velink - A Blockchain-based Shared Mobility Platform for Private and Commercial Vehicles utilizing ERC-721 Tokens

Transportation of people and goods is important and crucial in the context of smart cities. The trend in regard of people’s mobility is moving from privately owned vehicles towards shared mobility. This trend is even stronger in urban areas, where space for parking is limited, and the mobility is supported by the public transport system, which lowers the need for private vehicles. Several challenges and barriers of currently available solutions retard a massive growth of this mobility option, such as the trust problem, data monopolism, or intermediary costs.

Decentralizing mobility management is a promising approach to solve the current problems of the mobility market, allowing to move towards a more usable internet of mobility and smart transportation. Leveraging blockchain technology allows to cut intermediary costs, by utilizing smart contracts. Important in this ecosystem is the proof of identity of participants in the blockchain network. To proof the possession of the claimed identity, the private key corresponding to the wallet address is utilized, and therefore essential to protect. In this paper, a blockchain-based shared mobility platform is proposed and a proof-of-concept is shown. First, current problems and stateof-the-art systems are analyzed. Then, a decentralized concept is built based on ERC-721 tokens, implemented in a smart contract, and augmented with a Hardware Security Module (HSM) to protect the confidential key material. Finally, the system is evaluated and compared against state-of-the-art solutions