TRIP & Teleport: Uber’s New Rival

Teleport.xyz → Solving the Uber pricing issue. Decentralized ridesharing

An underpinning issue we’re seeing exists currently is the disconnect between current ridesharing companies such as Lyft & Uber. These companies take a major chunk of the pay received to drivers, leaving them with crumbs to work with. “In the rideshare industry, the intermediary's take rate can often exceed 40%. This means that a significant portion of the money paid by customers is taken out of local economies and funneled towards centralized, multinational intermediaries. “ ( sources: https://chefsstage.com/how-much-does-uber-take-from-drivers/ & https://guides.trip.dev/litepaper ) This is where Teleport.xyz & TRIP.dev seek to change the current narrative by leveraging DePin ( decentralized physical infrastructure network ) technology.

What is Teleport?

Teleport is built on top of TRIP, a decentralized ride-share protocol focused on providing higher earnings for drivers & lower fees for riders. By leveraging TRIP’s open marketplace-esque system, this creates a healthy competitive environment for drivers to earn a whopping 85% of their fees while creating an incentivized system for Client’s like Teleport to build on top of it.

The current narrative:

The new narrative:

This is a multi-faceted open loop that creates opportunity & win-win scenarios for all parties involved rather than a pyramid where the bottom beneficiary is the rider, the middle the driver, & the top the company. Operators are matching drivers and riders for trips, creating competitive pricing options rather than being tied to a fixed system. Clients are building applications on top of TRIP to service the ridesharing industry & leveraging this technology to revolutionize its centralized nature. You can read more about how the “fixed costs system” is mitigated here -

How do I benefit as a driver?

Besides keeping the lion’s share of your payment, you have the ability to earn TRIP rewards. TRIP rewards are distributed as NFTs, which opens the door to an array of possibilities. As we all know, NFTs have expanded much farther than your favorite JPEG monkey that has been reduced in value by almost 70% but we’ll save that topic for another day. Drivers get paid in USDC, staying true to the decentralized ethos that web3 abides by. Leveraging your current web3 wallet & DEX or CEX, you’re able to cash out on your USDC payments or do any other web3 native activity we’ve become familiar with.

The savviest bonus in my opinion is that your insurance is covered ( in their Genesis city of Texas only as of now ). This is only while you’re active as a driver & your standard insurance applies at all other times. While connected to the protocol & waiting for a trip you’re covered up to $50k for individual bodily injuries & $100k per accident ( contingent on the excess liability of your personal auto insurance ). While in the midst of a trip, your vehicle repair costs are covered up to $50k in its cash value with a $2,500 deductible ( contingent on your personal policy including comprehensive and collision coverage ).

How do I benefit as a rider?

Riders benefit from the ability to access much lower costs for their rides. Typically fares in most major cities for the average 6-mile ride are much too costly for the average rider. This is because rates are set based on the company at fixed pricing rather than a “negotiated” pricing structure set by an intermediary who benefits from better rates for both parties. There are also no incentives for riders besides getting from point A to point B. As a user of Teleport & TRIP, you’ll receive the trip rewards we mentioned earlier as an early user & benefit from growing the protocol. In my eyes, this is the closest thing to a ride-to-earn system that we have, incentivizing users & the gig economy as a whole from their current participation. Democratization of a previously semi-gated industry.

Riders are truthfully tired of the exorbitant costs being charged by standard ride-sharing services -

These same riders are incentivized to onboard drivers not only because the drivers get a better pay share but riders get better rates -

While others just want to take down the corporate status quo -

How do I join?

Simply join the TRIP community via Telegram & ask for a code to begin onboarding drivers & receiving rewards. Being early has the biggest benefits in most cases with any protocol & I believe Teleport is no exception. The biggest advantage currently is that the players within the ecosystem have the ability to dictate the speed of adoption while directly & visibly benefitting.

Things to consider

As per any service-based business or innovation, there is always a supply & demand curve. The growth of this project won’t be linear or exponential but have the common winding road we see amongst any company. As more users & key players within the space become aware of the underlying issue & the solutions at hand, it increases the speed of adoption. Because Teleport leverages Solana technology (OPOS!) the speed of iteration in which the services & products it builds are drastically quicker than we would see in a standard web2 setting. The team has been working on this for the past 15 years & through sheer willpower have pushed into reality something that can disrupt the entirety of an industry & empower those viewed as “cogs in the machine”. Learn more about the team’s journey here →

Honorable Mentions

While we’re discussing DePin technology & it revolutionizing the ride-sharing industry, it’d be hard fought not to mention two complementary projects are tackling the same industry from a different angle.

Natix Network →

Natix is the “Drive to Earn” DePin built on PEAQ network, allowing users to earn while driving & mapping out their cities in the same way Google maps out cities. NATIX Network’s focus is to provide “open and equitable geospatial intelligence to people and organizations. “ You can view their whitepaper which focuses on how the platform collects data using existing cameras as “super sensors,” protects privacy rights through NATIX's proprietary artificial intelligence and Edge computing technology, and creates a Dynamic Map of the real world for users to collect and consume real-time data.

(Imagine being able to sell the data you collect to companies in order to train their AI)

In combination with Teleport, you can not only earn from your standard gig but also earn from mapping out the locations in which you drive. Its a double whammy of proportional size that is set to revolutionize the gig economy & the way we leverage the data that is already collected by companies like Google.

ELOOP ONE →

They’ve taken it a step further & tokenized the ride-sharing industry, now allowing consumers to benefit from the rides taken by car fleets.

As per their whitepaper “ With the help of the EOT (economy of things), an ecosystem can be created in which the monetization of sharing products is managed in a decentralized way. A community is created that actively participates in the development of its sharing infrastructure. The ecosystem is made accessible to the community by means of a hub, which serves as the control center for the EOT “ ( source →

https://eloop.one/wp-content/uploads/ELOOP_ONE_Whitepaper_EN-1-1.pdf

Their first experiment resulted in the tokenization of 100 Teslas, this creates the ability for users from all over the world to invest in tokenized Teslas and get a share of the revenues they generate. That's what we call decentralized accessibility, an economy fueled by the people for the people. You can read more about ELOOP’s venture here:

Conclusion

In summary, DePin technology is pushing forward the new meta we’ll all abide by. Its centered on democratizing & disrupting legacy systems & we’re seeing it happen in real-time with players like Teleport, TRIP, Natix, & ELOOP. Currently, things are extremely nascent but that is likely to change within the next few years. The tables are turning & the tides set to lift all ships are rising with DePin technology being akin to Poseidon.