The next pillar of a decentralized society: Decentralized Courier Protocols (DCPs)

An article curated by Watson Lewis-Rodriguez, with revision by Noah Maskens and Spanish translation by Pedro Chacin, from Pigeon DAO.

In recent years, Web2 warehouse fulfillment and transportation companies around the world have seen intense demand. They provide value in enabling entrepreneurs to gain opportunities to fulfill and deliver packages. This has brought incalculable benefits to the world, especially in developing and emerging economies. These companies have been able to establish long-term success through the technological development of package tracking, putting reliance and accountabilities on couriers, and enabling convenient movement of trade around the world.

However, there have been several limitations to the use of Web2 systems. Although it has vastly improved supply chain infrastructure globally, they still face several core points of failure and inefficiency in enabling true independent entrepreneurship and economic mobility for individuals everywhere. Pigeon DAO, a social development, project, and protocol would like to expand on identifying the problems with current supply chains and finding opportunities and solutions for these individuals and their issues.

Pigeon DAO is intent on building the next pillar for a decentralized society, to enable free trade, complete control, and access for entrepreneurs everywhere, especially in developing economies. Throughout the last few years of independent research about Web3 technology and supply chain failures, learning about corruption and greed in existing enterprises and corporations, we have found an enticing and sustainable approach to enable true peer-to-peer trade. The underlying issues and viable blockchain solutions from existing Web2 infrastructure include:

The need for a middleman — In existing companies’ applications and logistic systems, payments in escrow are reliant on a middleman, a 3rd party individual/group/organization that tends to be trusted to promises or contracts (if the transaction is substantial enough). This often limits trust and removes compelling value for individuals and drivers wanting to pursue deliveries on behalf of that application. Throughout the last few years, these companies have faced several class action lawsuits and discreet suits for the control that middlemen have in facilitating these transactions on their platforms. Although currently it is more clear and determined for you to receive your goods with insurance and a degree of trust in the application, there is still an underlying level of uncertainty for the quality of the service as well. Middlemen in courier applications are the primary factor as to what consumers choose to trust, and with large tech conglomerates controlling and monopolizing transactions, individuals are forced to trust and rely on these applications to a deeper and deeper level.

Pigeon DAO aims to facilitate commerce without the need for a middleman, to truly enable direct peer-to-peer supply chains. By removing interference with the transaction and by limiting the fees required to sustainably grow, participants in the network, and couriers in the network have total and complete freedom to choose what is delivered, where it is delivered, how much the courier receives, the timeliness of the transaction, and the specific requirements in the agreement. By facilitating bilateral smart contracts and transparent agreements permanently on the chain, we remove ethical dilemmas by truly allowing couriers to build legitimate businesses and sustainably create professional and entrepreneurial pursuits by permanently having clear and authentic reviews without the need to trust middlemen.

DCPs can facilitate open and permanent contracts on public blockchains that provide direct value to individuals. Whether participants or couriers, by truly removing the need for a middleman, having marketplaces and communities established around the ability to create a personal career using blockchain and cryptocurrencies finally give the individual complete and total freedom to what they want to deliver, to how they perform their business, to how they build their clientele and to how they provide a valuable service to their community.

Transparency of reviews — Although organizations and enterprises may already have reputation models built around holding users accountable for their service, individuals still face a deeper problem, the trust that comes with having these reviews. Users on these platforms are naturally forced to rely on the accuracy and honesty provided by the companies that the reviews and transaction histories are accurate, whether it is through a direct courier service, or purchasing items from a business, individuals still lack the trust for purchasing digital goods. Pigeon DAO and existing blockchain infrastructure helps to provide a long-term solution through the development of public contracts and finalized transactions, by creating an open marketplace for both participants and couriers with a clear blockchain backlog of trade and deliveries, transactions with reviews are computationally reliant on the use of HASH256 blockchain models. Participants don’t need to build trust and reliance on any dApp but build confidence and reliance on their abilities to understand blockchains and transaction searching. Pigeon DAO is working on issuing and curating a DCP Marketplace that displays archived courier transactions on the chain, thus removing the fundamental need for relying on an organization to provide reviews.

DCPs can facilitate and provide permanent archives of transactions throughout the duration of their existence. With the natural computational ability to spread and archive data, couriers can build a clear and historically accurate (with complete metadata backing each fulfillment) resume and portfolio which thus enables further professional opportunities to expand their businesses as entrepreneurs.

Reliance on existing escrows — As companies continue to expand and grow internal infrastructure, more and more trust can be expected through the more technological developments and technical increases in payment holding technology, howeve,r we believe users don’t need to subdue to inefficient escrow systems, especially using middlemen. Pigeon DAO and other DCPs are able to naturally satisfy these requirements through Public keys and public transactions, removing the need to continuously be audited and tracked payment systems, by providing entirely transparent contracts between participants and couriers for a public archive, there is not an underlying stress or resentment towards needing to facilitate and manage escrow payments. Because bilateral contracts are able to obtain and hold public addresses, and payments until fulfillment, Pigeon DAO is able to simply facilitate the escrow directly inside the contract, thus removing an intermediary / middleman, to truly enable individual pursuits of open market trades without risks of reliance.

DCPs are generally able to fulfill these requirements as well, however there still needs to have an underlying trust in blockchain technology, through value creation and sharing valuable and fundamental philosophy of public chains and public networks, blockchain participants are able to gradually learn and comprehend Web3 infrastructure easier and thus be able to naturally get more involved in the next pillar of a decentralized society.

Pigeon DAO and DCPs are just two suitable approaches towards building immense value throughout the globe through the use of authentic and transparent transactions that greatly provide humane and social good development, through the use of Decentralized Courier Networks, we, the individuals, will have complete ownership of personal trade. Pigeon DAO hopes to establish the next frontier of Web3. Blockchains will continue to develop as communities and societies around the globe need more reliance on their communities rather than their governments, or corporations that greatly control what they are ultimately able to consume and rely on. Supply chains, and commerce exchange is one of the last pillars required to truly enable consumerized trade in Web3.

If you are interested in getting involved in Pigeon DAO and our movement, please feel free to join our community, we are continuously developing and building prototypes and dApps that will be used to enable true freedom for participants, and entrepreneurial couriers. Help us save lives, the world needs change, individuals need control.