Editor’s note: This article is from Hash Future, author: Cao Lijun, published with authorization.

The evil of the "poisonous" horned beast

On August 24, a 20-year-old girl in Yueqing City was killed after taking a Didi ride. This is the second time in three months that Didi has been criticized by unanimous public opinion across the country because of vicious cases.

According to CCTV data, in the past four years, there have been at least 50 cases of sexual assault and harassment by Didi drivers reported publicly by the media and handled by relevant court departments. Among them were 2 cases of intentional homicide, 19 cases of rape, 9 cases of forced molestation, 5 cases of administrative punishment, and 15 cases of unregistered sexual harassment, involving 50 drivers and 53 victims (all female).

According to 36 Krypton media reports, Didi once counted at an internal safety meeting that there will be one casualty event in every million trips, including traffic accidents and vicious incidents between drivers and passengers. But how to reduce the death rate, the masses have not seen Didi come up with a practical operation plan for a long time.

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(Source: Internet public information)

Why did Didi delay in coming up with a rectification plan? In fact, Shunfengche is a major business of Didi. According to network data, from the perspective of the number of users, Shunfengche has 30 million registered car owners and 160 million registered passengers; from the perspective of the number of orders, the average daily order is 2 million, accounting for 8% of the total daily average order; from the perspective of income , Shunfengche’s annual revenue is about 800 million yuan, and it is Didi’s only profitable business. The profit of the whole company depends entirely on this business. It is conceivable that Didi has difficulty in drastically reforming the ride-hailing business, because this business is a very important piece of Didi’s cake. It is conceivable that the problem of freewheeling has continued but has not changed for a long time.

Didi's inaction forced government agencies to intervene. On the afternoon of August 26, the Ministry of Transport, together with the Ministry of Public Security and the transportation and public security departments of Beijing and Tianjin, conducted a joint interview with Didi and ordered it to immediately conduct a comprehensive rectification of the ride-hailing business. On August 27, the Ministry of Communications criticized on its official website: "If it cannot provide practical and effective protection measures for the safety of passengers, such an enterprise will not matter."

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The evil of Didi, a "poisonous" horned beast, does not stop there.

Didi is a taxi-hailing company that emerged from the "subsidy war". In January 2014, Didi kicked off the subsidy war. This subsidy war has made people across the country remember the two companies Didi and Kuaidi, and it has also enabled consumers to enjoy the benefits brought by capital. During that time, when taking a taxi, Kuai subsidized 8 yuan, and Didi subsidized 10 yuan; Kuai further subsidized 11 yuan; both parties continued to increase their subsidies. For consumers, this is a joyful price reduction activity; however, for the two companies, this is a life-and-death battle: no one is willing to take a step back, because once lost, all capital investment in the past will become zero. Finally, on February 14, 2015, due to various reasons, Didi and Kuaidi announced their merger. Furthermore, on August 1, 2016, Didi and Uber China merged, which meant that the war that had lasted for many years in the taxi-hailing field came to an end temporarily, and Didi finally passed five hurdles and became the overlord.

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To deal with the evil of the "poisonous" horned beast, what good strategies do we have?

The blockchain technology that has been hotly discussed in recent years can just form a new business form. The application of blockchain technology can bring the following benefits:

First, the blockchain can transform trust in people into trust in machines;

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Countermeasure 1 - Security Issues

Everyone uses Didi Taxi, on the one hand, to improve efficiency and save time; on the other hand, people have basic trust in this taxi-hailing platform, and can entrust their own safety on the platform. However, after the Yueqing incident, everyone questioned the credibility of Didi.

The development of blockchain technology solves the trust problem for both parties to the transaction, and proposes a new solution. Blockchain technology allows the transaction process to be recorded in a system that cannot be tampered with. Drivers can upload information such as identity information, vehicle location, price, and passenger evaluations to the blockchain, and passengers can filter based on driver information to find a more reliable driver that matches their needs. All nodes in the entire network can verify and authenticate the information in the entire system, and maintain the entire trusted environment together.

At this time, people's trust in the platform is based on the previous business history of the platform; and through blockchain technology, people's trust in the new taxi-hailing system is based on the characteristics that the entire system cannot be tampered with and is jointly maintained. Trust in giants has transformed into trust in machines. The relationship between the user and the system thus changes.

Since every transaction in the blockchain is completely transparent and cannot be changed, users can trace any transaction information at any time. If a reward and punishment system is established through blockchain technology, drivers and passengers can score each other, and there is a related appeal function. At the same time, the community votes to determine whether the behavior is reasonable, so as to prevent malicious evaluation behavior. This is a step up from Didi's rating system.

Before the Yueqing incident, the driver had already performed malicious behaviors that were unfavorable to passengers, and the passengers had already complained about the behavior to the Didi platform. However, due to the various reasons mentioned above, Didi responded very slowly and did not release the information in time. In the blockchain network, if the passenger uploads the above information to the blockchain, the Yueqing girl will find out the driver's past records in time when she takes a taxi on the 24th, and will not choose to take the driver's vehicle. Thus avoiding the tragedy.

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Countermeasure 2 - Subsidy War

Taxi-hailing is a typical two-sided market, but it also has physical space constraints. Every additional passenger and driver added to the network will bring about an improvement in overall efficiency (faster order acceptance and less empty driving distance) . Therefore, ideally, a monopolized platform is the best choice to maximize the overall efficiency of society. This is the logical premise of the subsidy war in the taxi-hailing field. In order to obtain long-term monopoly benefits in the future, major platforms will use various methods to eliminate competitors in the early stage. "Subsidy burning money" is currently a mainstream approach. The method brings many disadvantages, but the capital parties still enjoy it, because once they win the subsidy war and occupy the monopoly market, the capital parties will get huge profits.

From the perspective of users, although they enjoyed a wave of benefits brought by capital during the subsidy war, after the war, consumers need to clean up the mess, such as Didi’s price increase. On the one hand, the subsidy war has caused damage to market order and rules, and on the other hand, it has also brought price pressure to users in the later stage. In the final analysis, the subsidy war is a short-sighted behavior that consumes later profits in advance.

Is it possible for an enterprise to achieve healthy development while attracting consumers and form a win-win situation with consumers? Blockchain technology provides a way of thinking.

The blockchain can reshape the relationship between users and the platform, allowing users to change from the role of consumers to the coexistence of investors and consumers of the platform. By issuing tokens, the interests of consumers are directly tied to the development of the platform, making consumers more motivated to help the platform to promote. Consumers are paving the way for their own profits while spreading word of mouth. From a specific operational level, passengers and drivers can get tokens when they access platform services, and the earlier passengers and drivers join, the more tokens they get, and token holders will enjoy the dividends brought about by the scale of the platform in the future . Users who join later can also obtain more tokens by pulling new users. Throughout the process, the total amount of tokens, the issuance mechanism, and related reward and punishment measures are guaranteed to be open and transparent by the blockchain, and even giants that grow into a monopoly platform cannot be tampered with.

In a fundamental sense, the blockchain builds a credible value network to solve possible problems in the value exchange process. Based on a trusted blockchain network, the efficiency of the application market can be greatly improved, and the reasonable distribution of value can be realized. Compared with the application of blockchain in other fields, taxi-hailing service is very in line with the characteristics of "chainization" such as p2p, standardization, and network gain effect, and it is easy to realize digitization and on-chain transactions. If the driver takes the passenger from point A to point B, the taxi distance and time will be automatically calculated through GPS, and through the open and transparent billing system on the chain, the intelligent contract of the account on the passenger chain will realize automatic transfer, and 100% of the value of the taxi service will be restored to each person. A participating general public to realize the true "Internet of Value". It can be said that taxi-hailing and other industries are naturally suitable for the application of blockchain technology.

Looking forward to the future, the blockchain will change the entire production relationship and accelerate the growth and innovation of enterprises. In the early stages of promotion and competition, the team no longer needs to spend huge sums of money on marketing promotion and subsidies, but can use funds and talents for technology research and development and product polishing. Users will also have a longer-term vision when choosing a platform and choose long-term cooperation. partner. The blockchain truly reshapes the relationship between users and the platform, achieving win-win cooperation.

At present, we also need to admit that there may still be some practical problems in the application of the token mechanism. On the one hand, if it involves the exchange between tokens and issued coins, it is still not feasible at the legal level; on the other hand, tokens are still unfamiliar to most drivers and passengers, and the education and promotion of the market will cost a certain amount of money . The combination of taxi-hailing scenarios and blockchain technology still needs to be solved in practice.

Overall, blockchain technology is bound to be applied in the taxi-hailing industry. As the blockchain technology becomes more and more mature, the regulatory system is becoming more and more perfect. Whether it is to ensure the safety of users or provide another way of thinking for the "subsidy war", the blockchain will bring a relatively complete solution. . With the continuous advancement and development of technology, it is believed that there will be fewer and fewer "poisonous" horned beasts in the market, and more and more real unicorn companies!