[danielnaab]

A decentralized ride solicitation tool with a reputation system, maybe blockchain-based, could kill off Uber and Lyft almost overnight. Especially if existing taxi companies embraced it. I want to know if a driver is licensed, insured, etc. Uber doesn't provide that, and I don't like the rent-seeking aspect of their service.

If it's winner-takes-all, it's only a matter of time until another winner takes all. I don't think we've seen the end of this market yet...

EDIT: Wow, two down votes in 10 minutes. Care to say why? There are a lot of incumbent players losing market share to Uber - how do they compete? It seems like the perfect opportunity for more of a SaaS business model built around selling integration with an open network. There are already reputation-based blockchain implementations. Why would a decentralized model not work?

[aetherson]

An interesting problem of working with "real" cabs is that you have to compete with street hails (that is, people doing the traditional stand-on-the-curb-and-wave-their-arms deal). This is a surprisingly big issue.

During slow times, it's not a big deal. But during slow times, you also aren't providing very many rides to the cabbies. And also pricing, which I'll come back to.

During peak times, it's very likely in a dense urban environment that a taxi driver will see a prospective customer and want to bail on your ride.

It's hard to make drivers not do this. You can easily get bogged down in a war of you trying to prevent them from bailing on people during peak hours (but remain hailable) and them trying to game you back.

Passengers will only use you if you can reliably get them a ride during peak hours, quickly. Also, taxis have mandated rate structures, and they will likely be more expensive than UberX or Lyft during non-peak hours, so the only time that you'll be able to really get a lot of passengers is during peak hours, and that's the time when all your drivers are at their most flakey.

Source: I spent two years as the lead engineer of Flywheel's server team. Flywheel being an Uber competitor that works with real cabs. Disclaimer: I've been away from Flywheel for more than a year, so my experiences are not current.

[greggman]

I'm curious how this is any different than Uber other than presentation? During peak hours there's peak pricing and not enough cars to go around so I have to wait.

Also, if it was legal for drivers to pick up hails I'm sure many drivers would just turn off Uber during peak and then turn it back on after, no "flakiness". Besides, their rep will go down if they bail on pickups so it seems like they'd just turn if off during peak to avoid that.

[aetherson]

Obviously in the ideal world for passengers, they'd get prompt pickups at any time for low prices. But given that that's not realistic, our experience is that they prefer moderate surge pricing plus prompt reliable pickups to "your cab is on its way oh wait no it's not," or just "we can't get you a ride right now."

Turning off during peak is bad. Again, your service will only be used if you can remotely get people rides during peak times. They're peak times because that's when passengers want rides.

[danielnaab]

Interesting observations on the dynamic with "real cabbies."

I would envision a decentralized system including both "real cabs", whose parent company vouches for a driver's licensing, as well as independent drivers, whose insurance company does. But if any driver participated in a transparent network, their reputation would be important to them, and I would assume that would be a deterrent to taking fares you don't actually intend to pick up.

[aetherson]

Well... I mean, it depends on how you do reputation.

Passengers do not by-and-large want to page through a list of cabbies and try to trade off the reputation of the person versus how far away they are or whatever.

Uber gives its reputation system some bite by just delisting drivers who fall below some rating system (and probably by threatening to do so considerably before they actually do so), and that's more-or-less what we did at Flywheel as well. But how does a decentralized system do that? For that matter, how does a decentralized system prevent the driver from just giving themselves a good rating by creating some dummy passenger accounts and upvoting themselves?

The reputation system also sort of implicitly depends on you having a working system that gets a substantial volume of rides. But the most vulnerable time for a TNC is right when you're starting out. You need to gain your users' trust, and that means getting them rides promptly the first few times they use you.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, and for the record I don't think that Uber has a "natural monopoly." I actually wouldn't invest in Uber precisely because I don't think they have any way to protect any profit margin they have. But mostly because I kind of expect that if Uber ever really demonstrates that they can actually make a decent margin, Amazon will come in and clone the service, not because you can do it with OSS.

[danielnaab]

The software agent that consumers interact with would have to be responsible for determining the accuracy of ratings.

I suspect that the most important aspect of such a system would be trusted participants: eg, insurance companies, city licensing agencies, etc. If you get one hundred great, but fake, reviews from shell accounts, it would be rather meaningless if your city didn't issue you a license on the blockchain, or you claimed false insurance which was somehow disputed on the same blockchain by the legitimate insurer.

[bfung]

What's in it for the insurance company to do this blockchain activity? What's in it for the city? They're not going to do this for nothing. And whatever entity that will help get this to work - wouldn't they be the next "uber"?

If the city is "issuing" licenses on a blockchain, how is this different than the medallion system already in use?

[n0us]

I'm not the one who downvoted, but I would imagine this is why.

* Overnight is a bit too quick. Uber's service has grown so quickly partly because they have an organization behind it to fight against regulations which is part of what made their rapid growth possible.

* Implementing a standardized "blockchain" protocol to guarantee all of those things is a non trivial task

* Go outside of SF Bay, whip out your phone with a group and tell them that you're about to order a "distributed reputation system cab" and they're just going to look at you like "wat" then open the Uber app and get an Uber that already works with their credit cards and lets them split the fare. They maybe have heard of Lyft, and most likely have Uber, not the blockchain app.

* Uber has hordes of information available that lets them tell drivers where to be and when, it also prices the rides based on demand. The block chain app has none of that.

* Traditional cab drivers are terrible, the cars smell, they don't show up on time, they drive you in circles to up the fare, sometimes they take off when they hear where you want to go. An app is not going to change this overnight, though eventually the reputation system might change it.

* Rent seeking is annoying but they are still much cheaper than traditional cabs, at least everywhere I have used them.

Maybe it's winner takes all, maybe not. It remains to be seen whether the legal system has just been slow to react to Uber and its ilk or if it will not react at all. I think the end of this in the short run is that Uber takes > 90% of the market, Lyft takes the majority of the rest, and the cab companies continue to operate at a smaller scale with less profits. This is after local and state governments wake up and impose more modern, but less restrictive taxi-style regulations on these companies to enforce some level of accountability for when the shit hits the fan or whatever.

The end of this market in the much longer term seems to be self driving cars and some form of shared ownership. I could see premium ride sharing clubs where you pay more to ride in an Audi or something with common ride sharing clubs where you ride in a van. It is this much longer term that I see Uber having more potential competition.

[frandroid]

> Go outside of SF Bay, whip out your phone with a group and tell them that you're about to order a "distributed reputation system cab" and they're just going to look at you like "wat"

If your friends trust you, they'll humour you; when your order comes through, your friends will ask you what app you used. I remember when I first saw the "Google" name and logo, I also went 'wat'. But then I used it and I never looked back. Reputation matters but reputations are made by delivering the goods.

[danielnaab]

Good points. I meant "overnight" loosely, but I have a few other comments.

* Any software may be branded - no one needs to know the word "blockchain" when they use a well-designed app. If a driver may have more take-home pay from an open network, there is no reason they wouldn't list themselves there in the same way many drivers are on both Uber and Lyft.

* The blockchain would record all transactions in a manner that any software could get something similar to Uber's intelligence, with some allowances for the privacy of the rider.

* I've taken Uber rides that reek of cigarette smoke. If anything, many cab companies have standards that you can't guarantee with the closest Uber. But like you say, reputation systems could address those issues.

I agree, though, that the technical challenges are real and not trivial. In particular, the privacy concerns seem very real. I just find it difficult to believe that a multi-billion dollar industry will allow a middleman to take all their customers away when really the only thing that Uber sells is UX.

[Grishnakh]

>* I've taken Uber rides that reek of cigarette smoke. If anything, many cab companies have standards that you can't guarantee with the closest Uber. But like you say, reputation systems could address those issues.

Did you downrate the driver and complain? If not, the reputation system isn't going to work.

[jdhzzz]

>The end of this market in the much longer term seems to be self driving cars and some form of shared ownership. I could see premium ride sharing clubs where you pay more to ride in an Audi or something with common ride sharing clubs where you ride in a van. It is this much longer term that I see Uber having more potential competition.

I see it looking much like air travel today. Some will opt for fractional/full ownership like netjets and the like, but most commoners will simply pay-as-you go. I hope it evolves like travel by horse with the endpoint being only the very rich will be able to own their own car and there will be restrictions keeping them off important travel arteries because they would be relatively slow, stupid, and dangerous.

[Grishnakh]

It won't happen quite that way. With driverless cars, the rich peoples' cars will also be driverless and would be just as fast as all the others, so there'd be no reason to have any restrictions. The difference will be that while you're riding in some self-driving van you don't own with some other strangers and paying a fare for the ride, the rich guy will be riding in his self-driving Aston Martin drinking scotch and listening to whatever music he wants in some very luxurious seats.

[steven2012]

Because claiming "a decentralized ride solicitation tool with a reputation system, maybe blockchain-based, could kill off Uber and Lyft almost overnight" shows you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what Uber does or the value it adds in keeping the critical mass of drivers and customers necessary to have a functional and high performing marketplace.

[nonsens3]

FWIW there is a http://taxime.to/ in Bulgaria, which has a reputation system and was embraced by existing taxi companies - you get a well-ranked driver that is licensed and insured, with overall quality much higher compared to random taxis in the country.

[ddingus]

It might work just fine, but it clearly does not have the sex appeal associated with a big potential market and a profit seeking gatekeeper.

And nothing wrong with that, mind you.

Frankly, I see the incentive to develop such a thing directly correlated to how well existing, centralized players treat their market potentials.

Uber appears to have developed a lot of negatives quickly. I know little about Lyft.

The dynamic might just be the same sort of thing we see with closed vs open software, only with law playing the role patents play in software.

Like with closed software, ain't nothing wrong with that, but it had better be real easy and deliver real value, or people will attempt something to keep that equation honest.

Notice how it's not hard, nor expensive to get access to Office these days. Some of that is Microsoft working hard to deliver value and serve it's markets, but the prospect of free / OSS out there keeps it all pretty sane too. There is zero chance of an OSS tool reaching critical mass, and the work needed to prevent that is good for everyone.

Say Uber continues to irritate... enter FUber, the decentralized, direct compensation, combination ride share, taxi service to the rescue. It could be a general marketplace. People want a taxi, exuber driver, rideshare, etc... sign up, check the little boxes and go.

Doing this would devalue things, but also doing this might show that there really wasn't anywhere near the value to begin with.

And some people just don't like the thought of that kind of check and balance gaining traction.

[powera]

Maybe downvotes because the claim that your combination of buzzwords "could kill off Uber and Lyft almost overnight" requires more backing than just asking people "why would [it] not work"?

[srameshc]

Today I had the Blockchain nirvana when it perfectly fit a usecase I had. It was when I could understand why are people calling it the next internet. For the next rideshare to be decentralized, someone will have to build that service over blockchain protocol, it will sure need time and there would need to be users to adapt. Till then Uber and Lyft would be starting their driverless car service I guess. But I would love to see that day soon when there is a true competition to Uber from a blockchain ridesharing service.

[kzhahou]

Blockchains will unseat Uber? Spoken like a true techie!

Uber has a reputation system. It can double down on insurance/license guarantees. Decentralized has no immediate direct benefit for riders.

[danielnaab]

>> Decentralized has no immediate direct benefit for riders.

Yes, but decentralized could have a very direct benefit for drivers... considering that sans an army of driverless cars, driver supply is what makes Uber's "sharing economy" work.

(Not to mention that the insurance/license guarantees are not currently being satisfied.)

[robwilliams]

Drivers will go to where the users are, and I don't think decentralized blockchains are an implementation detail most users care about.

The lack of insurance/license guarantees hasn't prevented users from flocking to Uber.

[arjunbanker]

Check out http://lazooz.org/

[sharemywin]

Customer acquisition is expensive.

[pbreit]

Your first sentence is completely ridiculous.