistakes and sensitive to current habits — which is what reputation has always meant, before software.
The deposit gets smaller.

An owner-side record that holds up across a dozen returns is the only reason your next deposit costs less than your first. There is no loyalty programme. The discount is the math of risk, run forward.

You can't fake a year of returning the bike.

Read the longer thought →

The deposit

A refundable promise.

Your deposit is held by a smart contract — not by daizen, not by a bank. We can't touch it, freeze it, or lose it.

Refundable.

Bring the bike back as agreed and your deposit is returned automatically. No tickets, no waiting.

Off our books.

Funds never sit on the company balance sheet. If daizen disappeared overnight, your deposit would still be there.

Sized for the asset.

A €30 bike doesn't ask for a €300 deposit. Owners set a fair amount; verified renters with a track record post less.

How deposits work in detail →

When two neighbors disagree

The guild decides.

A 700-year tradition, on a public chain.

The tradition

Zürich has resolved trade disputes through Zünfte — guilds of practitioners — for seven centuries. A guild was, and is, a small body of people who actually know the craft. They decide what counts as fair wear, what counts as damage, what counts as a misunderstanding.

The present

DaiZen carries that idea forward. Each asset class has its own guild: a bike guild for bikes, a tool guild for tools, an apartment guild for apartments. Members are vetted, bonded, and accountable. Evidence is on-chain so every decision is auditable. The platform never decides — the guild does.

Meet the bike guild →

Infrastructure

We already run on Polkadot.

A small piece of the Kusama network — Polkadot's canary chain — has been validated by a daizen node since 2024. Solar-powered. Continuously active. The same team will operate daizen's settlement infrastructure.

Network

クサマ

Kusama

Energy

100%

Solar powered

Status

Active

Validating blocks

Identity

大善

daizen.io

Real infrastructure, not a roadmap.

The node has been validating Kusama blocks continuously since 2024. Its power comes entirely from a rooftop solar array — the same discipline of running real things, sustainably, that we bring to the marketplace itself.

Stash DTmuJe…v1V6

Nominate the validator →

Journal