La'Zooz: Carpooling on the blockchain is the real sharing economy

Note: In the sharing economy model, everyone can share all social resources fairly and for a fee; the essence of blockchain technology is a distributed ledger, which provides technical support for the global sharing and release of resources. Moreover, the decentralization of distributed ledgers can obtain equal security in information distribution. Therefore, it is not difficult to see that the two have the potential for technical integration. La'Zooz has used the advantages of blockchain to develop a carpooling application that is completely independent of individuals, stimulating the growth of driver members and maximizing the utilization of cars.

The use cases of blockchain technology are almost limitless, and a large number of companies will adopt distributed ledger technology to develop different business models. La'Zooz is a digital currency enthusiast who has been closely following technology trends and has applied blockchain technology to carpooling applications. The sharing economy movement has gained more momentum, and the integration of powerful forms of technology will bring new innovative projects.

La'Zooz deepens the decentralization of the carpooling concept

To understand the concept of carpooling, we first need to understand that its primary goal is to make traffic congestion more efficient. Instead of blindly increasing the number of vehicles, La'Zooz's approach is to maximize the role of existing infrastructure while keeping the service price low.

Companies like Uber and Lyft are also working to solve this problem, although they still control the money of drivers and passengers. La'Zooz focuses on peer-to-peer transfers in the ride-sharing industry, increasing the number of people sharing a ride instead of spreading them across different vehicles.

But the concept of La'Zooz is slightly different because it focuses on community contribution, where community members can jointly decide how to distribute rewards using a complex protocol. The "weight" of each member is determined by the community, so there is no traditional individual leadership.

Decentralizing transportation is not easy, and turning it into an intelligent system open to everyone is even more difficult. The introduction of blockchain technology in this field makes it possible to fairly distribute rewards. Because the distribution mechanism is determined by community members, rather than being busy dealing with a fixed price mechanism. And distributed ledger technology allows La'Zooz to synchronize the availability of carpool seats in real time.

In view of the current market's emphasis on mobile services, La'Zooz has released an Android mobile app. Of course, it cannot be equated with ordinary daily applications, because its purpose is to use the car rental field to mine and obtain the critical mass of the sharing economy movement.

The best way for people who want to become La'Zooz drivers is to open the mobile app and drive more than 20 kilometers. This will earn you Zooz tokens as rewards. This will encourage early users to participate in person.

However, not everyone wants to be a driver, and there is a growing demand for the La'Zooz community around the world. People who recommend new users to use the platform and share activity data will also be rewarded with tokens. And once an area reaches critical mass, carpooling and other smart transportation services will be enabled.

The ultimate goal of La'Zooz is to bring people together and promote collaboration. Most tasks are automatically executed, and teams can store tokens in a multi-signature wallet, which can then be redistributed based on member task completion blocks.

Israeli ride-sharing app lets users earn virtual currency

Note: Israel's La'Zooz app gives both passengers and drivers who join the ride-sharing network the opportunity to earn Zooz coins in their own way.

When Bitcoin first appeared, it seemed to bring about a revolution. This crowd-sourced currency is independent of central banks and may even become the legal tender of the Internet age. In the eyes of many people, this new economic model will threaten the traditional economy and lead society into the 21st century and even beyond.

But if we really want to achieve change, says Matan Field of La'Zooz, "it's not enough to just play around with the currency." "We want to change the way people think about transportation, and from there, the way people think about the economy. So we came up with the 'Theory of Integration.' We believe it will change the world from top to bottom."

It may be a utopian vision, but Field believes it has a chance of being realized. If Bitcoin is Revolution 1.0, then La'Zooz (which means "mobility" in Hebrew) is Revolution 3.0 or more advanced, Field said in an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel. It is indeed an "integrated theory" of how society works, based on a carpooling system. In the system, drivers are paid in a virtual currency called "Zooz" coins, named after the currency of the Talmudic period. Because it supports a decentralized market, members from all over the world on the network can work together.

While Field wasn’t the first to foresee how this crowd-sharing model and Bitcoin would change society, he believes his project has the best chance of making those changes happen. Users download the La’Zooz app and join a ride-sharing network. When enough drivers in an area join (based on research, Field believes that around 30% of drivers in a region will be enough to achieve critical results), users can hail a taxi on the network heading in their direction.

Users are not required to pay cash, but Zooz coins, which will be recorded as points in the driver's account. "Users only pay for the part of the journey they take." Field said, "This is the difference between us and other online taxi services. They are more like taxi services provided by drivers to make profits, while our service is true ride sharing."

By joining the network, both drivers and passengers have the opportunity to earn Zooz coins in their own way.

Field said that so far, there have been many attempts at ride-sharing, but all have failed. Zooz coins came into being at this time. Previously, ride-sharing has always faced the problem of "which came first, the chicken or the egg". Field said: "Many projects and members of the ride-sharing service network exchange points or other benefits, but without incentives, there is no way to create results to make the network work properly. So we use Zooz coins to incentivize more people to join the network."

Even if you're not a driver, you can still earn Zooz coins. Passengers can accumulate virtual currency just like drivers by downloading the app and sharing their location. "They can accumulate Zooz coins by joining our network, just like drivers do, and then use it to pay for fares," Field said.

The app is currently available on Android, but an iPhone version is still in development.

Like Bitcoin, Zooz coins can be redeemed and their value is determined through public transactions. But unlike Bitcoin, Field hopes to strictly control Zooz coins. "There will be a limit to the increase and decrease in the value of Zooz coins, so it will not fluctuate as drastically as the value of Bitcoin." Field said, "At the same time, we also plan to store hard currency cash reserves equivalent to the value of Zooz coins in circulation to deal with speculation." He continued: "La'Zooz has lawyers who have worked in many countries to ensure that our system will not violate the financial system and operate without a license."

However, the development of Zoozcoin is decentralized. Field said that it is a more democratic process than Bitcoin. Due to technical limitations, only a small number of developers developed Bitcoin, and they became the earliest users of Bitcoin. This brought benefits to those who had the opportunity to create Bitcoin. The increase in demand made these developers rich quickly, and they sold the Bitcoins they mined for free at market prices.

La'Zooz allows anyone to participate in the development of Zooz coins. "Anyone can create Bitcoin as long as they drive a car, and they can earn it as long as they drive a car or take someone else's car." Field said that users who currently download this app can earn Zooz coin points just by running the device before the ride-sharing function is launched. After they actually use the system, these points will be converted into Zooz coins and deposited into the user's online wallet.

La'Zooz also welcomes other groups who wish to participate in this decentralized decision-making process. "As an open source project, La'Zooz and other open APIs create standardized communication protocols that allow any third-party applications to join and collaborate to provide transportation services such as ride-sharing, peer-to-peer taxi services, decentralized transportation services, mobility services, etc."

Each network operates independently, minting its own Zooz tokens for its members and deciding how many rides the network needs, and how many Zooz tokens participants can mint themselves.

Field even believes that the Zooz system will eventually affect other modes of travel and transportation, such as airplanes, trains or cargo ships. "Our collaborators will create new transportation markets, turning large amounts of idle positions and spaces into usable, exchangeable wealth. Imagine a transportation network that can quickly, conveniently and cheaply take anyone or anything to where they need to go, without congestion along the way, and maintain a healthy transportation ecosystem," Field said. He is a postdoctoral student in theoretical physics at the Israel Institute of Technology. There he began to think about new models of how to use technology to connect people. A year ago, he came up with the concept of La'zooz. "I realized that smartphones can play a big role in connecting people. If ride-sharing is done well, it will become a very viable project."

To turn his vision into reality, Field and his partners Oren Sokolowsky and Shay Zluf founded the La'Zooz platform, and subsequently added more employees, most recently Eitan Katchka, to the core team.

La'Zooz's vision may sound far-fetched, like a mirage, but surprisingly, many companies, even multinational corporations, are very interested in this project. They gave Field and his partners enough time to present their ideas to the company's executives, and some of them even gave them financial support.

"We are currently working with a large, well-known multinational company on legal issues, and they told us that they would prefer to accept Zooz coins," Field said. "When ride sharing becomes the norm, not just for passengers in taxis, but for everyone and everything, including transporting goods and passengers on airplanes, it becomes a lifestyle, and global pollution will become less and less, and the world will become more just. This is the vision of La'Zooz, and I think this trend is inevitable.