How a Bitcoin deposit anywhere in the world turns into a cleaner street in the Philippines — and why we think it works.
A person or organisation deposits Bitcoin into a CleanProof storm cloud — a funding pool. 90% is immediately earmarked for cleaner rewards. 10% covers platform operations. The split is enforced by code and auditable in the public GitHub repo.
Assumption: Funders are motivated by verifiable impact, not just goodwill.
Someone finds a dirty public area, records a before video, cleans it, records an after video — all live on their phone with GPS locked. The cleanup must take at least 10 minutes. Camera roll uploads are blocked. The videos are cryptographically hashed to prevent reuse.
Assumption: People will do real work for a small, immediate, verifiable reward.
Two independent reviewers watch the videos and rate the cleanup 1–5 stars. Eight automated fraud checks run in parallel. Disagreement triggers a tiebreaker. No single reviewer can approve unilaterally. Reviewers can also flag submissions as fraudulent — forcing a third reviewer regardless of star ratings.
Assumption: Distributed peer review is more resistant to corruption than centralised moderation.
After a 24-hour fraud hold, the cleaner receives sats via Lightning — directly to their own wallet. No bank account. No middleman. No payment rails that exclude the unbanked. With a self-custodial wallet like Phoenix, the cleaner controls their money from the moment it arrives. With a custodial wallet like Wallet of Satoshi, the provider holds the keys — fine for small amounts, worth upgrading for larger balances.
Assumption: Lightning payments are accessible to anyone with a smartphone, regardless of banking status.
For many cleaners, this is their first Bitcoin. They check the price. They learn what a satoshi is. They find a place nearby that accepts Lightning. Some hold. Some send to family. A few become Bitcoiners who go on to explain it to others.
Assumption: Receiving Bitcoin for real work is a more effective onboarding path than any educational campaign.
Reputation tiers, streaks, maintenance bonuses, and milestone rewards are all designed to make returning more valuable than starting over. The cleaner has a financial reason to maintain the area they cleaned. The community has a transparent record of who did what.
Assumption: Sustained behaviour change requires sustained incentive, not one-off payments.
Every cleanup generates a SHA-256 integrity hash. Every payout generates a Lightning payment hash. The funder's receipt page shows the arithmetic: deposit minus 10% equals rewards paid plus remaining balance. They can sign the receipt with their own private key — the signed hash is independently verifiable by anyone with the JSON export and their public key.
Assumption: Funders who can verify impact without trusting anyone are more likely to fund again.
The rewards are modest — a typical 3-star cleanup earns around 2,300 sats, roughly PHP 99 at current rates. The theory is that small, certain rewards paid within 24 hours outperform large, delayed, uncertain ones. A cleaner who receives sats the day after a cleanup builds a habit. A cleaner who waits weeks for a bank transfer does not.
Any centralised reviewer can be bribed or intimidated. Two independent reviewers who never see each other's rating before submitting are much harder to coordinate than a single gatekeeper. Fraud requires simultaneously compromising multiple independent actors. Reviewers can also flag submissions as suspicious — escalating to a third reviewer automatically.
Traditional payment rails (bank transfers, GCash, PayPal) require infrastructure, identity verification, and intermediaries that exclude the very people most likely to do cleanup work. Lightning payments require only a smartphone. They settle in seconds. They cross borders without friction. The on-chain deposit txid is permanent and verifiable on mempool.space. The funder's receipt — including the signed hash chain — is stored by CleanProof. OP_RETURN anchoring to make the full receipt chain Bitcoin-permanent is on the roadmap.
Every submission, review, and payout is visible. Fraud scores are public. The arithmetic on funder receipts is checkable. This transparency doesn't just catch bad actors — it prevents them. A cleaner who knows their video is hashed and reviewed by strangers is less likely to stage a cleanup.
We don't claim to solve pollution. CleanProof incentivises cleanup after the fact. It doesn't address the upstream causes of littering — consumer behaviour, waste infrastructure, enforcement. It is a complement to those efforts, not a replacement.
We don't claim the Bitcoin onboarding effect is proven at scale. The theory that earning Bitcoin is a better onboarding mechanism than education is plausible and supported by anecdote. It is not yet supported by rigorous data at CleanProof's scale.
We don't claim our fraud prevention is perfect. Eight automated checks plus peer review is robust. It is not impenetrable. A sufficiently motivated and coordinated actor could game the system. We monitor for this and update the checks as patterns emerge.
We are a pilot. Everything here is based on the Philippines pilot. The model may not generalise to every city or country. That is what the pilot is for.
Decent Work and Economic Growth
CleanProof creates a new income stream for informal workers — no employment contract, no banking requirement. Rewards are small but immediate and verifiable.
Sustainable Cities and Communities
Verified cleanup of public spaces directly improves urban livability. The publicly auditable record creates community accountability for shared spaces.
Climate Action
Plastic and waste removal from public areas reduces the volume of pollution entering waterways and ecosystems. A secondary effect, but a real one.
Questions about the model, the assumptions, or the pilot data? We'd rather have the conversation than not.