La’Zooz is a decentralized, collaborative transportation network, built around digital currency. Yep, in addition to having an apostrophe before a Z in their name, they have a description that’s a bit out of the realm of typical.
Specifically, the La’Zooz founders describe this new ridesharing network as:
“A Decentralized Transportation Platform owned by the community and utilising vehicles` unused space to create a variety of smart transportation solutions. By using cryptocurrency technology La`Zooz works with a ‘Fair Share’ rewarding mechanism for developers, users and backers.”
You can’t actually find rides with La’Zooz yet. The Zooz mining app is currently being used to build up a database of movement information from early adopters. The platform won’t launch ridesharing until they reach a critical mass:
“Once the critical mass of movement is reached in a certain geographical region the ride-sharing and other smart transportation services will become instantly enabled. The rate of distribution of zooz tokens via movement-based mining is designed to encourage the growth of local La`Zooz communities. Thus, it is proportional not only to the distance you are driving, but also to the growth of the community in your area incentivising users to promote the La`Zooz network in their own region.”
With 2,735 members so far, La’Zooz has the highest concentration of users in Israel where it was founded, but also a solid showing in Europe and a surprising number of early adopters in the United States.
The idea is more than just Ridesharing. La’Zooz is reminiscent of the early concept of Couchsurfing where there is no money changing hands and no one profits from the business. But unlike couchsurfing, La’Zooz is compensating everyone using cryptocurrency to ensure fair use by all. Drivers earn bitcoins for turning on the app while driving around, and riders will pay using these Zooz coins (which they call tokens). Even developers contributing to the project can earn bitcoins for their work.
Here’s an interesting interview with one of the La’Zooz founders in Shareable.
Read more about ridesharing networks around the world. Or check out my spreadsheet of ridesharing companies (select the “Transportation” Category and “Ridesharing” sub-category).