I made this comment in the thread of this story.
Probably a very unpopular thing to say: It would be interesting to see a middleman-free, decentralized version of Lyft/Uber where payments and ride-hailing are done with crypto and blockchain/smart contracts, driver ID’s using using DID’s, anonymized on-chain using homomorphic encryption. The hardest problem that I forsee with that tech is with dispute resolution. The idea stems from the opinion that the gig economy is great but the real problem (in matters not related to conflict resolution) is that the middleman takes a huge cut of the fare in exchange for doing almost nothing.
I was hoping that we could have a discussion about the pro’s and cons of a crypto implementation of ride-sharing apps like Lyft and Uber.
For me, I don’t think we’ll see any implementation of this idea anytime soon because there are a lot of near-impossible issues for a decentralized organization to deal with in regards to conflict resolution.
However from my perspective, almost all other aspects of this tech seem to benefit from the elimination of a greedy middleman that does nothing other than connect two independent parties (one looking to get hired to drive and the other looking to get a ride in exchange for money).
When you say ‘crypto’, do you mean cryptocurrency or an application of blockchain in a non-currency role?
I’m genuinely intrigued by the idea because I hate hate hate unnecessary middlepersons. I am sincerely interested how crypto/blockchain would help achieve this worthy goal.
If you can feasibly think of a way to effectively decentralize computation in order to create incentives for server owners to run a public network without involving crypto, I am all ears. If not, of course I am talking about cryptocurrency.
I have committed a lot of thought on this topic and, IMO, crypto is currently the only way to run a decentralized, open source platform where the nodes have an incentive to behave honestly.
Lemmy is a great case in point. On a long enough timeline, instance operators will need to secure funding or they will need to shut down. If they had some kind of openly-auditable incentive mechanism with rewards for longevity and reliability, it would be the best possible way to keep the system self-sustaining, uncorrupted by external financial influence, censorship-free, and reliable. *Even if Lemmy were considered a public good, funded by governments, even that would introduce a tendency toward censorship which might not exist if you compared it with a crypto-based system. *
ps. if you think I am crazy for thinking about this stuff in regards to lemmy/kbin right now, have a look at kbin’s source code.
pps. I am psyched to have these kinds of discussions. Thanks for the engagement and keep it going. It’s fascinating to me.
To play devil’s advocate, the biggest issues I can currently find with this idea:
Thanks for clarifying! The devil is certainly in the details. Worth hashing out.
Thanks for pointing out how cryptocurrency might be used to incentivize running a server to enable “p2p” ride sharing. I mean it’s not exactly p2p if there’s a server in the middle, but that’s how it would appear to riders and drivers ideally.
As a non sequitur, everyone always forgets about craigslist. They are still around and are quite active, not the same as in the early days but craigslist is still a viable concern.
There’s nothing fancy or exotic about their tech, the innovation and disruption came from the business model alone. Just throwing that out there as an appeal for simplicity and a discussion point. Maybe follow a craigslist model and charge a small fee for commercial load-sharing and the personal ride-shares can free-ride on the same infrastructure?
I have a bias toward simplifying big ideas as much as possible. The main challenge with a cryptocurrency based approach is you have to have mass adoption of two big new ideas at the same time: crypto and decentralized ride-sharing.
Again, great discussion point. I want this idea to take root so I am just being a devil’s advocate. I realize this is a cardano forum, so naturally the audience will like the application of cryptocurrency.
no problem! I will edit this comment more later but I have a big smile on my face because you come from the same spirit of intellectual honesty and idealistic curiosity that I do.
In the vast possibilities of technological evolution, should an innovation emerge that propels us closer to a truly egalitarian civilization, whether it be cryptocurrency or of some other nature, it is the outcome, not the medium, that truly resonates with me.
Ha! Looking forward to it. It would be interesting to cross post or repost this in different communities to get different audiences.
I could see Minneapolis saying ‘byeeee’ to Uber and making a public service. That isn’t much different from governments giving out taxi medallions, save that they hopefully wouldn’t limit the supply to create artificial scarcity.
Anyhow, good times!