The ownership of assets has consistently been a benchmark for success across the world. Throughout history, the wealthy could afford their own “things” and the poor had to share their “things”. However, today we are seeing an emerging trend that is antithetical, especially amongst millennial, where owning less and sharing more is preferred. This phenomenon is manifested in the sharing economy, which enables peer-to-peer sharing of access to various goods / services (e.g., house, cars, tools) in exchange for money or other goods / services. Augmented by new technology that efficiently connects suppliers and consumers (e.g., Uber, Airbnb, ofo), the global sharing economy is now estimated to be worth $335 billion by 2025.

The sharing economy has already introduced many new opportunities for both suppliers and consumers, most notably cheaper and easier access to goods / services. However, it also faces many growth-hindering challenges, such as fraud, asset maintenance, and lack of universal standards / regulations. Today, we are happy to announce our partnership with GSENetwork, a decentralized trust network for sharing economies, to address these challenges and unleash the full potential of the sharing economy using IoT and blockchain technology.

“By joining forces with IoTeX, we hope to champion the growth and transformation of the global sharing economy by creating a decentralized, interdependent network of users and providers.” - James Zhang, Co-founder of GSENetwork

What is GSENetwork?

GSENetwork, based in Singapore, is building a decentralized sharing economy network with the goal of eliminating the need for centralized intermediaries and solving trust issues that currently burden the growth of the sharing economy. Their team consists of top tier engineers, sharing economy experts, and blockchain veterans, who all believe that blockchain technology will enable the future of the sharing economy. GSENetwork utilizes a three-pillar technology solution (Decentralized Service (DService) platform, Incentive Model, and Trust Network) to seamlessly connect the interactions of users, assets, and services anywhere in the world.

GSENetwork’s vision is shared by sharing economy innovators around the world, as evidenced by their strategic partnership with ofo, the world’s leading bike-sharing platform. As part of their partnership with ofo, the two companies launched the “Ride & Earn” campaign, which rewarded ofo users with GSE tokens for completing ofo rides in Singapore, Japan and Korea. Although this initial pilot focused on bicycle sharing, GSENetwork hopes to launch additional pilots in several different use cases in 2019.

How will GSENetwork use IoTeX’s blockchain?

GSENetwork is currently building their three-pillar infrastructure to enable the second generation sharing economy. In addition to the Incentive Model and Trust Network pillars, the third pillar is the Decentralized Service (DService) platform, which serves as “middleware” to connect sharing economy DApps built on the GSENetwork with the base “mainchain” infrastructure layer. The DService’s core components include an order dispatching module, anti-fraud module, multi-dimensional user profile rating module, and transparent pricing system, as shown in the diagram below.

GSENetwork’s DService layer and its various components will interact with the IoTeX blockchain, which will serve as the base “mainchain” infrastructure layer and fulfill any IoT device-related requirements. Furthermore, IoTeX will support GSENetwork by providing other useful building blocks, such as our Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism, smart contracts, privacy, and more. As mentioned in their whitepaper, GSENetwork describes their ideal infrastructure layer as having a DPoS consensus mechanism, support of sidechains, and smart contract capabilities, all of which are offered by IoTeX. Throughout our partnership, we will explore the implementation of various IoTeX features for the GSENetwork platform.

What are the goals of the partnership?

The primary purpose of our partnership will be to expand the capabilities of today’s sharing economy by incorporating smart IoT devices, blockchain technology, and token economic incentives. In addition to addressing existing sharing economy issues, our long-term goal is to design and launch brand new features usable in several sharing economy domains, such as enhanced process automation (e.g., smart locks), traceability of assets (e.g., shared bicycles, shared cars), and privacy of user data.

In the near-term, we will work with GSENetwork on an initial proof-of-concept to implement our respective technologies onto IoT devices, starting with bicycle-sharing smart locks. We will collaborate to design a smart lock with industry-standard hardware, blockchain-enabled firmware, and server management tools. These smart locks will be installed on bicycles as part of a trial run, where data such as ride time, routes, user information, and more will be calculated by each lock and stored on the blockchain. Looking forward, we will look to implement this smart lock in other proof-of-concept use cases such as car-sharing, home-sharing, on-demand parcel delivery, and more.

About IoTeX

IoTeX is the auto-scalable and privacy-centric blockchain infrastructure for the Internet of Things (IoT). IoTeX’s global team is comprised of Ph.Ds in Cryptography, Distributed Systems, and Machine Learning, top tier engineers, and experienced ecosystem builders. IoTeX is developing several in-house innovations to push the frontier of blockchain 3.0, including a blockchains-in-blockchain architecture for heterogeneous computing, lightning fast Roll-DPoS consensus mechanism, and lightweight privacy-preserving techniques. IoTeX is bringing autonomous device coordination to the masses by “connecting the physical world, block by block.”