A few weeks ago I was in Vietnam working with the development team. I was able to save money here and there, making the trip pretty affordable: I purchased a day pass to stay on top of tasks at the airport lounge, I took a Grab to and from the airport, I stayed in a basic-but-comfy Airbnb rental, I took a tour of the city from a freelance tour guide, and for a reasonable price I found someone on a pet-sitting platform to look after my dog back home. Nothing unusual these days, but because of the sharing economy I was able to get this done for about half the price as I would have with conventional services.
Before the internet, these possibilities simply would not have worked, and back then nobody could have predicted how much extra value could be unlocked in the economy from expanding the number of buyers and sellers in this way. This is the “sharing economy” that you often hear about. Nowadays, none of these businesses are out-of-the-ordinary, but the key lesson is that new technologies will continue to surprise us with ways of transacting that we never would have thought of.
And more change is around the corner, but this time it won’t be just the internet but blockchain technology that makes the difference. In phase 1 of the sharing revolution, it was simply a matter of linking people together to facilitate the same kinds of exchanges as already existed. But in phase 2, tools like blockchain will enable more new kinds of economic exchanges that create entirely new products and markets.
Privacy: hard-coded
You hear a lot about big corporations adopting blockchain technology. In reality, there are major obstacles to using blockchain as a record in business. Optimists envisage a world where all database transactions are recorded immutably in decentralised ledgers. This, they hope, will create new levels of transparency and reliability.
There is only one problem: no business or person wants their entire financial history available to anybody who wants it. It is not acceptable from a personal perspective, but businesses also don’t want their trade secrets easily viewable. Public smart contracts would allow anyone to snoop around your dealings. In the case of a sharing economy, which often involved personal property, blockchain could create uncomfortable and possibly dangerous data exposure.
But there are solutions on the way. Enigma uses Multiparty Computation (MPC) to calculate smart contract data without anyone being able to view the full transaction. See: seven things that make self-sovereign identity different.
Clever contracts
One of the most unappealing terms in the English language is “payment dispute”. These words will send a chill down the spine of anyone who has traded extensively on eBay. It is a central problem with the internet that anonymity and distance allow scamming to flourish. Sharing economies involve decentralised networks and complex transfers of assets and services meaning that opportunistic behaviour is a serious risk.
Without blockchain technology, it takes a centralised actor to resolve disputes and process transactions. Ledger technology allows for transactions to be coded with conditional clauses that control the transaction process. If one aspect of the contract isn’t fulfilled, the contract can withhold payment automatically. No need for a centralised arbitrator.
Leveraged identity management
Part of the problem with doing business on the internet is that you don’t know who you’re dealing with. With blockchain technology, it is easy to keep a decentralised and transparent record of each user. A blockchain platform specifically made for the sharing economy, ShareRing has a OneID feature that allows users to create their profile quickly and easily. See: ShareRing Me.
Sharing safely
The world is moving towards a more sustainable and open paradigm with the advent of the sharing economy. For this to really take off, there must be safeguards and features built-in that make the platform user-friendly. Blockchain has come on an awful lot in the past few years, and now looks able to provide those safeguards. See: the three verification levels inside the ShareRing Vault.
Where we sit.
ShareRing has been building this technology since 2018. The encrypted Vault and self-sovereign ID model we put in the original whitepaper are the same architecture under everything we deploy today.
If you want to discuss privacy KYC at country scale, the door is open at sharering.network/contact.
By ShareRing Team of ShareRing.
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