My crypto-noob friend just sent me some ideas he has to increase the prevalence and safety of hitchhiking and asked me how crypto could help.
I've taken his idea and added appropriate use of crypto.
Can you guys help us flesh it out?
I'm thinking Open Bazaar (arbitration) + Uber (P2P taxi) + BitShares 2.0 (contract enforcement and referral income)
It's about hitchhiking. I’m afraid these are only the first few ideas and they are a little sporadic but I hope it makes sense. Tell me what you think, whether it’s viable.
Two main problems causing hitchhiking to die out: fear of hitchhikers, car owners not appreciating free-loaders. This plan will reduce the free-loading aspect, and indirectly reduce the fear.
So the hitchhiker (HH) pays a small monthly or yearly fee to the Company (decentralised network; pool of money) and in return gets an ID card and a plaque with logo to hold up to oncoming cars. This will mean that the HH will be identified as a person willing to pay for lifts and is less likely to be a threat.
The car owner (CO) signs up their car for free and in exchange for giving the HH a lift they will be paid for the journey from the money pooled by the HHs - there could be several ways of enforcing this but, for example, the CO could say they gave a lift to HH from a to b, and once the HH has confirmed this the CO gets paid the appropriate amount. This transaction is then confirmed in the same way that all crypto-currency transactions are confirmed.
A program can gather information on the average fuel prices for the specific day and calculate the required amount of money to give the CO based on weight of car, average weight of a person, distance of travel, age of car etc – not an extremely complex program, definitely achievable.
The CO displays a sticker on the inside of the windscreen so that the HH can see – this way the HH can mark down COs which don’t pick people up (can identify car by number plate) – works a bit like a penalty system, so for example if the CO gets 10 crosses then they have to pay a fine, or some such. This is a less-well formed idea, it’s difficult because sometimes COs won’t be able to pick up HHs for reasonable explanations, so there needs to be a little bit of a margin.
The demand exists - HH'ers gonna hitchhike.
The supply exists, for the right price. There must be compensation for the risk and time involved in giving lifts.
HH'ing is already MUCH cheaper than conventional travel.
I suppose that HH will be willing to pay UP TO ~50% of the would-be train fare, instead to the CO.
I also suppose that HH will want to incentivise and reward CO's to stay long term members, increasing the supply of CO and reducing the wait time for HH.
The problem to be solved is enforcement, and the CO must be compensated for the effort of collection and earn a (small) profit to incentivise joining the system.
A joining deposit could be paid by the CO and held in escrow (decentralised, no one could possible defraud it).
This deposit (hereafter 'Collateral') will be returned at the request of the user, with a small penalty if CO has given <1 lifts.
To encourage long term membership, the HH's contribute to a HH-pool which is used to pay for lifts and to pay an interest rate to long term CO members, given that they have not withdrawn their collateral.
I'm not sure how socialising the HH-pool will work, why would I pay any less than minimum? Unless there are charities or advertisers who would contribute in excess, in order to achieve some ancillary benefit. Goodwill amongst travellers for example.
Decentralised ID management is coming, third parties will soon be able to credit ID documents (privately) and then vouch that the user is who they say they are/has no criminal record etc - but without revealing the personal-info itself.
Companies will stake their reputation on ID documents they vouch for.
The use of QR codes linked to the HH and the CO could be scanned to sign a 'transaction' that specifies the terms of the lift.
'CO123 gave you, HH456 a lift of 200 miles, at current prices costing £40+ £10 compensation. Do you agree? Y or N'
A signature from both parties (unforgable) pays the specified amount, or a dispute leads to arbitration of some kind.
Every 'transaction' holds an arbitration-fee, if a dispute arises the fee is auto-paid to an arbitrator to solve the dispute.
The arbitrator profits from honest dispute resolution and will lose business if caught acting with bias.
This journey-transaction could even be negotiated at point of pickup, with fees paid in stages. Eg they agree to a journey of 200miles, but after every 50 it will ask both users to tap 'yes' to continue the journey, and partial payment is completed.
These terms would allow CO to mitigate HH who would bail before payment.
Any ideas?
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