An article by PARKGENE Advisor Manos Chatzopoulos explaining how PARKGENE’s Peer-to-Peer Blockchain Enabled Technology is Set to Disrupt the Parking Industry

My personal parking woes date all the way back to my years as a junior research scientist at the University of Chicago, when looking for a free curbside spot would require on average at least 15-20 minutes of my time. On top of that, I usually had to walk 2-3 blocks, often in the freezing cold of the windy city’s winters, to get from where I parked to my destination.

My parking struggle motivated me to start my own company, ParkZen, utilizing smartphone sensor data to detect where parking spots are vacated in real time, and find out first-hand how the market is struggling for a solution and how people are ready and willing to utilize their own private space to earn money but also help alleviate the city’s parking problems and parking—search related traffic congestion.

PARKGENE’s innovative approach hits right at the heart of this problem by creating a P2P marketplace where parking space owners can connect with drivers and rent out their space with contracts secured and executed on the Ethereum blockchain. As an academic research scientist myself working in the field of computational astrophysics I have great interest and I am financially invested in blockchain technology and the emergence of decentralized market places where trust-less, encrypted systems enable the transfer of value between individuals thus ultimately empowering the consumers and the innovators alike. Given ParkZen’s appeal to the Chicago market when we launched our marketing campaign in 2016, I can also attest to the excitement of the market to engage in P2P transactions and exchange of services, and to my desire to make ParkZen part of ParkGene’s ecosystem in the future to assist in the common cause of solving the global parking problem.

PARKGENE also arrives at a time when there is significant transfer of trust in the market from centralized to decentralized applications as evidenced by the public investment in ICOs that skyrocketed by almost 1300% within a year (in the 01/01/2017 to 12/31/2017 period; source: www.coindesk.com). The combined shift of the consumer base toward blockchain-based applications, investments in digital assets and P2P services together with the tremendously underutilized private parking spaces across the United States, Europe and the rest of the world — especially in densely populated cities — clears the path for PARKGENE’s unique technology, backed by a strong, motivated, experienced and highly technical founding team, to become the one-stop parking solution of the future.

In tandem, from an economic perspective, the success and utilization of the GENE token, PARKGENE’s official cryptocurrency, will open the door to strategic partnerships and transportation-related marketplaces such as vehicle services (e.g. oil change, car wash and toll payments) driving the potential of the entire ecosystem to unprecedented highs.

As a scientist and an entrepreneur myself I can attest that I am beyond excited to act as an Advisor for this incredible project, and I am eager to see the gradual transformation of modern metropoles as congestion, carbon emissions and accidents drop to historical lows due to a more efficient and definitely smarter parking solution. As such, I strongly recommend everyone to get on board with our ICO early on to avoid missing out on the unique opportunity to be one of the pioneers of blockchain-enabled P2P parking!

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Manos Chatzopoulos is a cofounder and the CEO of ParkZen LLC (parkzenapp.com), a smartphone app service that utilizes data analysis algorithms to locate faster free curbside parking. He is an Astrophysics Professor at Louisiana State University working on a variety of research projects in collaboration with local and external scientists.