Skychef

Skychef Desription
Skychef Workflow
1st screen
Login with Near wallet
Choose a destination
Choose a flight
Buy ticket from the airline or check offers from other travelers (working on that feature)
We bought this ticket!
Ticket is in our wallet. We can sell, auction, gift it in 2 clicks
Our tickets

Inspiration

Our friend lost 700 euro and 2 hours of time because ****he bought a ticket for himself instead of his daughter by inattention. He could not simply transfer the ticket. On another side, airlines spend millions on customer service solving such issues as changes of name, dates, flights, or refunds. Do you remember a long time of waiting for your refund during the time of Covid-19?

It is a time to change for the better. We make traveling simple by bringing transparency and trust to the industry using blockchain technology.

Now thanks to the new blockchain-based distribution protocol any traveler can get NFT ticket and become a real ticket owner and sell, gift, auction, or exchange the ticket.

What it does

Our solution is a more efficient distribution system of airlines tickets:

Just in few clicks, the traveler becomes a real ticket owner.
Minted NFTickets can be exchanged, transferred, or sold without costs. All changes are ruled by smart contracts.
Transactions are done through a trustable wallet system and secured by blockchain.
The personal data of traveler is encrypted, and only with a traveler’s permission airlines can access to it.
Airlines gain operational efficiencies post-booking, as well as they can reduce distribution costs significantly (call center, customer service etc.).
The tickets distribution and management are simplified, allowing to sell tickets really in advance or to solve such issues as overbooking.
The new blockchain-based distribution protocol can open up new sales channels and more efficient revenue-sharing model with partners. It can even bring an opportunity for new products (ex., collectibles, loyalty programs, rewarding system).

The travel industry is one of the largest industries in the world that doesn't have a secondary market. Our technology can create the new type of marketplace and bring efficiency, transparency, and flexibility to the travelers and market players.

Get your own ticket here

How we built it

Skychef is on-chain solution with pre-built smart contracts triggering different events which can occur in the travel industry, such as buying a NFT ticket, minting NFT, reselling a ticket, refund, fees distribution, etc. We decided to use the NEAR protocol, as it provides low cost of transactions, high speed, and low energy footprint.

During the idea definition, we have made a research on the openness of airlines to blockchain solutions. We have discovered that some airlines (Air Europa, airBaltics, S7, others) have been experimenting with NFTs and other blockchain products. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the industry, lots of airlines suffered from losses, and as the European economy enters into a recession, more airlines look to the latest technologies to respond quickly and effectively to market challenges.

We created a landing page and began to gather community to get feedback from airlines and travelers. We have received 21 in travelers interviews and 20 in subscribers. We have also managed to connect with TAP Air Portugal, and we are expecting a chat with them in the beginning of December.

Our team includes 3 people with complementary set of skills: software developer (Gleb), UX/UI designer (Anna) and sales and marketing manager (Anton).

Challenges we ran into

As a team we have all the necessary skills for building an MVP, however, all members live in different time zones. It was a challenge to build something in a such short period of time, especially when we have worked as a team for the first time. We managed everything by creating a clear roadmap and distribution of the tasks, however, we had time only for starting with the main features (basic smart contract and web application) leaving everything else for the future.

We also had a little time to research the problem and properly talk with travelers and airlines. It was easier to receive feedback from travelers, but airlines are very slow in responding. It took us two weeks to get to the right person in TAP Air Portugal, and even so the initial feedback was positive, we still wait for the call.

The next steps will be to test main hypotheses with airlines, build further the product responding to the main pains of the industry, and create the community of the first travelers-innovators.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of our team work and ability managing all the tasks efficiently. In a short period of time, we have built a business strategy, product roadmap, created our first Web3 MVP, talked with travelers and get a connection with airlines.

We have received 21 in travelers interviews and 20 in subscribers. We have also managed to connect with TAP Air Portugal, and we are expecting a chat with them in the beginning of December.

Particularly, we are proud of the feedback that we have received from the Web3 community. People have been helping us to improve our product and connecting us with relevant people with expertise.

What we learned

Previously, all team members were involved only in Web2 projects and this was our first time building in Web3. Thus, we used NEAR protocol for the first time, and we learned a lot about NEAR ecosystem and technology capabilities such as minting and managing NFTs. We care about personal information and privacy. That's why we are creating a solution to hide sensitive information that resides in public NFT metadata. We consider different use cases for airlines to provide seamless solution for minting NFTs and checking tickets in the airport.

We also learned a lot about teamwork on a remote basis and how to organize the workflow efficiently.

What's next

We plan to look for partners among airlines and travel agencies, and further expand the idea to the ability to travel only with NFT tickets on all types of transport. We want to build a community of travelers who want to feel being innovators disrupting one of the most old-fashioned industries. As a theory, we would like to test the idea to partner up also with Web3 developers to build additional products for travel industry.