Web3 powered ride hailing app in India takes on Uber
As someone who is working on building a product that has real utility beyond just being a token, it’s hard to get the value of decentralized products heard over all the scammy $hitcoin nonsense. The token should be purely a means to an end and not the end itself (which unfortunately it has been for many projects out there). For that reason alone, products like this one one make me smile. https://spectrum-ieee-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/spectrum.ieee.org/amp/blockchain-ridehailing-app-drife-takes-on-uber-in-india-2657903781
IEEE Spectrum
Another solution that is trying to find a problem.
1 major problem is big corp and government getting a share of the transaction that should (if the tech exists, which is only recently true) be between only the rider and the driver, no one else, like cash. Also transparency about what code is being run (open source), how data is collected, data ownership, privacy, etc etc. Just because you don’t recognize the immense problems of the existing web2 infrastructure, doesn’t mean there aren’t many
I like crypto bro arguments. Problem: expensive service. Solution: self-driven vehicles, car design focused on this specific use case, optimization of the operational efficiency. Crypto bro solution: did you guys try to run it on blockchain? Problem: bad actors. Solution: build various identification solutions, use credit cards, ssn number. ML systems to flag suspicious behavior. Team of investigators to resolve conflicts or cases that are not handled by ML. Crypto bro solution: maybe… we can run it on blockchain? You do realize that majority of problems you describe yourself a solved by for example ride sharing coops and it already exists in certain markets? What share of the transaction are you talking about? Uber is barely profitable and pays almost no taxes because of that. Nobody is trying to solve the problem of having too much energy, computation capacity, or trying to slow down their application. If it was the case, crypto would be the best solution.
Just sprinkle some web3 and blockchain on it. Probably generated 100k eth wallets and called them riders
There is still no actual use case for "Web3" that isn't better solved by existing tech. Decentralizing something doesn't make it better.
How does decentralising help here? I am confused.
Aims to cuts out the middleman thereby passing more to the actual people doing the work (drivers) and those paying them (riders) without compromising UX and safety
There are existing free and open source version of ride hailing app. The app charge zero fee on the application level. So the middle men issue is already solve. Although due to network effect, not many buyer and seller are on these free network, so it's hard for them to gain traction. So a web3 version will likely face the same traction issue
Taxi business is more towards politics and lobbying and then comes the technology. It is operationally difficult to run a cab haling service especially with razor thin margins. There is a reason why there are very few raid hailing companies exist. Tech is not a problem that need to be solved for this.
Because what we really need are expensive, slow, buggy, needlessly complex versions of things that already work fine.