BikeSwap.io

Decentralized P2P bike sharing that works with any bike.

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LIVE DEMO: https://bikeswap.io

SOURCE CODE: https://github.com/craze3/BikeSwap

Inspiration

The inspiration came from a smart city research paper that I stumbled upon on Google: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/15/3267

My best friend suggested bike sharing as the topic of my project, since it's one of the top ways for a city to lower its emissions. While we have a lot of bike sharing programs in the Bay Area, they are not as prevalent in many other major cities. I thought this was a good opportunity, but I needed a way to spice it up. That's why I came up with the idea to make the platform run without needing to purchase any external hardware, bikes, or locks. This is not only going to dramatically reduce the cost for cities to implement bike sharing, but it's also going to make this platform able to be implemented TODAY.

Features:

  • Decentralized and P2P
  • Fraud protection via user reputation system
  • Works with any bike and any lock that uses a code to lock
  • Encrypted communication
  • Mobile responsive
  • Map view

What it does

BikeSwap allow users to loan or borrow bikes in a trustless manner. This is achieved by BikeSwap's trustless smart contract which is hosted on the Ethereum blockchain.

While scams and fraud are prevalent when there is no centralized entity to moderate and resolve disputes, there are ways to dramatically decrease the chance of such things occurring. Implementing a reputation system that lets users leave reviews for each other is a strong way to dramatically decrease the number of stolen bike disputes. This aspect of the platform will be refined and improved over time.

How I built it

I used:

  • Open source examples to help me code the solidity smart contract backend
  • Free licensed template for the landing page
  • Web3.js - Open source library to interact with Ethereum smart contracts
  • IPFS.js - Open source Javascript library for uploading assets to the decentralized storage platform, IPFS.
  • HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript for the frontend
  • Google Maps API for the map
  • Infura for connecting to the Ethereum blockchain when there is no Web3 provider available.
  • Citopia API for creating a Citopia Provider for displaying available services/actions (work in progress).

Challenges I ran into

Preventing fraud is not easy in a decentralized system, but I think the user reputation system described above is going to help immensely. This was perhaps my biggest challenge when tackling this project.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Creating the first bike sharing program that doesn't require any bikes, locks, or other hardware/infrastructure to be purchased! It truly is P2P and decentralized!

What I learned

How important smart cities and efficiency in mobility are for improving the environment.

What's next for BikeSwap

Roadmap:

  • Improve UI
  • Implement encryption
  • Get pilot program started in small city in northern california
  • Expand pilot program
  • Release utility token
  • List data on Ocean Protocol
  • List data on IOTA's data marketplace

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