AirBie, a crypto bike-sharing service, just launchedthe first e-bike service worldwide powered by decentralized identity

Last November, the Swiss city of Zug officially launched its Zug eID, an opportunity for its residents to register for a decentralized, digital identity powered by uPort.

Since then, Zug residents have been able to adopt e-services such as online voting and proof of residency. Building on this momentum, and with visions of powering a smart city and sharing economy enabled by self-sovereign identity, AirBie, a bike sharing service that uses uPort, launched today a pilot in the city of Zug.

Over the past year, we heard from our community that it was critical to facilitate on-boarding and deliver a more scalable solution. So, we embarked on a major revamp of our architecture and released it recently, to make identity creation instantaneous and power more scalable projects. Because we believe in human-centricity and having our products be made simple to use by anyone, we are excited to partner with startups like AirBie that are focused on bringing Ethereum-based services into the smart mobility space.

This is a major milestone for the residents of Zug. Not only can they use their uPort-enabled Zug ID for online government services, but they can now also start using it for their everyday mobility needs. As verified residents of Zug, they get free access to use AirBie Cryptobikes for 20 hours — a perk that non-residents currently do not have access to.

With this use case, we see that digital citizenship has not only enabled more trust between citizens and the local government, but it also opens up a wider range of opportunities for “verified” citizens (or residents) to access services from the private sector.

At uPort, we are excited to see this pilot as a first step of using self sovereign identity to power smart urban mobility. This is a great example of the types of ecosystems that we can enable using user-centric decentralized identity.