[ANN] BitCab - Ridesharing 2.0 for the blockchain age

[kerafym]

This look quite interesting. Do you have plans for other country in the future too? I would like to see something like this on a wider field. Think this could go very well

[BitCab]

Was only a question of time until a blockchain Uber pops up Are you the first team trying to build a decentralized Uber?

Thank you for your question hazenyc - and indeed, it is about time to bring ridesharing on blockchain!

Some early experiments are already under way (such as Arcade City, Chasyr, Ridecoin) - you can find some more detail in our white paper in "Disrupting the disruptors: Uber, do you even Lyft?" chapter.

What sets BitCab apart from these projects is what is being built and by who:

• What: other ridesharing-on-blockchain projects we have seen seem to tokenize for the sake of having tokens, blockchain for the sake of blockchain. We, on the other hand, are applying blockchain to solve specific big hairy problems at the epicenter of ridesharing universe that tokenization and blockchain are uniquely positioned to solve: such as driver and rider loyalty, set rules and giving control to individual ecosystem participants, not corporate middlemen. You can find more details in our one-pager and even more in our white paper. Even the quality of deliverables so far (our video, white paper, white pager etc.) are miles apart - I encourage you to google these other experiments and compare for yourself.
• Who: team is everything in a startup. To bring BitCab vision to life, we have assembled a unique international team with a wealth of experience in ridesharing, tech startups, blockchain, software engineering, venture capital, finance and general business. Our team includes alumni of Uber, McKinsey, Yandex, Avito and multiple other fast growth tech startups, leading financial institutions and consulting firms. No other team has professionals of this caliber - such as Arkady who was a country manager for Uber or Andrey who is a former McKinsey consultant and tech executive

[BitCab]

Will your referral system be single-level? It just seems to me that such ideas lose relevance and effectiveness.

Great question waitsummer!

We intend a 3-level referral system as we see Champions as the core growth engine of BitCab. You can find more details in our white paper in "A tour of BitCab ecosystem: token economics and rules" section.

[BitCab]

Do i receive a one-time reward for every new driver in referral system? Does it work the same as in Uber?

While Uber and other traditional ridesharing apps are limited by their economics to one time incentives, tokenization enables us to offer Champions a much stronger incentive - a sustainable income stream in perpetuity. It will also further align the incentives - this way Champion is incentivized not just to get their referrals to register, but to actually be active in the ecosystem. Here are current plans for incentivizing Champions:

• 5% of value of all transactions completed by all Riders and Drivers who registered on the platform indicating the Champion as the referral in LT in perpetuity
• 2.5% of same for 2nd level referrals (Riders and Drivers referred by Champions referred by the Champion)
• 1% of same for 3rd level referrals

[BitCab]

...

Thank you for your highly researched, well founded and authoritative opinion gorbal We could never dream of reaching the heights of your standing in the world, and of course our co-founders like Arkadiy (a country manager at Uber), Andrey (a McKinsey consultant and tech executive), Vasyl (a long time blockchain and AI researcher) and others could never compare to the anonymous BTT user gorbal Linkedin profiles of team members are available in the end of the first post of this topic. Please keep sharing your infinite wisdom.

[BitCab]

Good afternoon. Do i have to purchase tokens on the ICO in order to became a champion? Or can anyone do it?

Thank you for your question Dort!

Anyone can play Champion role, but some roles on the ecosystem will indeed require holding a deposit of CAB and/or LT tokens (such as Witness, Approver, Arbiter) to align their incentives with the interests of the ecosystem. To play these roles you can acquire the tokens in any way you want - by purchasing them in pre-ICO, ICO, on an exchange or earning them on the ecosystem.

[BitCab]

This look quite interesting. Do you have plans for other country in the future too? I would like to see something like this on a wider field. Think this could go very well

Thank you for your interest kerafym!

We intend to launch BitCab globally with some countries prioritized for targeted marketing efforts and local fiat currency acceptance. You can find more details in our roadmap on pages 26-27 in our white paper: https://bitcab.io/BitCab_WhitePaper.pdf

[BitCab]

How this could be possible for driver to pick the customer on him price or how customer will be agree on the driver set price. This is very complicated part of this project while there are so many exists companies providing that facility on a fix price which acceptable for both parties. So how you will resolve this issue if driver demand more high rate than other companies.

Thank you bitcircle for a very thoughtful question.

Pricing will be defined by a simple algorithm with three inputs. By default average market price (updated from all transactions for a certain relevant time period) will be used for both riders and drivers for simplicity. However, every driver can alter this setting in the app by defining their minimum acceptable price, and a rider can do the same with a maximum acceptable price (note: they will not do it for each ride separately, but by changing a general setting in the app). The market will then settle similarly to how a bitcoin transaction settles - the drivers with the lowest minimum price will get matched with passengers first, and the riders with highest maximum price will get picked up faster. This will incentivize healthy competition and market pricing on both sides of the transaction.

[BitCab]

Will you be adopting delivery service like Uber is opening up too?  I believe this cash cow is ready for disruption and look forward to getting in on the ground floor for a knockoff project.  I will keep a close eye on this one.

Thanks for your question twothirtyfive!

This is definitely an opportunity down the line - partnerships with restaurants could unlock new use cases for CAB token and BitCab ecosystem.

[BitCab]

Looks quite interesting to watch. Total Supply is 5 billion and just 3.5 billion for pre-sale and token sale. Where is the remaining will goes? for project development and reserve for team?

Thank you for your question Sarul!

Here is a quote from our white paper ("All aboard the rocketship: How the ICO will work" section):

150 million tokens (3% of total amount) will be reserved for bounties. Further, 300 million tokens (6% of total amount) will be distributed among advisors and founding team, and 1 billion tokens will be retained by BitCab Foundation for market making, development funding and operations funding purposes. Founding team members will not sell any CAB tokens for 12 months after the ICO.

https://bitcab.io/BitCab_WhitePaper.pdf

You can find more details in that section of the WP.

[Odeoke]

CAB will be ERC20 token or you will develop your own blockchain for this platform. How you will integrate fiat as payment option and when this platform will go live. Is there any chance to get free ride before move to the ICO?

[BitCab]

Hi. Is the referral program dedicated solely to the drivers? I hope you provide kinda program for the passengers, too.

Great question polonium84!

Referral program will encompass most roles on the ecosystem - not just Drivers and Riders, but also also Sages, Approvers and Arbiters. Basically if you refer someone, you will receive in perpetuity a % of all their positive contributions to the ecosystem - it does not matter whether these contributions include driving, riding, providing community support or all of the above.

[ALWASA]

This look quite interesting. Do you have plans for other country in the future too? I would like to see something like this on a wider field. Think this could go very well

The project looks promising. I know this would be successful in the future. Maybe the dev will eventually had the plan that they will be able to   include some countries in this project if it is already profitable to everyone.

[BitCab]

Have you bounty program?

Thank you for your question JohnEther! The bounty program is under development and will be announced towards the start of the pre-ICO.

[pumz]

It will be opportunity for many people to set up a minimum acceptable price of their own condition. This can help many people to get more clients but most probably price are predetermined for some specific zone to eliminate the dispute. I see this question was raised and answered already in details but I will keep studying this business model to fully understand it by all aspects.

[BitCab]

Can passengers pay the driver with fiat money? I believe that such move will simplify attracting the drivers.

Thanks for your question gazman!

You are absolutely correct. First, BitCab will support payments in both fiat (local currency), ETH and CAB. This will enable faster adoption - as you have correctly pointed out, this will increase our target market in terms of both riders and drivers as not everyone is prepared to transact in crypto from the start.

The expectation is that most users will initially use fiat while a small group of crypto enthusiasts might use CAB and ETH from the start. The intent is then to migrate fiat and ETH users to using CAB. This will be achieved in four ways:
1. All ecosystem participants, in addition to direct payment between the rider and the driver, will receive long term vested incentives - LT (Loyalty Tokens) - for useful actions on the ecosystem (e.g., receiving 5 star feedback for a ride or providing community support). These LT tokens will vest over time and convert to CAB - hence people will receive CAB tokens to spend. Because they receive these tokens for valuable activities, it will be easier for the users to see its value, while vested nature will increase price stability.
2. Over time transaction costs in fiat and ETH will be increased to incentivize users on all sides of the transaction to shift to CAB.
3. Shift to CAB will be seamless: the app interface will be seamless and similar to any other ride sharing app (with more gamification to make it feel more like a new smartphone game than just a ride sharing app) with all the blockchain magic happening on the back end. A CAB wallet will be generated automatically and will be fully integrated with the app - resulting in use being easy with no particular technical / blockchain skills required.
4. Hype around cryptocurrencies will help drive adoption - drivers might initially be willing to do just some of their rides for CAB to get some some tokens without buying them for cash, and then increase their share of rides for CAB as they see low transaction costs, convenience and growth in the ecosystem.

[BitCab]

CAB will be ERC20 token or you will develop your own blockchain for this platform. How you will integrate fiat as payment option and when this platform will go live. Is there any chance to get free ride before move to the ICO?

Great questions Odeoke, thank you. The current plan, as you have correctly guessed, is to use Ethereum blockchain. We have also been in discussion with Waves over the last couple months and might consider using their blockchain (it has significant advantage such as transaction throughput and speed) depending on when and how smart contract functionality is implemented on Waves.

Fiat will be available in select countries. Riders will be able to select in which currency to pay (CAB / ETH / fiat), and riders - in which currency to get paid. Then the transaction will settle in market prices on the back end if exchange is required.

We estimate about 6 months would be required to develop a fully functional platform. ICO will allow us to extend our developer team with more designers and coders and embark on this mission.

[BitCab]

Good afternoon. What will insure your tokens? Are you establishing a reserve fund or anything like that?

Thanks for your question bars_kz!

Let me quote from our WP (https://bitcab.io/BitCab_WhitePaper.pdf page 12):

All transactions on BitCab blockchain will ultimately be settled in CAB (although for fast adoption Riders and Drivers will be able to choose to pay and be paid in fiat currencies on the front end - but with transactions still settled in CAB at market rates on the back end). This will create real demand for CAB token tied to volume of transactions in the ecosystem. Essentially, all CAB tokens, existing and future, are hence by definition backed by the present value of all future transactions (mostly car rides) on BitCab ecosystem.

Like any other currency, CAB can be used to buy and sell goods and services even beyond the BitCab ecosystem. In case of BitCab success, there will be good reasons for wider application of CAB, such as millions (and billions) of users of the currency and it being backed by real value of mobility services it can be redeemed for. The present value of all future mobility services on BitCab ecosystem therefore represents not the ceiling, but the floor for the value of CAB. There is unlimited upside in CAB being adopted for wider uses - similarly to BTC, ETH and USD. One advantage of CAB over BTC and ETH as a store of value is that unlike cryptocurrencies mined by solving computational puzzles CAB is immune to the threat of quantum computers as it is issued proportionally to real world activity, not just virtual computations.

[askon]

Why is it impossible to automate the verification of transactions? Why should you involve the additional group of users?

[jznsamuel]

Interesting project and the team certainly seems very promising. Going to go through the whitepaper. Looking forward to more updates.