Twytch to increase e-hailing safety using blockchain

[Daniel Puchert]

South African Uber rival using blockchain

South African e-hailing platform Twytch plans to take on foreign competitors like Bolt and Uber by using blockchain technology to tend to a concern on the minds of many South Africans — safety.

The platform announced on Monday said it had identified numerous gaps in the market that will differentiate it from e-hailers already well-established in the South African market.

 

[Randux]

When token launch?

 

[Syphonx]

How is this different from storing the data in a normal database? Blockchain does not know if the data provided is forged or not. And altered data should not be a concern, just keep the original.

 

[quovadis]

1. Twitch is a huge brand and will probably sue.
2. Blockchain really isn't going to change anything. It's not like a rider or a driver can modify anything on Uber.com nor does the blockchain prevent someone from misrepresenting themself when being a driver or a rider.
3. Surge pricing is to motivate drivers to drive to ensure demand is met.
4. Drivers are either employees or not. Feeling like an employee really isn't a thing.

 

[pstation]

These alternative e-hailing apps in SA and elsewhere in the world unfortunately *always* fail because the reality is that uber and bolt actually lose money on nearly every ride taken by passengers in SA.

These added features and benefits sound nice in theory, but the reality is that customers only want the cheapest ride possible and drivers want to make as much revenue as possible. uber and bolt maintain their dominance by giving customers massive discounts while also giving drivers bonuses and other incentives.

To take on uber and bolt in SA you are looking at spending literally billions in marketing and incentives for both drivers and customers and local companies rarely ever have such deep pockets to

 

[Syphonx]

Immutability is a blockchain property.
The DB is distributed (not sitting in a central DB that can be altered and updated without transparency) and it's public (transparent).

And none of that is relevant to ride hailing IMO. This is just some startup desperately trying to convince people that it has a place in the market, while the actual buzzword these days is AI.

 

[hyarion]

Immutability is a blockchain property.
The DB is distributed (not sitting in a central DB that can be altered and updated without transparency) and it's public (transparent).

So all riders and all drivers personal information is available to the public?

It's immutable, so if you spelled your name wrong, tough luck? Or instead if you want the latest details of your driver it requires reading 5mil blockchain entries to find all the updates applied to the original data...

It's distributed, so anyone can add a user to it without going through verification channels? In which case isn't that the opposite of safe? Or just read-only distributed, again a POPIA nightmare of public personal information...

It's all a marketing gimmick, nothing more. None of those points will be true, which means none of the benefits of blockchain will be utilized. This isn't a suitable use of blockchain. I have serious doubts it will be public (POPIA), immutability would work against them, things in the real world change. They going to distribute it to random PCs across the internet? Not a chance. It'll be "distributed across our own servers". Again, POPIA/GDPR rears it's head.

 

[LCBXX]

Lekke man!
Just get me to where I'm going and no conversation.