joaxapDAO governance models - 101
In this previous article, I talk about my immersion into DAOs.The approach I took to learn about them was to deep dive and collaborate on a few of them. I am still collaborating -and learning. Furthermore, I have found more resources to help understand the tool universe that web3 is bringing to the equation. But in this post, I am going to dissect and describe the different governance models of several DAOs. Note: the governance of a DAO is as fluid as the DAO itself. Because of its decentral...
joaxapThe mobile web3 experience is coming
Not so far from today, we will start seeing blockchain-enabled features on our mobile phones. These features, while minor, will make our user experience incredibly better than what it is today. The general belief of blockchain is that it involves cryptocurrencies. While not far from wrong, it also enables a new set of functionalities we are starting to discover. The reality is that despite the ubiquity of mobile devices, there are only two operative systems out there that control our lives on...
joaxapThe "death valley" for DAOs - thrive or die.
Those involved in startups know that there is a time, early in the life cycle of the business, between Seed round and Series A round, where most startups die or stall, called the Valley of Death. Death Valley is the moment of truth for a startup. It is the gap between the “idea of a business model” and the revenue generation from the product, when expenses are high and cash is limited. It’s when the company has to hire the team, build the product, and launch it. It is when they need to show t...
Exploring the world of web3 by immersion. Global head of product at zerohash.com
joaxapDAO governance models - 101
In this previous article, I talk about my immersion into DAOs.The approach I took to learn about them was to deep dive and collaborate on a few of them. I am still collaborating -and learning. Furthermore, I have found more resources to help understand the tool universe that web3 is bringing to the equation. But in this post, I am going to dissect and describe the different governance models of several DAOs. Note: the governance of a DAO is as fluid as the DAO itself. Because of its decentral...
joaxapThe mobile web3 experience is coming
Not so far from today, we will start seeing blockchain-enabled features on our mobile phones. These features, while minor, will make our user experience incredibly better than what it is today. The general belief of blockchain is that it involves cryptocurrencies. While not far from wrong, it also enables a new set of functionalities we are starting to discover. The reality is that despite the ubiquity of mobile devices, there are only two operative systems out there that control our lives on...
joaxapThe "death valley" for DAOs - thrive or die.
Those involved in startups know that there is a time, early in the life cycle of the business, between Seed round and Series A round, where most startups die or stall, called the Valley of Death. Death Valley is the moment of truth for a startup. It is the gap between the “idea of a business model” and the revenue generation from the product, when expenses are high and cash is limited. It’s when the company has to hire the team, build the product, and launch it. It is when they need to show t...
Exploring the world of web3 by immersion. Global head of product at zerohash.com
Subscribe to joaxap
Subscribe to joaxap
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
<100 subscribers
<100 subscribers
Today, when you book an airplane ticket online, you most likely visit one of the large OTAs (online travel agencies) and pay for it. Once it's paid, you get the reservation information on this website with a reservation number that allows you to verify your booking on the airline's website.
What if you want to change the ticket? You may want to try to do so through the airline's website, but oops, 'This reservation is made through a third party website, please contact this website to make any changes to this reservation.'
You are limited to using your OTA's website to do reservation changes and, even worse, seat changes. Sometimes you won't even be able to do so, even by calling the airline.
This inefficiency exists because the integrations between platforms are tedious, cumbersome, and hard to maintain. Moreover, every time one of the many players that have a role in your reservation evolves, the others have to catch up and invest in upgrading their integration.
Thanks to Web2, it is possible to make online reservations for airplane tickets. Overall, it has been one of the significant benefits of making this process entirely digital. But in this never ending, evolving world, things need to change. Web3 is here to help.
Web3 is a new paradigm of digital logic based on blockchain technology. Blockchain-focused technologies enforce a new way of doing things, as follows:
All data has to be immutable and stored in the chain.
All programs have to be immutable and stored in the chain.
Running a program over a specific data set needs the data owner's permission.
All these enforcements happen via cryptographic mechanisms that render it impossible to have a third party execute one of these programs on your information without your wallet's permission.
So based on this, how would the travel industry leverage the Web3 paradigm to make things better?
Reading around Twitter, you must have found plenty of references to what an NFT is. It refers to the non-fungible token standard, created as ERC-721 in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The Ethereum network is the most prolific level-1 network to run smart contracts today. Most of the NFT collections get minted in this chain. In addition, the most significant development community works on this chain, making it the most advanced in terms of resources, libraries, and knowledge base.
The purpose of the NFT is to earmark an asset (digital or physical) to a wallet with certainty. This earmarking happens by "minting" a token that cannot be duplicated but can be transferred. As you can see, this token resembles an airplane ticket reservation.
But as with many other tokens in Ethereum (and the other chains), these are governed by smart contracts, which in the end, are just pieces of software we can mold to our needs.
Well, the title describes it very precisely. What if we minted a token every time we booked a trip? This token would include all of the reservation information, and it would be minted directly to our wallet.
The OTA now integrates with our Web3 wallet (Metamask) that interacts with this token. So if the OTA needs to check the reservation information, it would ask for our permission.
Here is the first significant shift between Web2 and Web3. The access to the booking reservation now sits in the wallet.
Now that the reservation is in our wallet, in a standardized form of token, we can access our booking to other organizations. Overall, it opens the market to a new breed of services that couldn't have existed before.
If we ask the airline (or any organization with the power to change that airline's reservation) to change our ticket, it would first ask for access to the token.
The airline can now access the token information and provide the services needed for the booking—no need to identify oneself. Having the token in your wallet is enough.
When the reservation is changed, the permission for the token gets revoked automatically.
The whole point of the airport check-in is to identify yourself as the rightful person to board the plane and to check the luggage going with you to the destination.
In this case, you would identify your wallet, and the agent or machine would gather the token information to compare it to your identification.
This identification would issue a claim on your token in the ERC-725 format. This claim confirms that you are the rightful owner of the ticket, so this NFT is enough to let you in. In addition, the claim can hold some identification information—your wallet would be the portal to access this information.
At the airplane gate, you would again permit the machine or agent to access the NFT and claim the information to revalidate your identity before boarding the plane.
First, this model enables a fully digital experience for the consumer. All the steps here are no different than on Web2:
Book a reservation online
Receive tickets (in the form of NFT)
Check in at the airport with NFT
Board airplane with NFT
If you replace booking boarding passes with NFTs, you will have the same customer experience, as both are QR codes.
The difference resides in the ownership piece. The wallet holder always grants the information access. The customer is conscious of when and why their booking and personal information has been accessed.
Furthermore, the airline—via the travel platform—and the OTA use one standard for the booking tokens. Other organizations can now use this standard to augment the customer experience.
If the bookings all come as tokens, your wallet is the central point for your travel arrangements.
Imagine how easy it would be for American Express or any other white-glove concierge service to access and help you manage your travel with your consent.
Imagine how easy it would be to account for your total travel costs since everything is in your wallet.
Finally, imagine how easy it would be to have an app that can show you the itinerary and different travel options with your consent instead of Google reading your emails to show you the same information. It is all seamless with the token approach.
In this shift from Web2 to Web3, your booking and personal information no longer sits in the OTA's database. It sits on your token. Airlines inevitably hold your information as there are laws around passenger identification. But we will see the identity space also move to Web3 soon.
When you own your information, the OTAs can no longer lurke your information or hold you hostage on their tool. You have control of access and your information.
The OTA can focus on what they are good at: helping book your travels. Period. No need to store lengths of information to fulfill their mission. They can just help you get your travel token minted appropriately.
Aside from the control of access and where the information sits, the other major paradigm shift is the standards applied.
The internet didn't become mainstream until some major standards were adopted—namely, TCP/IP and URLs. These two things alone helped standardize access to the network, which helped people build tools and browsers at a much faster pace.
Web3 helps drastically abstract the business logic of digital assets. This standardization enables businesses to focus on their true mission, leaving technology and digital assets to the blockchain and the customers' wallets.
I have oversimplified a travel-based protocol within a small use case. Obviously, the travel industry cannot be summarized in what I have described in this article, but the power of Web3 can be. If we, in 1500 words, have been able to describe how travel booking could be ported to Web3, imagine how fast we could explore other use cases. It's a matter of finding the first use case and pushing forward.
After all, we never thought we could have a QR code directly issued to our phones from our couch at home, without having to talk to anyone, and then board a plane using that code.
Today, when you book an airplane ticket online, you most likely visit one of the large OTAs (online travel agencies) and pay for it. Once it's paid, you get the reservation information on this website with a reservation number that allows you to verify your booking on the airline's website.
What if you want to change the ticket? You may want to try to do so through the airline's website, but oops, 'This reservation is made through a third party website, please contact this website to make any changes to this reservation.'
You are limited to using your OTA's website to do reservation changes and, even worse, seat changes. Sometimes you won't even be able to do so, even by calling the airline.
This inefficiency exists because the integrations between platforms are tedious, cumbersome, and hard to maintain. Moreover, every time one of the many players that have a role in your reservation evolves, the others have to catch up and invest in upgrading their integration.
Thanks to Web2, it is possible to make online reservations for airplane tickets. Overall, it has been one of the significant benefits of making this process entirely digital. But in this never ending, evolving world, things need to change. Web3 is here to help.
Web3 is a new paradigm of digital logic based on blockchain technology. Blockchain-focused technologies enforce a new way of doing things, as follows:
All data has to be immutable and stored in the chain.
All programs have to be immutable and stored in the chain.
Running a program over a specific data set needs the data owner's permission.
All these enforcements happen via cryptographic mechanisms that render it impossible to have a third party execute one of these programs on your information without your wallet's permission.
So based on this, how would the travel industry leverage the Web3 paradigm to make things better?
Reading around Twitter, you must have found plenty of references to what an NFT is. It refers to the non-fungible token standard, created as ERC-721 in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The Ethereum network is the most prolific level-1 network to run smart contracts today. Most of the NFT collections get minted in this chain. In addition, the most significant development community works on this chain, making it the most advanced in terms of resources, libraries, and knowledge base.
The purpose of the NFT is to earmark an asset (digital or physical) to a wallet with certainty. This earmarking happens by "minting" a token that cannot be duplicated but can be transferred. As you can see, this token resembles an airplane ticket reservation.
But as with many other tokens in Ethereum (and the other chains), these are governed by smart contracts, which in the end, are just pieces of software we can mold to our needs.
Well, the title describes it very precisely. What if we minted a token every time we booked a trip? This token would include all of the reservation information, and it would be minted directly to our wallet.
The OTA now integrates with our Web3 wallet (Metamask) that interacts with this token. So if the OTA needs to check the reservation information, it would ask for our permission.
Here is the first significant shift between Web2 and Web3. The access to the booking reservation now sits in the wallet.
Now that the reservation is in our wallet, in a standardized form of token, we can access our booking to other organizations. Overall, it opens the market to a new breed of services that couldn't have existed before.
If we ask the airline (or any organization with the power to change that airline's reservation) to change our ticket, it would first ask for access to the token.
The airline can now access the token information and provide the services needed for the booking—no need to identify oneself. Having the token in your wallet is enough.
When the reservation is changed, the permission for the token gets revoked automatically.
The whole point of the airport check-in is to identify yourself as the rightful person to board the plane and to check the luggage going with you to the destination.
In this case, you would identify your wallet, and the agent or machine would gather the token information to compare it to your identification.
This identification would issue a claim on your token in the ERC-725 format. This claim confirms that you are the rightful owner of the ticket, so this NFT is enough to let you in. In addition, the claim can hold some identification information—your wallet would be the portal to access this information.
At the airplane gate, you would again permit the machine or agent to access the NFT and claim the information to revalidate your identity before boarding the plane.
First, this model enables a fully digital experience for the consumer. All the steps here are no different than on Web2:
Book a reservation online
Receive tickets (in the form of NFT)
Check in at the airport with NFT
Board airplane with NFT
If you replace booking boarding passes with NFTs, you will have the same customer experience, as both are QR codes.
The difference resides in the ownership piece. The wallet holder always grants the information access. The customer is conscious of when and why their booking and personal information has been accessed.
Furthermore, the airline—via the travel platform—and the OTA use one standard for the booking tokens. Other organizations can now use this standard to augment the customer experience.
If the bookings all come as tokens, your wallet is the central point for your travel arrangements.
Imagine how easy it would be for American Express or any other white-glove concierge service to access and help you manage your travel with your consent.
Imagine how easy it would be to account for your total travel costs since everything is in your wallet.
Finally, imagine how easy it would be to have an app that can show you the itinerary and different travel options with your consent instead of Google reading your emails to show you the same information. It is all seamless with the token approach.
In this shift from Web2 to Web3, your booking and personal information no longer sits in the OTA's database. It sits on your token. Airlines inevitably hold your information as there are laws around passenger identification. But we will see the identity space also move to Web3 soon.
When you own your information, the OTAs can no longer lurke your information or hold you hostage on their tool. You have control of access and your information.
The OTA can focus on what they are good at: helping book your travels. Period. No need to store lengths of information to fulfill their mission. They can just help you get your travel token minted appropriately.
Aside from the control of access and where the information sits, the other major paradigm shift is the standards applied.
The internet didn't become mainstream until some major standards were adopted—namely, TCP/IP and URLs. These two things alone helped standardize access to the network, which helped people build tools and browsers at a much faster pace.
Web3 helps drastically abstract the business logic of digital assets. This standardization enables businesses to focus on their true mission, leaving technology and digital assets to the blockchain and the customers' wallets.
I have oversimplified a travel-based protocol within a small use case. Obviously, the travel industry cannot be summarized in what I have described in this article, but the power of Web3 can be. If we, in 1500 words, have been able to describe how travel booking could be ported to Web3, imagine how fast we could explore other use cases. It's a matter of finding the first use case and pushing forward.
After all, we never thought we could have a QR code directly issued to our phones from our couch at home, without having to talk to anyone, and then board a plane using that code.
No activity yet