6 years of Trips Community
At the forefront of Web3 innovation in travel
Here’s a quick glance of what we’ve been doing in these last 6 years:
- July 2017: We launched the idea of a decentralized Airbnb and cooperated collectively on The White Paper.
- January 2018: We deployed the TRIPS Token.
- August 2018: We partnered with Origin Protocol
- September 2018: We brought crypto on travel conference’s stages.
- 2019: Teaching time
- 2020: The pivot to experimentation.
- June 2020: We created a pool for the Trips Token on Uniswap.
- September 2020: We started onchain governance.
- October 2020: We deployed the first decentralized SAFE in the travel industry.
- March 2021: We started experimenting with NFTs in the travel industry.
- 2022: We worked on educating the travel industry about Web3.
- 2022/2023: We organized the first Web3 Travel Conferences.
- 2023: We launched the Web3 Travel Alliance
Here’s everything more in detail:
July 2017: The White Paper
We kicked off TripsCommunity during the ICO craze, 6 years ago.
The big idea? To shake up the travel world with a platform that worked like Airbnb the app, but without Airbnb the company.
Why? Because I had run a vacation rental booking platform a few years before Airbnb, so this was my core competence, and I considered platforms to be extractive.
Crypto was promising a way to give back the power to the platform users.
We decided not to raise money via an ICO and focus on a high quality White Paper instead.
When we finally published it, crypto winter was upon us.
January 2018: TRIPS Token is born
We minted our TRIPS token, on Ethereum first, and xDAI (now Gnosis) and Polygon later.
August 2018: Partnership with Origin Protocol
Origin Protocol was launching an open source marketplace, and we partnered with them to launch our own vacation rentals marketplace on top of their technology.
Together, we did the first onchain booking in history.
September 2018: Bringing crypto on travel conference’s stages for the first time
This was the first of a series of conferences in which we talked about the opportunities crypto was bringing to the travel world.
2019: Teaching Time
We dove into helping everyone get savvy with Web3 tools.
We toured Europe teaching Airbnb hosts and major industry players to set up a wallet.
At the same time, everyone involved in Trips learned a lot about crypto, DeFi and NFTs, making the work done for the DAO rewarding.
Trips Community also got rewards and airdrops, which form part of the Treasury now.
My Web3 In Travel podcast (also on YouTube), although not a Trips Community production, fits in perfectly in this, and it has been useful for many people since 2021.
2020: The Pivot
Ethereum’s gas fees were through the roof, Web3 tools were still finding their feet, and wallet adoption was nowhere near the needed critical mass.
So, we decided to change our strategy and went into full experimentation, not daring to even dream about any product-market-fit in the travel space.
June 2020: the Trips Token lands on Uniswap
As soon as we discovered Uniswap, a permissionless decentralized exchange, we jumped on it and created a pool.
Our token had a market and was one of the first ones to be there.
September 2020: Governance!
We created a Snapshot space and started voting on key decisions for the community.
Here’s the first vote: Staking: Rewards in Trips For October
This is also the first case of decentralized governance in the travel industry.
October 2020: the first SAFE
We created the first decentralized treasury in travel.
The Community voted 9 multi-sig owners with their Trips tokens.
It was a new way of doing things in the travel scene.
March 2021: NFTs in the Travel industry
With NFTs, we went wild.
- We, first amongst all, theorized the NFTs as digital representation of nights, a concept which today is underlying the existence of several startups.
- We did the first NFT booking in history, with a villa in Ibiza, Spain. That historical NFT now belongs to a DAO we created ad hoc.
- Together with the biggest Italian Tour Operator Alpitour, we did the first NFT Hotel booking in history, in a 5-star Hotel in Venice, Italy.
- With the Little Traveler we created the first PFP for the travel industry, setting a trend in which global players like Etihad and Lufthansa followed. The Little Traveler is also run by a DAO.
2022/2023: Web3 Travel Conferences
Verticals like travel in Web3 are often solutions in search of a problem.
After 5 years of experience, we decided it was simply too early to try something relevant.
So we looked around and asked ourselves the question: “what does this industry need?”.
Back in 2019 we had organized a blockchain side event at a travel conference in Milan, Italy and it had been a great experience.
So we decided to do one of our own, and we launched Web3 in Travel, in Porto, in 2022. It was amazing!
We doubled down in Barcelona, Spain, in 2023, and now we are organizing the third edition in Italy in 2024.
We also did:
- The first NFT tickets for a travel conference.
- The first NFT sponsorship (first in travel, or in general, we don’t really know)
Web3 in Travel conference is also a DAO.
2023: The Web3 Travel Alliance
We just co-founded and launched the Web3 Travel Alliance, a unified coalition of startups, companies, and DAOs in the travel sector, all leveraging Web3 technologies.
WHAT’S NEXT?
2024: Here’s what we have in the pipeline for:
- Token upgrade:
we are working towards a new Trips token, with all the modern features we need to get ready for the next decade. - Web3inTravel Conference 2024
We are organizing the next conference and decentralizing its control.
We just minted the Web3InTravel.eth domain, which we will use for onchain governance. - Web3TravelAlliance
We aim to grown and strengthen the relevance of the alliance, starting with a forum and accepting new memberships. - The App
Trips was born with the aim to create an app (or a Dapp as we used to call them back then) and so far hasn’t done so.
Will we ever create one? Yes, when the time is right, and we have the right idea, which we think can find product market fit (read: do something people want).
Don’t we have ideas? Yes, we do, we have tons in fact.
I’d say the situation is “too many ideas, most too ahead of time”.
Or, in other words: the market and the infrastructure are not ready, as we’ve been saying for a long time.
Now, it really feels we are getting closer.
Maybe this time it’s the right time.
CONCLUSION
The fact that Trips Community didn’t raise money from VCs or ICOs, set our burn rate to zero.
No one makes money directly, and Trips does not have expenses.
We all extract value from the DAO in different ways: mostly by learning and networking, so at this stage in its life Trips, is more a Free and Open University than a startup.
Several other DAOs have spun up out of it, and more will.
Every single contributor in Trips is with us because they feel rewarded in a way or another, no one is here just because they are paid.
The resilience is total, virtually nothing can kill us (not bear markets for sure!).
We are also extremely flexible.
We live on top of an ever-changing environment and adapt easily to it.
So, what is Trips Community? It’s a new thing, and we are inventing it every day.
Join us in the next leg of the journey!
🕳️ 🐇 Get deeper down the Trips Community rabbit hole
Talk to us on: Discord | Telegram | Twitter | YouTube
Learn: 🎙 Podcast: Web3 in Travel
