Please describe your proposed solution.
1- Connected Car Market Size
Vehicles are increasingly becoming IoT devices with internet capabilities, including greater connectivity. The expected size of the connected car fleet industry is expected to grow from worldwide 200 million units in 2021, to over 800 million in 2035 [1].
In addition, the global connected car market swelled to 65 billion USD in 2021. Meanwhile, the market is expected to expand to approximately 121 billion USD by 2025. [1]
2- Connected Car Privacy and Security Challenges, as well as Blockchain's Role
The increasing connectivity of vehicles constitutes a rising privacy and security problem. After all, vehicles connect solely to centralized servers – including manufacturers' servers.
Plus, the increasing connectivity of vehicles is opening up the problem of a broader "attack area" for malicious actors. Hence, a car could be hacked from the wireless to CAN Bus [2].
The automotive and mobility sector is aware of these issues. Hence, several articles and research papers were published to address this issue, emphasizing the role of the Blockchain in ensuring secure, private IoT vehicles [3] [4] [5].
3- Connected Car Blockchain Solutions MUST be real Web3 solutions
Blockchain solutions for the automotive sector must be real Web3 decentralized solutions. More specifically, there should be no involvement from centralized servers in the vehicle data transmitted to the Blockchain.
Unfortunately, currently, several Blockchain solutions claim to be real Web3 solutions when this simply isn't the case. In reality, these solutions are Web2 centralized but packaged in Web3 marketing. Centralized entities manage these tools.
Using comprehensive and real-life examples, Moxie Marlinspike discusses the issue with the blockchain industry in a recent blog post [6].
On the opposite side of the coin, PeakChain is working on developing a real Web3 automotive solution. Ultimately, through the solution, car data could neither be impacted by by centralized servers nor managed by centralized entities.
4- Features of PeakChain Hardware wallet:
But, to realize the above, we are focusing on a hardware device with car connectivity while offering the below functionalities:
· The car connects to the hardware directly through a dedicated OBD2 port; this port exists in almost every car.
· The hardware is connected to the internet through an embedded sim card .
· Our hardware is connected exclusively with the Cardano Blockchain by submitting transactions. There is no server in the middle connected to our hardware.
· The hardware retrieves sensitive data from the vehicle like vehicle speed, the time, engine RPM etc.
· Data is obtained in a raw output in a special CAN Bus format.
· This data is decoded in a human-readable format using embedded software.
· The hardware runs a full Cardano node and a wallet.
· Upon trip completion, the hardware submits a transaction to the Cardano blockchain, including the previously retrieved vehicle data's metadata.
This hardware will allow many Web3 mobility solutions on Cardano to merge. Check the following section to discover the PeakChain hardware component's application domains.
References
[1] strategy&, Part oft he PwC network, "Digital Auto Report 2021, acceleration towards the new normal "- volume1 https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/de/en/industries/automotive/digital-auto-report-2021/strategyand-digital-auto-report-2021-vol1.pdf
[2] Sen Nie, Ling Liu, and Yuefeng Du. Free-fall: hacking tesla from wireless to can bus. Briefing, Black Hat USA, pages 1–16, 2017.
[3] A. Dorri, M. Steger, S. S. Kanhere and R. Jurdak, "BlockChain: A Distributed Solution to Automotive Security and Privacy," in IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 119-125, Dec. 2017, doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2017.1700879.
[4] J. Halabi and H. Artail, "A Lightweight Synchronous Cryptographic Hash Chain Solution to Securing the Vehicle CAN bus," 2018 IEEE International Multidisciplinary Conference on Engineering Technology (IMCET), 2018, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/IMCET.2018.8603057.
[5] Falco, G., & Siegel, J.E. (2020). Assuring Automotive Data and Software Integrity Employing Distributed Hash Tables and Blockchain. ArXiv, abs/2002.02780.
[6] Moxie Marlinspike, "My first impressions of web3", https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html, "Jan 07, 2022".
Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.
Mobility, as a sector, is one of the largest and fastest-growing by market size and user numbers. However, the hardware as mentioned above will help unlock innumerable mobility solutions for exclusive use on the Cardano Blockchain.
Ultimately, this will increase demand for the Cardano blockchain: by increasing retail users and enhancing the adoption of Cardano by automotive manufacturers and mobility service providers.
What follows are some of the application domains of the PeakChain hardware component.
1- Remote Software Update:
Given the rapid digitalization and proliferation of vehicle connectivity, the number of ECUs (Electronic Control Units) embedded in each Car is growing at a significant pace.
ECUs contain software that should be continuously maintained and updated. That way, fix bugs can be applied while features can be enhanced.
The firmware update process could be done by driving to a service center and flashing the software manually, or through a remote software update.
The remote software update represents one of the biggest security challenges in the automotive industry.
Similar to Tesla, one current solution is using a VPN. Still, the long-term solution should be by connecting cars to the Blockchain using a dedicated device and performing the updates in a decentralized way.
Thus, a hardware component with vehicle connectivity and which receives ECU update instructions through blockchain transactions, but without a centralized manufacturer server in use, is integral. This approach will reduce the malicious actors' attack surface.
2- Insurance
Car Insurance companies are willing to offer customizable insurance contracts based on their customers' driving behavior. Nonetheless, such driving behavior contains sensitive content that should be collected directly from the car, like speed, braking behavior, etc..,
Hence, a hardware device is needed to collect these sensitive data directly from the vehicle, hash it and transmit it securely to the Blockchain.
Just the allowed actors could decode the driving data existing in the Blockchain using their private keys.
3- Electric Vehicles
The proliferation of electric vehicles is incredibly fast. Still, all data is managed in a centralized manner – examples of these include the car manufacturers' or charging station service providers' servers. Obviously, though, all vehicle data should be managed by the charging service provider platforms for charging electric cars.
To help enable a smooth charging user experience, automatic vehicle charging should be adapted based on the customer's need and their typical preferred journey habits. Consequently, the car should interact with other IoT devices like a smart home. Special hardware embedded in the car is, in this use case, essential for secure and private data communication through the Blockchain
4- Car-sharing Services
Carsharing services are increasing rapidly. In 2019, the car-sharing market size exceeded USD 2.5 billion and is expected to surpass USD 9 billion by 2026 [1].
Central entities (huge companies) manage payments, contracts, and customer/car data. Potentially, users could be tracked and have their data abused.
But, to address security and privacy issues, customers must communicate, transact with the vehicle and pay it in a peer to peer way.
The customer's driving behaviour and travel trajectory should be kept private and protected from malicious actors willing to manipulate or abuse the customer or the car data. Hence, using block solutions as a base, carshasing services and cars must maintain communication with the customers and Blockchain. This would be done by deploying dedicated hardware fully decentralized, privately and securely.
With all above in mind, We will implement this use case in our proposal submitted in fund 9**:**
PeakChain Car-Sharing Platform
<https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/414199>
5- Fleet Management
Fleet Management services were estimated to increase worldwide from around 13 Billion dollars in 2017 to around 28 Billion dollars in 2022 [2]
Especially logistic companies must monitor their fleets to reduce fuel consumption and optimize driving behavior and trajectory. Fleet management data of all kinds is essential for the development of a business and should remain confidential. Security or privacy concerns in a company's fleet management of data could significantly impact competitiveness.
Also, there is the need to manage the fleet data through the Blockchain using special hardware embedded in the vehicles—this hardware will be capable of retrieving and transmitting the needed data.
We will implement this use case in our proposal submitted in fund 9:
PeakChain Fleet_Management Platform
<https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/414216>
6- Ridesharing/Ride-hailing services (like Uber)
The market size of ridesharing services is increasing worldwide. The figures have stemmed from about 58 billion USD in 2021 to an expected 185 billion USD in 2026 [3].
However, like car-sharing and fleet management services, users should control their data completely. The data retrieved from the car and trajectory of the travel and costs should remain confidential and not open to the abuse or manipulation of others. In addition, the payment should occur peer to peer between the client and the car.
As mentioned earlier, there is a need for a hardware device connected to the vehicle to ensure the secure management of customer and car data using the Blockchain. This further assures a secure peer-to-peer payment between the customer and the car using the car wallet and customer wallet through a Cardano Native token.
We will implement this use case in our proposal submitted in fund 9:
PeakChain Uber on Cardano
<https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/414255>
References
[1] P. W. Wadhwani and P. Saha, "Car sharing market size by model (P2P, station-based, free-floating), by business model (round trip, one way), by application (business, private), industry analysis report, regional outlook, application potential, price trend, competitive market share & forecast, 2020–2026," Global Market Insights, Pune, India, Tech. Rep., Apr. 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.gminsights.com/industry- analysis/carsharing-market
What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?
1.Main Challenges:
There are three main challenges
- Presently, many startups are merging without any recognized, formal and established legal entity offering full transparency. Consequently, team members sometimes have no experience in the market in which they are operating, meaning they have unproven experience.
- Most innovative projects fail to deliver on time and have an excessive time to market.
- Most projects focus on delivering features, often choosing to skip software quality assurance efforts, assuming that the cost of quality is higher than the cost of non-conformance.
2.Our Strategy to mitigate the risks:
2.1. Building Trust:
- Our expert team has significant experience, working on Connected Car Projects in the automobile industry for extensive periods.
- We are a transparent legal entity, a company called PeakSoft GmbH based in Wuppertal, Germany. For many years, we have been dedicated to delivering software development and software quality/test automation solutions.
- For more information about PeakSoft GmbH, the company forming PeakChain, please check our website: <https://peak-soft.de/>
- For more information about the company legal information, please check this link: <https://peak-soft.de/impressum/>
2.2. Short Time to Market:
- Our Strategy is to build and deliver high-tech, effective solutions through an incremental agile process. Our team, collectively, possesses technical and management experience
- We have developed an initial prototype with the infrastructure we need to succeed. In this way, we can concentrate on building impactful features and accelerating our deliveries.
- Agile Software Development methods will be used to manage our project, in particular with a focus on Scrum. Sprint period iteration will last two weeks Agile Software Development methods will decrease time to market while accelerating the pace of development by focusing on delivering plug-and-play features within short increments, without having a detrimental outcome on quality.
2.3. "Highly" Prioritizing Quality
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Short time to market doesn't mean delivering features and hindering quality. We are ISTQB Certified, offering outstanding experience in software quality assurance and test automation. Consequently, quality will be our main focus.
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We plan to utilize ISTQB as a standard to ensure our quality. A dedicated test concept containing details of the software quality assurance process will be formed in the project.