Evolving the Sharing Economy: Support-to-Earn

One of the key factors that differentiates Dtravel from other marketplaces is that Dtravel operates as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). A DAO is an internet-native organization that is collectively owned and governed by the members who use the platform — specifically, the hosts, guests and TRVL token holders.

With ownership in a DAO represented through blockchain-based tokens, it’s possible to have more engaged and loyal members who contribute long-term value to a DAO thanks to well-structured token economic incentives.

In Dtravel, community participation will be encouraged in a variety of ways through TRVL token incentives using the concept of “Support-to-Earn”. Support-to-Earn will allow community members to share their experiences and knowledge to contribute to customer support, dispute resolution, member onboarding and more in return for TRVL token rewards.

Unlike other home sharing platforms, members have the freedom to choose how to use these tokens, whether that be to book accommodation on Dtravel, trade them on an exchange, or participate in governance or other ecosystem activities. Dtravel anticipates that this concept will have a lasting impact on contributor-led marketplaces today and for years to come.

Support-to-Earn will position Dtravel at the forefront of operational and organizational innovation by allowing contributors to trade their time, expertise and loyalty for tokens, reputation scores and social value.

Sharing in a Centralized World

The shared economy platforms we currently use for booking a home, ride or meal keep users of these platforms deliberately separated from each other. By purposefully limiting the extent of these interactions, platform operators sit as watchdogs within these economies, preventing genuine relationships between the buyers and sellers from being formed.

In exchange for developing the marketplace that facilitates the exchange of goods and services, platform operators earn fees. Community members (regardless of whether they transact or not) sit outside the marketplace, with limited ability to benefit from their contributions.

The challenge with a siloed approach to marketplace building is that as the marketplace grows, platform operators are incentivized to charge fees to platform members to maintain financial sustainability as they scale their companies to meet growing demand. The reason for these fees chiefly stems from platform operators having to pay the salaries of their growing number of employees, whose roles are mainly to grow the marketplace and ensure transactional integrity.

The resulting inefficiency is that financial motivations become misaligned, making it increasingly difficult to reconcile differences between user groups.

A True Marketplace

By dismantling the silos common with digital marketplaces of the past, we can create a true marketplace without intermediaries that paves the way for more valuable participation. Dtravel believes that the future of marketplaces involves expanding opportunities for all users — whether on the demand side, supply side or within the community — to become contributors to the marketplace in exchange for real value and social capital. In the context of Dtravel, guests (or travelers) form the demand supply side while hosts (or property owners) form the supply side.

Instead of platform operators requiring huge teams of employees to manage day-to-day operations, this responsibility is entrusted to community members, which can include individuals on both the demand side and supply side as well as any other individuals passionate about contributing their time and skills.

Platform operators become platform creators, with their role being to create and grow the marketplace. These platform operators then assign responsibility and autonomy to community contributors to manage elements of the marketplace that interests them and matches their expertise and skill set.

Allowing members to contribute will significantly reduce the fees required to maintain the marketplace while encouraging the growth and sustainability of the marketplace.

Rewarding the Right People

With other sharing economy platforms, the synergistic effects from the effort that users put into sharing goods and services isn’t typically reflective of the value that user contributions add. This results in the people behind these platforms benefitting more than the users providing value to the economy through sharing their goods and services.

Dtravel set out to change this.

By using real-value tokens to incentivize contributors, Dtravel will be the world’s first true sharing economy — not only because the token is designed to be shared with members, but because members can share their contributions with the home sharing community as a whole.

The extent to which community members can contribute under the Support-to-Earn model will be based on each member’s time commitment, expertise and loyalty, as well as where Dtravel is in its journey of progressive decentralization. Initially, the majority of support-related tasks will be kept within the core contributors before passing greater responsibility to community contributors.

Ways to Contribute

The ways in which community members will be able to contribute are extremely diverse. New formats for Support-to-Earn will constantly be reviewed, either for expansion of existing opportunities (i.e., more advanced customer support management) or entirely new ways to involve community members. The following initial focus areas have been identified:

• Customer support
• Dispute resolution
• Onboarding
• Host success
• Software development

The outcome for Dtravel, its token holders and community members will be as follows:

Benefits to Community Members

• Participate in the growth of Dtravel, with the ability to directly earn and spend real-value tokens
• Deeper engagement with the community (at the individual and/or group level)

Benefits to Dtravel

• Improved user engagement and retention, creating a better experience for all members
• Return more value to community members with a lower core team headcount

Get Involved

Information on the Support-to-Earn program and how community members can register to participate will be published in the future.

Join the Community

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