Proof of Mobility Service in the Internet of Mobility
Iomob recently announced our plans to embrace our blockchain roots as we pursue progressive decentralization and tokenization in 2022 and deploy the Internet of Mobility protocol.
Just one aspect of decentralizing from Iomob to the IoM involves a pathway to incentivize usage of the protocol. As the graphic above indicates, a key component of decentralization will be node auctions and a node registry. In short this means instead of Iomob the company being the only entity capable of deploying the interoperable IoM protocol, other organizations will deploy the infrastructure in different territories around the globe.
The IOM token will be a critical tool for animating the mobility ecosystem. Node Operators and other stakeholders such as mobility service providers (MSPs) or systems integrators will be incentivized with tokens to grow the utilization of the IoM. For example, any stakeholder involved in hosting the infrastructure (node operator), adding their mobility services (MSPs), integrating the MSPs to the IoM or demand partners driving end user adoption could be eligible for token incentives every time a journey is booked in the IoM.
While on the surface this may seem straight forward and perhaps fail-proof. But what if the IOM token is valuable enough that any of those stakeholders could be encouraged to fraudently claim journeys occurred when they never actually did. Because Iomob the company will not have direct knowledge of journeys in territories supported by other node operators as the IoM decentralises, this is a risk that needs to be addressed.
One of the key aspects to incentivizing growth in a decentralized network is to avoid bad players (who can almost certainly participate in the system due to its decentralized nature) misreporting or pretending to deliver mobility services just to capture rewards. To picture a simple scenario, think of an app or mobility service provider faking activity to attempt to capture a token reward, which they would then sell on cryptocurrency markets for monetary gain.
As a consequence of these opportunities for fraud and deception, the network needs to verify which real mobility services are being delivered. Solving this issue is harder than it seems, because, in decentralized systems, trust between parties is low to nonexistent, and adding a requirement that parties need to collectively trust one another is undesirable.
Moliere & PoMS
Iomob is proud to be the core technology partner to a H2020 funded project, called Moliere. This consortium project intends to leverage the European Union’s own Galileo satellite network for improved geopositioning and capture of vehicle location data along with innovative use cases of blockchain in mobility.
In the case of Moliere, one of the most exciting things we are developing is a mechanism to prototype and deploy our first approach to what we call proof of mobility service (PoMS).
PoMS requires every stakeholder to cryptographically sign the operations they perform and, most importantly, include a geolocation tag as appropriate. Geolocation from Galileo is at the heart of this scheme, as inaccurate, unreliable or insecure geolocation would be an unsuitable basis on which to build PoMS.
For example, an app can request a taxi from points A to B. The app captures this information from the end-user’s device. Then, the Mobility Service Provider (MSP) also captures it. Likewise, the node that interconnected the app and the MSP too records this information. Then any party with access to these signatures can at least attest that all parties agree a service was performed.
For Moliere, we are working with Octo Telematics to install their on-board units (OBUs) inside an electric vehicle carsharing fleet, MEC. This will allow Iomob to triangulate data from more than multiple sources including the OBU, Iomob’s own demo app already built for the Moliere trial and the MSP (MEC) as well.
PoMS is a key innovation we are developing with the support of Moliere and the consortium partners which will support the progressive decentralization of the IoM and enable exciting new token economic incentives to help grow the ecosystem of global and local partners focused on accelerating a shift to sustainable multimodal mobility.
About Iomob
Iomob Technologies is the first company in the world to offer a global decentralised, interoperable mobility marketplace network. Iomob’s world-leading solution enables businesses and governments to quickly and easily launch their own Mobility-as-a-Service solutions by adding individual mobility modes to their existing digital channels. Iomob has won numerous industry awards and has commercial customers in Europe and the US, serving millions of travellers.Iomob also has global partners who increase the reach of the IOM Protocol to more than 40 million daily users.
About Moliere
MOLIERE will build the world’s best open data commons for mobility services, the “Wikipedia of public transport and new mobility data”, a Mobility Data Marketplace (MDM) underpinned by blockchain technology, raising the profile, visibility, availability, and utility of geo-location data from GALILEO, and will test it to fuel and demonstrate a diverse set of concrete, highly relevant mobility scenarios and use cases where geo-location data is key, addressing the needs of cities, public transport authorities, mobility service providers, and end-users.
