Internet of things and blockchain within shared economy applications

Recently, Statista have released a terrific study saying,

“By 2020, mobile apps are forecast to generate around 189 billion U.S. dollars in revenues via app stores and in-app advertising by 2020”.

The previous piece of statistics indicates how the globe is heading for digitalizing your daily processes in various life trends.

Within a fairly old scenario, you had to pick up your taxi on your own earlier enough before your intended meeting to make sure you will make it to the meeting on time.

But surely this is not the way things would go nowadays.

With the creation of cap-service providers such as the giant Uber and Lyft, you can order your desired cap whenever you like to drive you to the destination you seek.

Likewise, everything around is meant to go the same way in the near future.

A daily ongoing scope of processes that currently tries to feature the digital world is shared money applications.

These apps are now attempting to integrate inside a recent two stunning technologies to follow up the increasing global trend.

The two well-known pieces of technology are the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain.

Hereby, let’s first have a decent understanding of the sharing economy and blockchain concepts

Then, let’s proceed by explaining the involvement of IoT and blockchain technologies within shared money applications.

So first let me give you a brief insight into what shared economy is and its most common applications.

To your surprise, you can be involved in daily sharing economy processes

You can display the definition as simple as this if you have a bike that you do not actually use it many times.

You thought it will be great to make some money out of it. Therefore, you offered people to rent it for some time in return for some cash.

Let us get it reversed. You are getting ready for a two-day school hiking trip, but unluckily you shoes have worn out.

You remembered a neighbor of yours has once said that you can borrow his hiking-special sneakers for 2 dollars per day.

Immediately, you hurried up and made the deal with him so smoothly and promptly. Then, your neighbor and you have just materialized the sharing economy concept.

What is sharing economy?

April Rinne, the founder, and advisor of April Worldwide defined the concept of sharing economy in a 2017 Forbes article.

“Sharing economy: focus on the sharing of underutilized assets, monetized or not, in ways that improve efficiency, sustainability and community” April stated.

The same year as April did, Koen Frenken professor in innovation studies at Utrecht University, and Juliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College, also defined sharing economy.

Both lecturers focused on describing the customer behavior in sharing economy transactions.

“Consumers granting each other temporary access to under-utilized physical assets (idle capacity), possibly for money.” As a 2017 paper revealed by Koen and Juliet.

To put it much mildly, you can conceptualize the term as follow. People with not fully utilized assets exchange them to make profits and spread values such as community and sustainability.

“Not fully utilized assets” also known as underutilized assets, can vary from large commodities like cars and houses up to products toys and tools.

Some of today’s most notable sharing economy applications

In fact, some applications were founded even before the creation of sharing economy concept.

However, they featured to a large extent the core of sharing economy.

1. Airbnb:

The platform most classified to provide the best ecosystem for sharing economy embracement.

The idea was first launched in 2008. The platform offers a variety of rental residences to travelers from all over the world. Those residences are not owned by the founding company.

People like you and I upload their houses or even rooms, and offer them on the website for a certain charge. The travelers then surf the website to find the best option for them.

2. TaskRabbit:

The 10-year old mobile marketplace is dedicated to offering help to people with tasks extending from delivery to office help.

People hired within the network are so-called rabbits. They first get interviewed to evaluate their skills whether they will fit the various tasks or not.

3. Zaarly:

The recent company is recognized to give chances for business growth for small ventures, home ventures in particular.

Zaarly website is loaded with home service providers that website visitors can choose from to carry out home maintenance and other services.

What is blockchain?

The term was first introduced by the inception of the cryptocurrency bitcoins in 2009. Later on, blockchain becomes much familiar and involved within several applications.

According to a paper written on sciencedirect,

“Blockchain technology is a distributed public ledger of transactions that the author of a report for the UK government describe as essentially an asset database that can be shared across a network of multiple sites, geographies and institutions”.

In a simple sense, blockchain technology is meant to provide trustful records of any kind of transactions.

Advantages of blockchain technology:

Nowadays, the recent tech is increasingly adopted and embraced by the globe.

Interestingly, the blockchain method is anticipated to be used within taxes paying process by many governments.

The reputation gained by blockchain results from a number of strengths the technology has developed:

1. The technology made it possible to get rid of the third end of any transaction; the central authority meant for trust.
2. As the paper explained, blockchain has featured the ability of “implementing autonomous scripts” such as smart contracts. That is by using data-driven code that represents “verifiable application logic and helps automate a system’s rule set”.

Integration of IoT and blockchain within sharing economy applications

As sharing economy applications are thought to comply with the pace of the age and its technology.

Founders of such applications try to foster their quality by embracing promising technologies such as IoT and blockchain.

Basically, those two unique methods have been introduced in more than one applications.

AutoPay

On one hand, the Auto Pay service is based on providing you with smart contracts on your blockchain interface.

On the other hand, you link your car with these contracts on your blockchain. Once you are about to run out of fuel, data is transferred here via IoT technology between your car and to you AutoPay system.

Then, the car gets loaded with the fuel, fuel cost gets from your credit and eventually, the transaction gets recorded on your blockchain.

To wrap up

Sharing economy platforms were first established to spread values such as sustainability and community.

Uber, Lyft and TaskRabbit featured some of today’s most successful shared economy companies.

These applications are constantly being updated with technologies such as IoT and blockchain to boost quality and performance and simultaneously optimize the user experience.

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