Why doesn't the "blockchain + shared travel" use the blockchain?

It has always been said that decentralized shared travel is an almost perfect blockchain and Web 3.0 case.

Although many project teams have made a commitment as early as 2015, so far, even a beta version has not been implemented. Where is the problem? Is there a fundamental error in the idea itself? Is the actual technical problem more difficult to overcome than it seems?

The following video is a brief introduction to the blockchain-based shared travel service:

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The concept is there, but it is not difficult to land it? In fact, it is difficult to land!

Why do shared travel and Web 3.0 look great?

For a long time, some people think that shared travel seems to be one of the most mature industries in the blockchain and Web 3.0 combination, mainly for the following four reasons:

First, shared travel operations, such as Uber and Lyft, are heavily resisted by the government and existing taxi driver interest groups. In a country like France, it has actually been banned. A unique advantage of the decentralized system is that a peer-to-peer shared travel application with interaction and payment functions, with data storage and communication processing outside the centralized server, there is almost no possibility of being shut down.

Second, from an economic point of view, decentralized shared travel saves up to 35% of the fees that middlemen like Uber ask. In this way, the user's taxi fare can be reduced, and the driver's actual income can be increased.

In addition, it replaces Uber's current algorithm for arbitrarily setting fares, allowing for a more user-friendly way to set fares, thereby restoring a more realistic rental market. At the same time, it also makes it more difficult for drivers to manipulate the user's taxi fare through the "collective fooling" algorithm.

Finally, existing shared travel users have become accustomed to using an almost peer-to-peer application and trust that these strangers can send them to their destination. To achieve true decentralized shared travel, the possibilities are far greater than other blockchains and Web 3.0 potential cases. For example, in the case of a predictive market platform, even in a centralized forecasting market, few people have such experience, let alone prophecy.

Basic technology is available,

Is there a test version of DApp for Qilian?

The basic technology needed to make decentralized shared travel a reality seems to be there, and the interaction involving value transfer can be handled through a smart contract blockchain platform like Ethereum. While existing platforms do not have enough scalability to support millions of shared travel on the chain, most second-tier solutions are already available in test versions of DApps in other industries, in their view, completely Decentralization is not that important.

A distributed chat protocol like Whisper can be used to handle communication between the driver and the passenger. Finally, you can use a distributed storage protocol such as IPFS or Swarm to save data about the trip and the driver's reputation.

Despite this, there is no real decentralized shared travel DApp so far, even a test version. Of course, long-term scams like Arcade City are ignored.

Fortunately, as far as I know, at least three projects are still actively pursuing this goal, namely Swarm City, Chasyr and DRIFE. Next, we will introduce these three projects in detail.

Ongoing projects and the challenges they face

Swarm City, probably the longest-running peer-to-peer shared travel project in the world, was formerly Arcade City (boss Christopher David was a liar), and the development team parted ways with David to create Swarm City, a project that has gone through several times. Iteration. Until recently, the project team was committed to providing a more versatile platform for peer-to-peer trading, Boardwalk, on which special cases like shared travel could be inserted as “storefronts”.

Boardwalk released its first version in 2017, but it was not impressive, and its team has almost undergone a thorough reorganization. In the process, they face considerable financial difficulties due to the plunge in cryptocurrency prices. Today, the team seems to have realized that their back-end technology is not working for shared travel, and that IPFS storage components need to be replaced by Ethereum's Swarm.

Another project to decentralize the shared travel dream is Chasyr, founded by former Swarm City community leader Tommy Marquez. Currently, development seems to be still in the prototype stage, and the project team is not planning to go to ICO.

Chasyr Prototype Demo

Finally, it is worth mentioning that DRIFE, unlike Swarm City and Chasyr, is not based on Ethereum, but a project running on EOS. Like Chasyr, the DRIFE project is still in the prototype stage, and if it is based on its roadmap, it should now be in beta.

The biggest problem facing these three projects seems to be funding issues. To date, the investment in these three projects has been far from the investment in other speculative DApp projects.

Why are investors so picky about decentralized sharing?

A significant feature of these ongoing decentralized shared travel projects is that they have hardly raised any funds over the years. DRIFE It seems that the ongoing IEO may be a lifeline, but because of the government's strict supervision, the idea of ​​making a pen investment through IEO seems unlikely.

Another problem is that potential investors may have realized that decentralized shared travel ultimately requires a centralized level that makes them unacceptable.

In theory, there are two potential bottlenecks that could undermine the prospect of decentralized shared travel. One of them is that the amount of payment involved in a common shared trip is relatively small, and potential customers may not have enough motivation to learn new technologies to deliberately reduce such occasional micropayments. A common question is how ordinary customers can get the tokens they need to pay for their rides. Buying mainstream currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum is still very cumbersome.

However, in general, investors believe that the idea of ​​decentralized shared travel has some unique risks seems to be doubtful. Conversely, the initial choice of the current Swarm City team working with Christopher David may make it difficult for them to quickly deliver viable technology.

This may form a consensus in the blockchain community that decentralized shared travel is not a worthwhile investment.

Information reference:

Http://proof-of-news.com/en/2019/05/23/why-has-decentralized-ridesharing-not-arrived-yet/

Https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/bs6c5d/why_has_decentralized_ridesharing_not_arrived_yet/

Https://press.swarm.city/swarm-city-swarm-united-by-fair-data-society-to-build-decentralized-rideshare-fa1c1c656a37

Source: Interchain Pulse

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