Consulted by Deutsche Bahn / DB Vertrieb GmbH to work on content for a workshop of an internal entrepreneurship program, Unibright evaluated on tokenizing the ecosystem around a public transport company with the help of Blockchain technology.

The Challenge

Deutsche Bahn AG is a German railway company, and is the largest railway operator and infrastructure owner in Europe. Deutsche Bahn was the largest railway company in the world by revenue in 2015. It carries about two billion passengers each year.

In the current state, customers of DB can already use different channels to get a specific ticket for a specific train. A customer can get a ticket online via www.bahn.de, at a desk, at a ticket machine or by using the app “DB Navigator” on a smartphone. Some of these tickets are personalized, some are anonymous. Some of these tickets are printed, some can be stored online, while the tickets bought via the DB Navigator app can also be stored right within the customer’s smartphone.

Furthermore, travelers have access to a wide variety of additional services alongside a specific travel: Local transport from or to the first station, catering provided both on and off the train, plus many individual businesses in the local surrounding of a station, like hotels, restaurants and taxi companies.

Akram Sioud, BI Developer and blockchain enthusiast at DB Distribution, consulted Unibright after successfully pitching the initial concept to the executive board of Deutsche Bahn.

Together, they developed a blockchain based solution for bringing together all connected services around a travel (tickets, vouchers, local transport, accommodation, local train networks).

Unibright was instructed to do a 4-week-deep dive and preparation of an DB internal kick-off workshop to prepare the project, to extract parts of the concept that can be potentially put into a business and to consult on possible implementation and integration matters.

Providing 3 dedicated employees from Unibright working together with the experts from DB Vertrieb, Unibright named this project as “Deutsche Bahn Vertrieb: Ecosystem Tokenization via Blockchain”

Motivation and explanation of terms

Telling from the project’s name, the terms of the working title “Ecosystem Tokenization via Blockchain” shall be explained and motivated.

Ecosystem

There are both structural and technical views on an ecosystem.

Structural, the Deutsche Bahn and all connected service providers already build an ecosystem. From a customer’s point of view, some actors in this ecosystem are already connected, e.g. when a customer buys a ticket and the corresponding travel is fulfilled by both Deutsche Bahn trains and local trains of independent providers. Other players are not yet fully integrated, e.g. the surrounding services like hotels. A loose coupling of the involved players is provided by vouchers Deutsche Bahn offers, e.g. a hotel voucher a customer can use when he missed the last connecting train due to a train delay.

Technical, an ecosystem is defined by datastreams between different companies and their underlying IT systems. Some of these datastream may be defined and empowered by the offering of APIs on one or both sides of the connection. Other datastreams may exist, but are not yet supported by an automated integration.

Marten Jung, CEO of Unibright, states:

One goal of the workshop concept was to define better, which players can be part of an ecosystem around Deutsche Bahn and to make proposals on how this ecosystem can be built. The result should feel natural to the customer and provide tangible advantage.

Tokenization

The method chosen to build an ecosystem in this challenge is Tokenization. Basically it means to transfer the participating values and assets into tokens, that act like value representatives or vouchers with a specific sense in the ecosystem.

Tokens can be configured as transferable, partial, controllable and can be restricted in their use due to location, time or events.

Daniel Benkenstein, CIO of Unibright, explains:

One goal of the workshop concept was to tokenize values and assets that can be part of that future ecosystem, and also to check on possible transformations of existing value based systems like “BahnBonus-Punkte” (a reward program where a customer can collect points for each ticket purchase).

Blockchain

Blockchain is the perfect technology to build tokenized ecosystems. The values in a blockchain can be personalized while not being centralized. The concept of “trustless trust” is defined by blockchain technology itself, making it easier for new participants to decide on becoming part of the ecosystem. And finally, the client has a real benefit of being part of a decentralized ecosystem and implicitly strengthens the ecosystem by using it.

Stefan Schmidt, CTO of Unibright, adds:

The technical part of integrating existing players into a newly build ecosystem is not trivial. Therefore, one goal of the workshop concept was to show, which parts of the solution can live in a blockchain and how can they be integrated with the “off-chain world”, a challenge that is explicitly targeted by the Unibright Framework.

Basic Concepts

The basic idea is to represent all parts of a common “journey” by tokens on a blockchain. This means single travels (or traveled miles), services, catering, hotel bookings, local transport or other assets that bring value to the overall journey.

These assets can be purchased by the customer, to save them in a personal wallet. The customer can transfer these assets, in a whole or divided into parts, he can perhaps sell them or give them back to the issuer.

The use of a specific asset is then carried out by transferring the corresponding tokens from the customer’s wallet to those of the service provider.

Roles and Processes

To enable the process, the following roles are defined.

The issuing office defines new tokens to become part of the ecosystem, e.g. when a new provider is included

defines new tokens to become part of the ecosystem, e.g. when a new provider is included The provider can offer his tokens for sale on a dedicated platform

can offer his tokens for sale on a dedicated platform A collector transfers tokens from users to providers. This can happen automatically (e.g. “transferring a token per traveled mile”) or manually (e.g. triggered by a train conductor)

transfers tokens from users to providers. This can happen automatically (e.g. “transferring a token per traveled mile”) or manually (e.g. triggered by a train conductor) The consumer manages his wallet to hold and monitor the different assets, represented by tokens. From a customer’s view, the token concept (and especially the underlying blockchain technology) should be abstracted as much as possible and should be reduced to an easy to understand concept like “My balance”

On these roles the following processes are defined.

Selling and buying tokens

Collecting tokens

Transferring tokens

Issuing new tokens for new assets of new providers

Use of tokenized assets

Different suppliers can define new assets (= issuing new tokens) and bring them into the ecosystem. These tokens can be (independently) redeemed for their initial purpose and also be bought later to refill the personal balance. In the example showed in the following image, “Token A” could be issued by Deutsche Bahn directly and would be redeemed per driven mile in a long-distance train (the current model does not work on billing per mile, but billing per relation).