Tokenised Transport

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The Problem

Providing new transport services to people who already own cars is difficult, mainly because demand has already been met and people's transport budget has already been committed. 

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• Car owners need more than one gap to be filled to replace their car

• New, gap filling services need more than one user, to be financially viable

• People can't use a service until it is provided

• Services provided before they have enough users make a loss

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When a new service is provided, there is a transition period, during which the new service and the original number of cars are both provided at the same time. If this transition takes place in the real world, overall costs are increased, which presents a barrier to change. 

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The Solution

Tokenised Transport shifts this transition online:

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• Private car owners create information tokens that represent each different use of their car

• Sustainable transport providers create information tokens that represent the use of their different services

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These are exchanged on a decentralised blockchain, such as Minima, until car owners have the sustainable transport tokens required to replace their car and transport providers have the user tokens required for their services to be financially viable. 

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Driving change with smart contracts

Exchanging information tokens establishes who is going to use what. At the point when combined private cars are traded-in for combined alternatives, information tokens are converted into value tokens and smart contracts are used to ensure the total costs of new services are covered. Anyone holding value tokens is responsible for that proportion of any shortfall or surplus made by the new combination of transport.

 

There are fewer value tokens after the transition than before, as some have been removed with the cars that are no longer needed. Less transport provision is required to meet the same transport need, so each value token has a higher value after the transition. This creates an arbitrage opportunity that has the potential to drive rapid change.

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Tokenised Transport changes the whole transport marketplace and developing it needs to involve people and organisations from all aspects of transport use, provision and development. The role of this network is to combine all of these with the initial objective of delivering a proof of concept demonstration.​

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In the video below, Henri Pihkala of Streamr describes the step change made possible by decentralised Peer 2 Peer networks.