Traipse energizes businesses in the historic district with playful walking tours and local currency

Eight years ago, Darren Smith was looking for a way to protect historic business districts while supporting local businesses. Smith, an urban planner and self-proclaimed "puzzle nerd", found his answer in playful tours of neighborhoods, complete with puzzles for players to solve. So he created a company, Traipse, to develop and market the concept, which he runs full-time from 2018. Today, he is developing a blockchain-based currency that local communities can use with his app.

"It's about helping people understand the importance of these places and the independent local businesses that sustain them," Smith says.

Walking tours

The free application gives access to fun walking tours that take the form of treasure hunts. Specifically, it takes visitors on a tour of historic city centers with stops at landmarks such as buildings, statues, or local businesses. Every place has a puzzle to solve. Example: The Statler Brothers Tribute monument, a sculpture garden in Staunton, Virginia, which commemorates country/gospel musicians with four stools on a platform, a nod to the stools they sat on during their performance. When visitors arrive at the site, the app asks them to solve the following riddle: "If the band sang their four-part harmonies here, how many legs would you see?" (The answer is 24).

There is also a bonus puzzle with several clues that players solve as they go through the course. In some cases, local businesses award tote bags and the like to pick up at the end of the scavenger hunt.

Tribute to the Statler brothers

Traipse PBC

So far, Traipse has created tours in about 20 regions, mostly in the mid-Atlantic, with the majority in Virginia. It's also in other places like Taneytown, Md., a town near Gettysburg brimming with Civil War history, and Huntersville, DC. The company has also created scavenger hunts for college campuses, such as one at Wellesley College targeting a homecoming event, hotels and other locations.

Local currency

In 2019, Smith's Homeport Downtown Development Association in Staunton, Virginia approached him to revamp the city's gift card program for local businesses and replace it by a local digital currency program. Before long, he started organizing a crowdfunding campaign. But then came the pandemic, which forced him to put the project on hold. Additionally, its progress has been further hampered by the complex legal issues of adopting the dollar-pegged Celo blockchain network. The result: It wasn't until the middle of last year that he was able to start seriously developing the product.

Local Currency Token

Traipse PBC

The currency, called My Local Token, consists of a coin bearing a QR code, which is integrated into the Trapise app. (There is also an app version of Gift Cards). Thus, players who participate in a Traipse circuit earn “MLT” points which can be used in local stores. Pieces can be purchased from the Traipse website or from businesses in the community, usually off-the-beaten-track establishments that don't usually attract many tourists.

Ultimately, Smith plans to add the ability for attendees to create their own tours and stops in the Traipse app, and earn My Local tokens as a result. Users will also be able to earn rewards for steps such as correcting information already in the app. As the community of users grows, Traipse will implement a decentralized administration system through which participants can vote on how the MLT reward pool will be allocated for various actions. "The goal is to create an in-game user-generated content system that rewards people in local currency, so it becomes a complete, self-contained ecosystem," Smith says,

Traipse started testing the coins in May with a group of merchants and around 50 players. Smith is now enlisting more stores, preparing for a big promotional push in October, ahead of the holiday...