Lock as an abstraction of physical and digital world
Lock was invented as a proof of the property ownership in the human history back in B.C 2000. Now the sharing economy has been evolved after 4000 years. The fundamental meaning of sharing economy is “temporary change of the ownership”.
Smart lock, in our definition, is a ‘lock’ which knows when to open for the ‘right person’ at the ‘right time’. This unlocking can be done via digital authentication, if a person has the legitimate private key, which in the case of blockchain, will allow the person to access the property by allowing the lock to be opened. BCL Smart Lock records all the transactions of ownership changes against blockchain and verifies the ‘rightness’ of the ownership. This is what we refer to as the ‘tokenized sharing economy’.
Let’s take one example of an ownership change: the property owner is “A” and lessee is “B” then It can be described as shown below:
…A → B1 → A → B2 → A → B3…
All these ownership changes will be recorded against the blockchain in an immutable way. The ownership will be tokenized and be transferred from A to Bx and back to A. This is the abstraction of a lock which links the physical world and digital world.
When comparing the current ‘rental economy’ and the future ‘tokenized-sharing economy’, people often misunderstand the differences between the two. People see car-sharing services as a part of ‘sharing economy’. In fact, these are a part of the traditional rental business. Enterprises purchase large amounts of assets, for example, fleet vehicles, with the sole aim of renting out these properties. While in the tokenized-sharing economy, individuals or property owners ‘share’ their ownership with customers for a certain, fixed, period. Because of the sense of ownership customers also share, he or she uses the property carefully as if it is his / her own. And this trust will be written against blockchain and be accumulated over time. Therefore, tokenized-sharing economy will become sustainable and overtake ‘rental economy’ in the near future.
There is another factor that needs to be considered. It is regulatory requirement: regulatory requirements. Depending on the type of business you wish to operate within the tokenized-sharing economy, one must fully understand and follow all regulations. If the government demands that the business owner or operator verifies the identity of the customer, blockchain will be the best solution possible. While recording the changes in ownership, any business process of “Know Your Customer” will be conducted and customers’ personal identifiable information will be hashed and written against blockchain so that any third party which has the right to access may reuse it on a demand basis. One enterprise will manage all aspects of this exchange: the customers’ authenticity and the “Know Your Customer” process. Therefore, BCL Chain will enable current and future enterprises to launch a subchain to conduct their businesses while BCL Chain itself provide broader trust throughout the tokenized-sharing economy.
By linking both the physical and digital worlds, BCL Foundation will bring the tokenized-sharing economy, which will revitalize and create new value exchanges of dormant assets around the world with the power of blockchain and smart locks to “Unlock the World”.
