According to the Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), the company behind the Solana-based protocol TRIP that enables mobility-based applications, the ride-sharing industry is poised for another paradigm shift, with Web3 protocols permitting new companies and drivers to bid for rides using a matching algorithm.
According to DEC, companies and passengers can collaborate and compete in a common economy on the TRIP platform. The protocol also gives the most active participants a role in its governance, which benefits both drivers and customers.
The first service intended to operate on TRIP is Teleport, a decentralized ride-sharing program run by parent company DEC that is set to start in December. DEC announced a $9 million seed round funded by Foundation Capital and Road Capital on October 27.
The Foundation Capital and Road Capital co-led the seed round, with participation from Thursday Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, 305 Ventures, and Common Metal. Uber’s third-ever employee, engineer Ryan McKillen, as well as social media influencer Jake Paul, Flexport founder Ryan Petersen, and Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero, are among the individual strategic investors.
according to Paul Bohm, CEO of DEC and founder of Teleport, Uber “basically operates a monopoly—incredibly it’s concentrated.” According to Bloomberg data, Uber controls an estimated 72% of the US ride-sharing market as of June.
TRIP is Aimed to be a Decentralised Protocol
According to Paul Bohm, CEO of DEC and founder of Teleport, ridesharing giant Uber “basically operates a monopoly—incredibly it’s centralized.” According to Bloomberg data, Uber offers the infrastructure that links drivers and riders and takes a big share of the fee, garnering an estimated 72% of the US ride-sharing market in June.
TRIP is intended to be a decentralized protocol into which multiple app developers may plug to create a marketplace that links drivers and passengers, all without the need for centralized power at the center.
Bohm believes that this will encourage both cooperation and competition, encouraging players to deviate from the paradigm of behemoths such as Uber and Lyft while also driving companies to innovate to produce the greatest app based on a shared economy.
DEC will utilize the seed financing to accelerate its implementation in the coming months, with Teleport and TRIP demonstrating at Solana’s Breakpoint conference in Lisbon in November and Art Basel Miami in December.
According to Bohm, Uber is “atrocious” at delivering service around large-scale events, thus the plan for Teleport’s initial test is to give “table stakes or higher quality.”
He believes that full implementation of the service will take six to nine months, with further decentralization envisaged as DEC seeks to validate the idea. According to Bohm, certain companies and automobile fleet owners have shown interest in using TRIP to develop their apps, similar to what DEC has done with Teleport.
The additional funds, according to Bohm, will be used to “launch TRIP permanently in specific cities.” It will also assist the corporation in meeting its decentralization goal.
Riders in the TRIP ecosystem can pay with USD Coin on Solana and fiat currency through Apple Pay thanks to a blockchain-based mechanism, while drivers can accept the stablecoin as payment directly to their bank accounts or have it transferred into their wallet.
“By turning ride-sharing into a protocol and Teleport is constructing what Uber could not do in 2010, and what Uber should be building now,” said Ryan McKillen, a former Uber employee and one of the seed round investors. Thursday Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, 305 Ventures, and Common Metal were among the other investors.
Conclusion
TRIP is not the first attempt to construct a decentralized ridesharing service, but Bohm believes that recent developments in decentralized finance (DeFiDeFi) have yielded token models that can make this go-round work for all players.
According to Precedence Research, the ride-sharing sector would be worth $344.4 billion by 2030. According to Statista, Uber is the most popular ride-sharing app in the world, with 93 million people using it every month.
