The dockless bike-sharing boom in Europe has brought convenience to last-mile mobility, but has also flooded urban areas with poorly maintained bikes, harming local economies and communities. FairBike is a fair, decentralised and local bike sharing platform aiming to provide a good and useful service for consumers while involving and investing in the local economy.
Despite bringing convenience to the last mile, bike-sharing platforms such as MoBike, UFO and others do not seem to be living up to their promise of revolutionising urban mobility. Under the motto ‘don’t be gentle, it’s a rental’, shared bikes are often mistreated and end up in strange places, harming local communities. With little or no room for local bike shops, these sharing bikes drain local wealth to large corporations, depleting local economies and centralising wealth. Working with award-winning Rotterdam design studio The Incredible Machine, we developed a first prototype of a decentralised and autonomous bike-sharing system that grows its fleet with demand and invests in and involves the local economy.
The Incredible Machine, 2018
With: Marcel Schouwenaar & Harm van Beek
Funded by: SIDN Fonds
FairBike’s goal is not to make a profit, but to create a large network of shared bikes that will grow and shrink according to local demand and governance. Together with independent local bike shops and parts suppliers, the network will function as a decentralised ecosystem. Each FairBike will be equipped with a smart lock, which will be unlocked when you check in with your phone. Built on blockchain, LoRa networks and open source hardware, each bike will be its own owner and earn its own money. When a FairBike has earned enough money, it will contact local bike shops to buy a new bike, or contact a bike shop if it needs a repair. FairBike is being set up as a Distributed Autonomous Organisation (DAO) and aims to be the first company that is not owned by anyone. This gives it a unique ability to work in the interests of all stakeholders. The shared bikes do not make a profit, but the revenue is ploughed back into buying new bikes and repairing damaged bikes at a local bike shop. There is no owner, no incentive to make a profit, no incentive to grow non-linearly with demand. Just software that coordinates availability. This creates a self-sustaining economy.
We created a first prototype of Fairbike and presented it during Dutch Design Week 2018. The prototype consisted of an open-source hardware smartlock connected to Fairbike’s smart contracts via The Things Network (LoRa), and powered by the Ethereum currency. It was a first case study of how we can design fair economies at scale, serving the public interest rather than prioritising monopoly and profit.
