Breaking the pattern — how can decentralized deliveries change the world?
My first shared economy experience was when I rented a flat right in front of Rome’s well known Piazza Navona. An experience that was made possible only with Airbnb, as there are no hotels that close to the fountain.
Once I overcame the pattern of only sleeping at hotels, renting stuff at Grover and hailing an Uber was trivial.
Look at Uber and Airbnb and what they’ve created. Disruption? Revolution? I would go a step further and claim they re-invented the way we use cars and homes.
In this post I would like to introduce the PAKET Protocol and how it impacts the parcel delivery industry and its multi hundred million annual revenue. To be more specific, it’s what we can all do to change our world, make it more accessible, cheap, efficient and trustworthy.
When we send packages locally, we use a local courier, they are usually the best. When we send packages internationally, we don’t have a choice but to use an international giant, although they are usually not the most efficient player on the local level.
Let’s take me as an example. I live in the center of Tel Aviv, also known as a traffic disaster zone. All those trucks are always jamming my narrow street, not to mention what they do when they look for a parking place. Now imagine a similar truck trying its luck in the streets of Moscow, where traffic is even worse! Challenging right? If I choose an international giant to take my package all the way, the delivery will be time-consuming, expensive, wasteful and far from environmentally friendly.
But what other choice do I have? Or, how can a decentralized package delivery protocol make a difference?
Let’s break down the same delivery into legs and see who is most qualified to take the package:
- Inside Tel Aviv — a bike rider that zooms around the city
- From Tel Aviv to the airport — a taxi which already making a trip to the airport with a passenger
- International flight — one of the international giants
- Arriving in central Moscow — a truck carrying goods from the airport to a major city hub
- Last mile — inside the city — a metro passenger (a very quick and convenient delivery method in Moscow)
My example is an easy one, as we are talking about a delivery from one major city to another, both located in developed countries.
What if you happen to live in a rural resort where fishermen and the occasional tourists arrive once a day or two? How do you deliver your package? Will that international giant arrive at your doorstep? PAKET will.
PAKET allows you to break down the delivery and use different couriers for different parts of the journey.
But, how can we trust all those couriers? What happens if the package is lost?
This is where the magic of smart contracts comes in. With a predefined contract to govern the relationship between the sender, the recipient, and the different couriers, everyone agrees on:
- The delivery cost (that will be split between all couriers)
- The collateral (insurance) each courier needs to set aside for the safekeeping of the package
- The expected delivery time
The smart contract, and not a central authority, controls and incentivizes each courier to fulfil his leg of the route, each package arrives at its next destination in a timely manner, and the entire delivery becomes cheaper and faster.
If the delivery does not arrive on time, you immediately get the collateral. You don’t need to contact any customer complaints department, wait for a response, argue… it’s a smart contract.
Add a layer of routing and tracking, and you have complete visibility of the package and its whereabouts at all times. This layer is also where each courier can publish his abilities — potential destinations he can commit to, package sizes he can carry, availability, requested price and more; and each sender can define his requirements — what he is willing to pay, when and where must the package arrive, the required collateral and any other special requests.
We have so many decentralized ways to purchase goods online using bitcoin and the likes of it as means of payment, it’s time we have a decentralized approach to get what we paid for. We trust strangers to host us at their apartments, to feed us and to drive us. It’s time as also let them help us deliver packages.
This is where blockchain meets the “real world”. This is how decentralization can kick some industrial ass.
