Interesting company that is taking ride sharing to a more local and disruptive level check it out. I post this because they want to decentralize with ethereum possibly BUT since safe will be done first why not here? 
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Hard to imagine this taking off haha, imagine being cramped in with strangers every morning, at least with the bus there is more room and you feel more blended in with the crowd.
Funny how technology has made us so close yet so much further away from one another in terms of real human connection/interaction, such a paradox.
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Well when solar gets good, we will be able to return to smaller town living, where we really know each other, and make human connections again,
Since we won’t have to be attached to a centralized power grid.
Cities will disappear and disperse back into the natural way of living that we were designed for.
I agree how unnatural and nasty big cities are, but remember it’s only because we have to now, but it’s only temporary no worries
haha wait, what?
I wouldn’t mind sharing a car with someone I don’t know for a commute if it meant the ride was 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 the price.
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La Zooz is one of the most interesting projects in the space and may end up impacting much more than ride sharing.
(1). By trading against the Platform, they will be testing a unique concept where the Zooz token is pegged to the cost of driving 1km.
(2). They will end up advancing the concept of Proof of Unique Identity.
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I’ll just add a little context from the Wiki as indeed it seems more than ride sharing. (I emailed the dev advising of testnet2)
La’Zooz is an open-source, decentralised and autonomous, collaborative transportation ecosystem, that is using cryptocurrency technology for establishing, coordinating and growing its community of users, developers, and promoters alike.
Introduction
Transportation is one of the most basic human needs, we travel to work, to get food, to meet each other and discover new places.
Our current transportation system is outdated, wasteful, distractive and expensive. There is a consensus that building more roads will not solve this problem.
To free transportation from its sickness, we must increase occupancy over the existing infrastructure. Ironically, our current road space and transport expenses are used to move mostly empty seats from one place to another. In fact, it is a well-hidden fact that thousands of empty seats out there haven’t experienced any ass for years.
The solution is obvious. Humankind is being called to better use its available resources rather than create new ones, promoting a sharing economy. At any point in time even half of vehicles on the road would serve all needs out there, if only those needs would be mutually synchronised and aligned. The goal then is to create a collaborative platform and protocols that will automatically communicate between people’s needs to allow reducing dramatically the number of vehicles on the roads.
The technology aspects of this problem are solvable - IT revolution and the wide acceptance of smartphone devices paved the road for solving this challenge, as it is basically a simple matter of synchronization. The real challenge about establishing such a collaborative transportation network is reaching the critical mass of use needed for those technological tools to take effect in the transportation domain.
When not enough users are connected at an instant of time, there would be no flow in the system and a surfer of this web would not be able of relying on it to reach any place easily and quickly. On the other hand, when the system doesn’t flow, no users like to use it. This is a chicken-and-egg problem. All true ride-sharing projects in the world are up-to-date stuck in this same gridlock phase, with almost no active users in the system.
Interestingly, this is the same challenge nightclubs are facing. When opening doors at 10pm, a first partier would enter, see that she’s alone and leave the place. Same would happen for the second individual, again facing an empty club. The well-known solution among nightclubs is to start receiving guest at, say, 10pm but not opening their doors (saying the doors will soon be opened), building a line while treating the patient guests with drinks and food, and then when enough people are standing in the line, opening their doors and start partying together.
In fact, La’Zooz is doing just the same. Building the network of users is carried out by an app that is not offering ride-sharing right now. Instead, the patient and visionary individuals who will user the app while driving, on one hand will help in establishing the network, and on the other hand will gain value while being distributed with Zooz tokens,
Zooz being the token of transportation that will be mined via a proof-of-movement algorithms. When reaching a critical mass of active users in the system, the ride-sharing option will instantly become enabled and individuals would start riding from place to place together, better using their already existing resources.
Moreover, as an open-source project, La’Zooz creates standard communication protocols (with open APIs) to enable the integration of any 3rd-party applications for collaborative-transportation services such as real-time ride sharing, peer-to-peer taxi service, decentralized delivery of goods and boxes and more.
All various partners will create this new transportation market place, turnning the abundance of empty seats and space to a usable, tradable asset. Just imagine a web of transportation on which anyone, or anything can surf from place to place, instantly, easily and cheaply, and by that un-jamming and maintaining a healthy transportation ecosystem.
Zooz - the Token of Transportation
Movement is energy. In the La’ZooZ ecosystem, this energy can be traded with Zooz tokens, which are crypto-currency tokens issued via 2.0 protocols over the Bitcoin blockchain. One can turn his movement energy into Zooz, or vice versa, pay Zooz for transportation. The value of 1 Zooz is partially pegged to the average world cost of 1 km of ride in a private car, thus the value of Zooz is being related to the energy index, avoiding ultra-deflationary economy, and keeping it tangible and usable.
The average cost of 1 km of ride is constantly being updated via crowd-wisdom, that is, by members of the community.
Zooz is an ancient coin that now returns into life; it was used from the Greek era of drachmas, through the Roman era of Denarius, and then as the quarter denomination of Bar Kochba coinage. It has been suggested that the name Zooz (move in Hebrew) came to describe the important essence of money that leads to a flourishing economy by its constant movement from hand to hand.
Not well-enough appreciated is the fact that a coin has generally two different and independent purposes. One is being the tool for trading value, while the other is the tool for storing value. As a trading tool, tokens should be rapidly moving between hands, and thus should not be deflationary, in fact they better be slightly inflationary.
However, the deflationary property of tokens has the virtue of encouraging their purchase and storage, which may serve as a mechanism to bootstrap the investments in a new project and thus its creation.
The Zooz token is entitled with a genuine mining protocol which aims at serving both ends of this rod. It is engineered in a way that makes it deflationary when funds are lacking for the project, and slightly inflationary otherwise. At a final stage, upon the establishment of this network and service, we aim for this coin to keep switching hands thus creating a live active economy. All Zooz holders will become part of a collaborative transportation community and will benefit its value.
Contribution-Based Mining
La’Zooz is a completely decentralized and autonomous organisation. That means that anyone can contribute towards the establishment of its goals in whatever way he or she believes would be the best. Tasks are carried out within autonomous, self-defined circles or teams. Each circle can consist of any number of individuals (including a single person), collaborating together towards well-defined goals, and holding their own (perhaps multisig) wallet to promote the circle’s tasks. Once a circle delivers a contribution to the La’Zooz community, the community as a whole evaluates this contribution, and as an expression of appreciation reimburse the circle’s wallet with Zooz accordingly.
Our basic beliefs are reflected in La’ZooZ initiative. Using a decentralized digital coin enables all of us to enjoy and share our own wealth (in this case our empty seats). Working in a decentralized organization prevents the usual structure of power to build up. All efforts are directed to make this project a community project in a way that all can become part and enjoy the wealth that is created. We share a deep hope that La’ZooZ will become a people’s project that creates prosperity for all.
Weighted Voting
The La’zooz initiative has no appointed CEO or other predefined decision makers. Decisions in the community, such as how many Zooz to reward a contribution, are carried out by weighted voting. The weights in the community are dynamically set by the collective opinions of its member, in a way analogous to the way Google’s first searching engine has determined the importance of pages (see Google’s PageRank algorithm).
A technological collaborative platform to support the uploading of decisions to be voted, as well as the weight and voting systems must be developed, and we hope that later on this platform would be used for other decentralized projects to arise in similar ways.
Movement-Based Mining
The purpose of this mining is to obtain the critical mass of movement needed for the collaborative transportation web to become operational, as well as to create and (fairly) spread Zooz tokens among the community.
There are two basic ways to increase movement in the system:
- Send your movement data (i.e. running the app and driving >20kmh ).
- Get others to send their movement data.
Both actions are being rewarded with Zooz tokens through the La’Zooz mining application. In this way early adopters of the La’Zooz network are gaining value and thus being incentivised to take part in the establishment of the network before its technological benefit takes effect and any transport service is available.
As more users join more coins will spread out, therefore when critical mass is reached many drivers and riders are out there ready to share rides.
The rate of distribution of Zooz tokens via movement-based mining is set to encourage the growth of the Local La`Zooz community. Thus, it is proportional not only to the number of Kms or miles you are driving, but also to the growth in the total number of Kms or miles driven in your area.
Proof of Movement
… add info here
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The unique human thing made me think of the thread on here immediately as well
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Those who don’t drive would need to buy zooz coins with other currency. Within the zooz system you can’t seem to generate coins without being able to drive.
Also the weiighted voting system concerns me.
“Weighted Voting
The La’zooz initiative has no appointed CEO or other predefined
decision makers.
Decisions in the community, such as how many Zooz to reward a
contribution, are carried out by weighted voting.
The weights in the community are dynamically set by the collective
opinions of its member, in a way analogous to the way Google’s first
searching engine has determined the importance of pages (see Google’s PageRank algorithm).
A technological collaborative platform to support the uploading
of decisions to be voted,
as well as the weight and voting systems must be developed, and we hope
that later on this platform would be used for other decentralized
projects to arise in similar ways.”
I never did like Google’s weighted ranking system but when applied to a democratic system it’s absolutely disturbing. We already have enough corruption in our own “democracy” without deliberately creating it in this new Zooz ecosystem.
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I believe by tracking your movement even if not driving you get paid zooz and then based on others movements get matched up and pay. Then at some point I believe you either make your own arrangements? I’m less clear on this but I gathered it was mostly incentivizing people to make an effort on a specifically designed platform to carpool. In general I think it’s interesting. Everyday I drive a half an hour with three open seats. Seems like a waste to me.
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