Why Fetch.ai cares about disrupting mobility
Since the inception of Uber, Lyft and tons of other Mobility-as-a-Service based models, the mobility industry has experienced a technological shift in how it caters to its customers. But remember this: despite the shift, there is still the elephant in the room which needs to be addressed — the centralized aspect of these services.
Centralized systems — by the inherent nature of their design — are open to shocks and failure. The need to trust an individual, a company, or an authority, introduces risks that are otherwise non-existent in a decentralized system. They also have a single point of failure, and are individually and uniquely implemented in a way that prevents easy combination with other such systems to create new businesses. This lack of safe, rapid adaptability leads to inefficient use of resources and an inability to operate hyper-local services.
We at Fetch.ai have a different approach: on a network that’s owned by its users and operators, we neither act as a gatekeeper nor do we choose the best course of action for you. Autonomous economic agents act on your behalf, and on their own behalf, to solve your problems without human intervention. With your personal information safely in possession of your agent, on your device, it offers complete privacy. There’s no server, either to hack, or to break down depriving you of service. It’s like a set of clothes that adjusts each and every moment to be perfectly tailored to you, and you alone.
The global market for moving things around the economy is huge and complex. There are a vast number of moving parts, and none of them are able to move themselves when they need to. No top-down system would ever be able to handle the level of complexity of billions of individual units each with their own destination.
Fetch’s autonomous economic agents solve this, by addressing the problem from the bottom up. And because it’s truly decentralised, large-scale problems over multiple business areas are able to be solved as though they were one. Your business trip that involves travel halfway across the world, with transport, hotels, food and more is a considerable problem to solve: and when any part goes wrong, everything needs to be re-organised; each part involving your personal information, your payment data and more in order to provide your service.
With Fetch.ai, every part of the problem is its own autonomous economic agent. It has agency, and can operate free of human intervention to work for you. Agents that represent hotel rooms, hotels, flights, trains, restaurants and more work together, seamlessly, negotiating, planning and delivering. One app, acting as a window on the digital world, provides you an interface to all this activity. Like an inside out search-engine, what you need, when you need it comes to you. It’s entirely user-focused: agents working for you, all day, every day.
Developers and participants benefit from a common interface to all components: no private, cryptic APIs — one way of talking to everything. Those providing services, such as shipping, food and more, are able to take part in the network without the permission of others. Backed up by cryptographic technologies such as non-fungible tokens, verifiable credentials, staking-based insurance and dispute resolutions and end-to-end encryption, decentralised trust is possible without the need for a single centralised entity. New ideas, new features and no services can be seamlessly integrated with no prior knowledge.
