Power Trip
*Satisfaction: Garaunteed on-chain *
Let's get into the D.E.T.A.I.L.S of our project; Power Trip!
Distributed
Event based
Travel
And
In
Ledger
Service
Have you ever been on the train and had a disruption? Just yesterday, I was sitting in a full economy class car, and noticed the temperature climbing. Eventually, it got so bad, they stopped the train and 'evacuated' 2 cars. In a full train, we now had to cram into the remaining cars, standing around luggage, baby strollers, and unhappy co-travelers.
But I nonetheless paid full price, upfront, for this service. I consider this a breach of contract, but I have no reasonable recourse. Maybe I spend some of my precious time to send a letter, and maybe they refund me?
Enter the world of Garaunteed Travel, where you pay for only and exactly the service you agreed to. Automatically, without even thinking, the broker service will enforce the contract you signed up for. Your money is held in escrow, and only disbursed to the service provider upon exucution of the promised service.
Did the train only make it 70% of the way before being cancelled? Well, the service provider only get 70% of the funds!
Did the temperature exceed 26C for half of your 1st class trip? The service provider has access to only 75% of the paid fee!
The power is in your hands!
Software components
The main component is the Travel Broker Service (TBS). The broker queries the Mobility Service Server (MBS) on behalf of the customer. The MBS presents a list of all valid trips, including the start and destination, price, times, and most importantly the service garauntee rules.
After selection of a service by the customer, the TBS establishes a back-to-back Smart Contract (SC) structure. SC1 is between the customer and TBS. SC1 includes a garauntee of service in terms of, for example;
- Cash back if delayed
- Cash back if comfort level not provided (temperature exceeded)
- Cash back if seat not available
- Etc...
The second contract, SC2, is between the MBS and the Service Provider (SP). The TBS is free to negotiate any SC2 they wish. In fact, TBS may wish to not have any SC2, and instead take the liability themselves!
This places the TBS in the role of both Travel Broker and Travel Insurance Broker.
The smart contracts are enforced by customer and vehicle sensors, and provided by streaming IOT messages by i.e. Kafka.
SC1 could be triggered by i.e. temperature > 26 for > 1000 timesteps, or by actual arrival time - promised arrival time > 30 minutes.
Smart contracts
service garauntee rules
The TBS is free to establish garauntees for their customers according to market demand. Therefore, more players should incentivize better garauntees. Likewise, the TBS is incentivized to negotiate strong SC2 from Service Providers, and vice versa, service providers will be priced out of the market unless they can meet the customer demands.
Overall architecture, v1
Overall architecture, v2
Overall architecture, v3
Service Providers
The Service Providers component comprises the Mobility Service Registry, a server which aggregates trips, and serves them from a database.
Service provider architecture
Service provider schema
Smart Contracts
Ethereum smart contracts make sure that the conditions set at the beginning of the trip are enforced during the Power Trip. The smart contracts can be broken into 4 major components;
- Travel Target Registry:
- Events Contract:
- Pricing Contract:
- Service Provider Rules: