As we enter the final stretch of Q3 2024, we’re excited to update the community on our progress with bloXmoveNG. During the past two or three quarters we were mostly in BUIDL mode; finalizing our go-to-market (GTM) with our partners in Jos.

Our steps to the launch of bloXmoveNG

We will follow a phased GoLive along the following steps:

1. Switch to PRODuction networks
   1.1) internal technical testing
   1.2) business team testing
2. In parallel:
   2.1) Onboarding of first batch of drivers
   2.2) Final end-to-end (E2E) User Acceptance Testing (UAT) on the PROD network
3. FINALLY: official start of business and passenger acquisition and onboarding.

What we did over the last months

1. Over the last few months, we completed the following:

• After finalising the requested app functionality improvements, such as adding a ringer and the cash payment functionality,
• We have tested the apps in the test environment, including its newly added functionalities
• and focused on fixing any bugs that occurred during testing
• After some back-and-forth with Google Play Store and its requirements, we
  – relisted the driver app
  – and the passenger app in the Play Store.

Now, we know a lot of you are eagerly waiting for the franchise takers to start operating in Nigeria, ourselves included, but the listing in the app store was not the final work that was needed before going live. The go-live in Nigeria does not just depend on the readiness of the technology, but on the full business being ready for go-live.

Our franchise partners requested to operate the business with Paystack as their payment provider, instead of Fincra, which was previously used as the digital payment provider (PSP) for the driver and passenger apps.

This has now been completed and is in the last round of production environment testing before GOLIVE.

Handover of technical operations to our partner

The second and most important part before go-live, is the full handover to our local franchise team. This means we are not just conducting a business handover, but also a technical handover: we are giving full control of the backend to our Nigerian Franchise partners: Antipas and Joshua and their tech team. This knowledge transfer equips the Franchise partner’s tech team with the expertise to manage the backend and other technical elements post-launch, ensuring smooth day-to-day operations.

What will happen over the next few days & weeks?

The last steps to ensure a smooth launch consist of switching from a test (UAT) Environment to Production Environment (PROD) in the coming weeks and conducting a last comprehensive testing round in the live PROD environment.

We will do this during a soft launch, which is planned before the official launch day in October. During the soft launch, the driver and passenger apps are rigorously tested within a closed group to confirm that all features function as expected. This will include all key functionalities such as payments, withdrawals, ride requests, driver registration, vehicle verification, and driver verification. This helps us ensure a seamless user experience on both the passenger and driver end from day one.

We have made great progress in completing the steps mentioned above and are now heading into the final parts of this stage: executing the last handover, migrating to the live PROD environment and starting the soft launch.

The post bloXmoveNG — countdown to GOLIVE appeared first on bloXmove.

bloXmove — The road ahead to 2024

Decentralizing governance of the product as well as the token.

Pause, learn and leap forward

As many of you know, we kept seriously busy last year.

And yes, we are proud of what we have achieved. Not only of the delivered code and the pilots we conducted — but just as importantly the learnings we took away from a year which many say was the most turbulent in a decade.

So, during the last weeks of 2023 we took pause and reflected what to continue, what to shed and prune and what to start.

The most important learnings — which will shape our way forward — are:

1. Only fully decentralized utility tokens can stay unregulated and still prosper.
2. bloXmove and #BLXM is a web3 community — to operate commercial and regulated services we need partners.
3. We need to expand our L1-footprint to go where the action is.

2024 is a new beginning!

The team has therefore decided to go back to the drawing board: looking forward we have realized and determined the following:

1. Full road ahead on decentralization (“the DAO”) of the BLXM token.
2. Work through corporate partners and franchise takers to operate bloXmove mobility products.
3. Work with L1 blockchains (peaq, CELO etc.) to bring our technology for green energy and #DePIN offerings to technical fruition.
4. ….and nothing else!

The quintessence being: focus, focus, focus!
Focus on what our strengths are, look for partners where we need them and discard all other ballast.

Decentralization — the DAO

We partner with FactoryDAO, one of the leaders in DAO building with vast experience in DAO tooling and management to ensure a sustainable and effective transition to a DAO for the BLXM token community.

Together with FactoryDAO, we laid out our plans and set up the structure of the DAO, which is being implemented as we speak. More on the progress and next steps is to come via our weekly updates and was shared via our AMA session with FactoryDAO on Thursday the 11th of January. The recording of this session can be found here: Semi-DAO AMA with FactoryDAO.

Our DAO will be governed by those who are active in the BLXM community. Your access ticket — your “voter passport” will be an NFT Avatars for DAO governance — which is of course based on our NFTicket technology and packaged as an entertaining membership pass to the exclusive club of BLXM governance.

In Q3 2023, we had a Whitelist opportunity for interested DAO participants. The NFT Avatar will be mintable for free if you stake or provide liquidity in BLXM tokens. The whitelist application was a success and we received over 140 applicants! More on the Avatar and its use within the DAO system can be found here.

The minting and launch of the BLXM governance NFTavatar will happen this February and kick off the active phase of our road to Decentralization.

Open sourcing

As part of decentralization we will continue to release our codebase as open source. The passenger and the driver app have already been released and we will have completely released all of our code by the time the transition to BLXM DAO has been completed.

Franchising our “Decentralized UBER” as piloted in Nigeria

After running a highly successful test pilot in Jos and Lagos in July and August 2023, we realized that while we had all the technology needed and had very successfully acquired drivers — we still need local business partners for operation and B2C business development.

We therefore decided that our next step is to hand over the technology (passenger and driver dApps) to a business party who can run it as a fully qualified Nigerian mobility operator.

Initially, we found two interested franchise takers, our ambassadors in Jos: Mr. Joshua Joel Bako and Mr. Antipas Abalis Shingshak (see franchise announcement).

The business negotiations are ongoing and we have identified further parties who might be interested in operating our technology under their brand.

Note that with the handover of the technology, this does not change the fee model of bloXmove: the operator pays a (small) fee for operating the dApp via a commission fee for each transaction on our platform. For the blockchain community, this also means that nothing changes with regards to the token burn mechanism and utility of the BLXM token.

Franchise taker/mobility app operator opportunity!

Presently, we are looking for more operators/customers for our franchise model, this can be in Nigeria or elsewhere in the world. These can be mobility companies, driver unions or individuals interested in receiving the full product (passenger and driver dApp) from us as a franchise taker or as their own.

In case of interest, do not hesitate to contact us through any of the channels given at the end of the article.

Overview plans of next 4 quarter

Q1 2024

• Test minting and the actual mint of the NFT Avatar used for DAO governance
• DAO Governance roll-out and the first public governance proposals
• First governance voting to take place

Q2-Q3 2024

• Further roll-out of the DAO system (Cookbook for setting up your own mobility company or implementing our technology in your existing mobility company)
• All technology relevant to building mobility solutions open-sourced
• Governance fund implementation, managed by the community
• We expect new partnership(s) aimed at growing adoption of our NFTicket solution and our mobility blockchain platform (which includes bloXmoveNG)
• Franchise taker(s) (Nigeria) roll-out and launch

Q4 2024

• Fully fledged DAO system
• Franchise taker(s) operating in Nigeria
• More to come

Besides these key points and targets, we are continuously in talks with potential partners, franchise takers, mobility companies and driver unions to strengthen our network and the adoption of our NFTicket and mobility platform solutions.

Last year we built and tested our solutions, this year is all about adoption of our key technologies (NFTicket & the mobility platform — including driver & passenger apps) and the DAO-transition. Now is the time to grow!

We are proud of what we achieved in 2023 and look forward to building out bloXmove further next to you, our community!

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The post bloXmove — The road ahead to 2024 appeared first on bloXmove.

As we head into 2024, it is time for us to look back at what 2023 has brought us and to look at the road ahead. We are proud of our achievements last year at bloXmove and will take you on a trip down memory lane to show what 2023 has brought us.

1) Launch of NFTicket: core protocol for access management and settlement

At the start of 2023, we finished development and launched our NFTicket protocol. You, the community, could participate in the beta launch by testing our NFTicket solution. We had over 10.000(!) participants (wallet addresses) actively testing the NFTicket beta.

After our NFTicket beta launch, we integrated NFTicket with a Blockchain-enabled electric scooter. This was within a joint project with the University of Mittweida (M4All Mobility). NFTicket is also at the core of “Decentralized UBER”, which we launched in Nigeria (more below) as well as a pilot with NRverse, offering renewable energy certificates to provide carbon-free power to event organizers. A video explaining the RECs as an NFTicket by bloXmove, is found here. A full breakdown of all you can do with our NFTicket solution can be seen here.

2) Back to the #DePIN roots: partnership with peaq

While our current development focusses on applying NFTicket to the “Decentralized UBER app” we are launching in Nigeria — that is not where our roots are.

When we started working on what was then called the “Daimler Mobility Blockchain Platform”, we were clear where the future of mobility lies:

The #FutureOfMobility lies in autonomous vehicles, acting as self-sovereign economic agents. A core element of this is identity and control of a wallet (tied to that identity).

Which is precisely what #DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastrcuture) tries to achieve for pretty much any industry and any physical asset able to generate revenue.

This brought us into a cooperation with peaq — a layer-1 blockchain with a strong focus on the real-world asset tokenization, #DePIN (Decentralised Physical Infrastructure) and the Economy of Things.

We can proudly say that we launched our Decentralized mobility dApp on the Peaq dApp store, which can be found here, as part of Peaq Control. The peaq partnership announcement and its objectives can be found here.

We are looking forward to continuing to collaborate with Peaq and its growing ecosystem.

3. bloXmove pilot in Nigeria (bloXmoveNG)

In March 2023 we launched the beta release of bloXmoveNG dApp, allowing our community to get early access to see and test what we built. In the first round of testing, community members tested our dApp and provided feedback which allowed us to finalise and polish our solution.

Their feedback helped form our dApp, thank you testers!

In its first release, the app relied on an external wallet (https://valoraapp.com/) to interact with our smart contracts.

A major learning was that this greatly reduces user acceptance, so we built our own wallet and integrated it into our passenger and driver apps. This removed the need for an external app to be used when making payments.

We also partnered with MetrocabsNG in Jos, with their drivers to use our platform for ride hailing. In June, it was finally time to launch with MetrocabsNG and our (pilot) dApp was live for the first time, a significant achievement! In August we started working with ambassadors and fully launched our Flagship solution in Jos and Lagos.

In order to have real-world experience and test the market feedback, we ran a 3-month pilot in Jos and Lagos from July-September.

The results were positive:

• Listing of our bloXmoveNG app on both the Google Play store & Apple’s App store
• 500 verified drivers onboarded in Jos & Lagos, Nigeria & over 800 applicants
• Over 2.000 passengers onboarded & 1.500 driver app downloads in the app store
• Over 750 rides taken with within the pilot period

A full breakdown of our achievements in Nigeria during the July-September period can be found here.

Besides the app itself, we also greatly improved the website for bloXmoveNG (see https://bloxmove.ng/).

4) bloXmove DAO and launch of governance NFTavatar

In our original BLXM Whitepaper, published in October 2021, we already said we would eventually move to a fully decentralized mobility solution (DAO or semi-DAO). Last year, we released a full breakdown of what this entails. The breakdown, including the reasons why we move to a (semi-)DAO system, is found here.

We initially planned for the decentralisation to take effect in Q3 and Q4 of 2023, but after setting up an initial plan and careful consideration found it best to work with an external party, a DAO expert in order to realise our plans. This DAO expert is FactoryDAO, one of the leaders in DAO building with vast experience in DAO tooling and management.

Together with FactoryDAO, we laid out our plans and set up the structure of the DAO, which is being implemented as we speak. More on the progress and next steps is to come via our weekly updates and was shared via our AMA session with FactoryDAO on Thursday the 11th of January. The recording of this session can be found here: Semi-DAO AMA with FactoryDAO.

As part of the (semi-)DAO system, we work with NFT Avatars for DAO governance. In Q3 2023, we had a Whitelist opportunity for interested DAO participants. The NFT Avatar will be mintable for free if you stake or provide liquidity in BLXM tokens. The whitelist application was a success and we received over 140 applicants! More on the Avatar and its use within the DAO system can be found here. In the next few weeks, information on the mint will follow.

5) Open-Sourcing: apps are out there!

We also made steps in open-sourcing our technology, as part of the (semi-)DAO transition. In the last quarter of 2023, we open-sourced both our passenger dApp as well as our driver dApp. These can be viewed here:

1. Driver dApp: https://github.com/bloXmove/bloXmove.driver.git
2. Passenger dApp: https://github.com/bloXmove/bloXmove.passenger.git

This year, we will open-source more modules to fully live up to our promise of offering decentralized mobility to all!

Once we open-sourced our full tech stack, tech contributions are enabled and granted via special programs which form part of our DAO system.

The post bloXmove: The Year in review appeared first on bloXmove.

bloXmove: The Year in review

We were busy, weren’t we?

As we head into 2024, it is time for us to look back at what 2023 has brought us and to look at the road ahead. We are proud of our achievements last year at bloXmove and will take you on a trip down memory lane to show what 2023 has brought us.

1) Launch of NFTicket: core protocol for access management and settlement

At the start of 2023, we finished development and launched our NFTicket protocol. You, the community, could participate in the beta launch by testing our NFTicket solution. We had over 10.000(!) participants (wallet addresses) actively testing the NFTicket beta.

After our NFTicket beta launch, we integrated NFTicket with a Blockchain-enabled electric scooter. This was within a joint project with the University of Mittweida (M4All Mobility). NFTicket is also at the core of “Decentralized UBER”, which we launched in Nigeria (more below) as well as a pilot with NRverse, offering renewable energy certificates to provide carbon-free power to event organizers. A video explaining the RECs as an NFTicket by bloXmove, is found here. A full breakdown of all you can do with our NFTicket solution can be seen here.

2) Back to the #DePIN roots: partnership with peaq

While our current development focusses on applying NFTicket to the “Decentralized UBER app” we are launching in Nigeria — that is not where our roots are.

When we started working on what was then called the “Daimler Mobility Blockchain Platform”, we were clear where the future of mobility lies:

The #FutureOfMobility lies in autonomous vehicles, acting as self-sovereign economic agents. A core element of this is identity and control of a wallet (tied to that identity).

Which is precisely what #DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastrcuture) tries to achieve for pretty much any industry and any physical asset able to generate revenue.

This brought us into a cooperation with peaq — a layer-1 blockchain with a strong focus on the real-world asset tokenization, #DePIN (Decentralised Physical Infrastructure) and the Economy of Things.

We can proudly say that we launched our Decentralized mobility dApp on the Peaq dApp store, which can be found here, as part of Peaq Control. The peaq partnership announcement and its objectives can be found here.

We are looking forward to continuing to collaborate with Peaq and its growing ecosystem.

3. bloXmove pilot in Nigeria (bloXmoveNG)

In March 2023 we launched the beta release of bloXmoveNG dApp, allowing our community to get early access to see and test what we built. In the first round of testing, community members tested our dApp and provided feedback which allowed us to finalise and polish our solution.

Their feedback helped form our dApp, thank you testers!

In its first release, the app relied on an external wallet (https://valoraapp.com/) to interact with our smart contracts.

A major learning was that this greatly reduces user acceptance, so we built our own wallet and integrated it into our passenger and driver apps. This removed the need for an external app to be used when making payments.

We also partnered with MetrocabsNG in Jos, with their drivers to use our platform for ride hailing. In June, it was finally time to launch with MetrocabsNG and our (pilot) dApp was live for the first time, a significant achievement! In August we started working with ambassadors and fully launched our Flagship solution in Jos and Lagos.

In order to have real-world experience and test the market feedback, we ran a 3-month pilot in Jos and Lagos from July-September.

The results were positive:

• Listing of our bloXmoveNG app on both the Google Play store & Apple’s App store
• 500 verified drivers onboarded in Jos & Lagos, Nigeria & over 800 applicants
• Over 2.000 passengers onboarded & 1.500 driver app downloads in the app store
• Over 750 rides taken with within the pilot period

A full breakdown of our achievements in Nigeria during the July-September period can be found here.

Besides the app itself, we also greatly improved the website for bloXmoveNG (see https://bloxmove.ng/).

4) bloXmove DAO and launch of governance NFTavatar

In our original BLXM Whitepaper, published in October 2021, we already said we would eventually move to a fully decentralized mobility solution (DAO or semi-DAO). Last year, we released a full breakdown of what this entails. The breakdown, including the reasons why we move to a (semi-)DAO system, is found here.

We initially planned for the decentralisation to take effect in Q3 and Q4 of 2023, but after setting up an initial plan and careful consideration found it best to work with an external party, a DAO expert in order to realise our plans. This DAO expert is FactoryDAO, one of the leaders in DAO building with vast experience in DAO tooling and management.

Together with FactoryDAO, we laid out our plans and set up the structure of the DAO, which is being implemented as we speak. More on the progress and next steps is to come via our weekly updates and was shared via our AMA session with FactoryDAO on Thursday the 11th of January. The recording of this session can be found here: Semi-DAO AMA with FactoryDAO.

As part of the (semi-)DAO system, we work with NFT Avatars for DAO governance. In Q3 2023, we had a Whitelist opportunity for interested DAO participants. The NFT Avatar will be mintable for free if you stake or provide liquidity in BLXM tokens. The whitelist application was a success and we received over 140 applicants! More on the Avatar and its use within the DAO system can be found here. In the next few weeks, information on the mint will follow.

5) Open-Sourcing: apps are out there!

We also made steps in open-sourcing our technology, as part of the (semi-)DAO transition. In the last quarter of 2023, we open-sourced both our passenger dApp as well as our driver dApp. These can be viewed here:

1. Driver dApp: https://github.com/bloXmove/bloXmove.driver.git
2. Passenger dApp: https://github.com/bloXmove/bloXmove.passenger.git

This year, we will open-source more modules to fully live up to our promise of offering decentralized mobility to all!

Once we open-sourced our full tech stack, tech contributions are enabled and granted via special programs which form part of our DAO system.

Contact us

Twitter

Discord

Linkedin

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Facebook

The post bloXmove: The Year in review appeared first on bloXmove.

bloXlab partners with FactoryDAO to guide the bloXmove DAO transition

We are thrilled to share that we have entered into a partnership with FactoryDAO, one of the leaders in DAO-building!

Since we announced our transition to a DAO, we have done a great deal of work behind the scenes, and initiated the onboarding framework through the bloXmove governance Avatar (bloXmove Governance Avatar).

Moving forward on decentralizing the BLXM ecosystem we are proud to announce that FactoryDAO will work with us on the Path of DAO.

Our Partners

Working with our valued advisors from Arcanum Ventures in planning the execution roadmap , we identified the need for a partner with direct, hands-on experience in building a resilient and safe DAO organisation.

This is what led us to FactoryDAO, who have an impressive track record in building such organisations.

Basic DAO design

Initially we had to think of the functionalities that we wanted to add to the DAO and what our base points would be. We came to the conclusion that the DAO system should:

1. Be Fair — Voting power should not just be based on monetary power. Quadratic voting (limiting the impact of large holders) and contributions (e.g. Zealy quests, voting, programming, closing partnerships etc.) should play a role in voting power.
2. Be Multilayered — We require different DAO systems for drivers (driver dApp governance), passengers (passenger dApp governance) and franchise takers (franchise dApp governance and rewards, which can vary per franchise taker).
3. Contain Treasury Management: A main component of the DAO governance for bloXmove as a protocol (coming via you, our community) will be governing devleopment grants and spending of funds in general.

The steps to DAO

With FactoryDAO as a partner, we have laid out a plan, selected the tools and created a timeline to create our DAO system. As it turned out, FactoryDAO already has the ready-to-use tooling for us, making it quick and easy to integrate and set up the DAO system. An example of this is FactoryDAOs MetaDAO system, where NFT governance (the bloXmove Avatar) is used to manage a series of subDAOs as described above.

Jointly we agreed on the following main work packages

• WP 1: Decentralise BLXM Token
• WP 2: Decentralised NFT Governance
• WP 3: Liquidity And Economics

The timeline

FactoryDAO and ourselves will officially launch on Monday, November 20th 2023. All the tooling however is readily available and the theoretical groundwork has been executed prior to this announcement.

Over 4 to 8 working weeks after this, we will be gradually rolling out the DAO governance system as we thought it out and begin the NFT Avatar mint. Applying for the Avatar is possible until Sunday, November 19th.

Mints open periodically so subscribe now if you want to get a headstart and want to be part of the initial DAO: Avatar Whitelist Application Form. Note that the NFT Avatar is free if you stake or provide liquidity (see for the conditions our NFT Avatar article).

Our tools

Mint and Influence are used for decentralized decision making. Influence offers a robust governance system for NFT Governance in MetaDAO/subDAO structures, including quadratic voting and integrated proposal building.

For the treasury management (Governance Fund) we will host a community election (governance council election) to create a multisig wallet for the distribution of funds to the DAO. This will be a 7/12 signers system. We use the Bank tool for decentralized token distribution.

Live Stream for Official Launch

Monday the 20th of November, 13:00 PM UTC, we will join Arcanum Ventures in a LIVE Stream ( https://www.youtube.com/live/4tJIqpykpy8?si=QEfVKspvrvPJ27xI ) to discuss our collaboration with FactoryDAO, DAOs in general, decentralization and the transition to a decentralized project.

About FactoryDAO

FactoryDAO seeks to lead the DAO wave with an extensive suite of dApps for building sustainable, decentralised organisations. We are building no-code, modular infrastructure, allowing anyone to launch a DAO.

We are excited about the bloXmove collaboration as it will mark a significant step forward in the current industry practices of progressive decentralisation and community nucleated governance.

About bloXlab

bloXlab is the Web3 solution provider behind bloXmove, integrated by the original tech team. bloXlab is committed to improve and expand bloXmove’s ecosystem as well as support any project or initiative that wants to build on top of bloXmove platform, either mobility solutions or any other that benefits from the NFTicket protocol.

We are grateful to be working with an experienced DAO partner like FactoryDAO which has all the tooling necessary for the DAO we envisioned, allowing us to create a smooth transition.

The post BLXM decentralization: FactoryDAO to partner on roadmap execution appeared first on bloXmove.

Where do we come from?

Around a month ago, on the 19th of September, we communicated our bloXmoveNG adoption numbers and showed you that we were gaining traction in the market. We could proudly communicate having obtained over 500 verified drivers on the platform and over 2.000 potential passengers. The number of completed rides around that time was at approximately 750 rides.

A link to the news can be found here: https://x.com/BloXmove/status/1704187277574824262?s=20.

Short Evaluation

Since then, we found that our strategy was limiting our growth and our chance of succeeding. A small project like ours would never be able to defeat a giant like Bolt or Uber whose core strategy is crushing competition with their billions of investor money, offering free rides and operating at a loss for as long as it takes. We simply don’t have billions in the bank and would never be able to out-market our competitors with marketing and free rides.

Define our USP

What would distinguish us from our competitors? How could we offer a truly different solution to that what is being offered by Bolt or Uber? The answer to this is not that we distinguish ourselves by offering additional payment options (crypto payments), but it involves offering better ride conditions (fair pricing, proper safety measures etc.) to both drivers and passengers with the help of decentralization. If you do not want to become the next aggregator, you cannot keep full control like any centralized entity. So how do you then operate or market the mobility dApp?

These were the questions that were top of our mind over the past months and that led us to choose the approach laid out in this article. As we stated on the 6th of October (see: https://x.com/BloXmove/status/1710324378041221615?s=20), we see the strategy for bloXmoveNG and the mobility dApp as a whole, as a core component of the transition to a (semi-)DAO.

Solution: Franchise to local business entities

After thinking these questions through, we decided that the best way forward for bloXmove, would be to create a networlk of grassroot movements around the world consisting of individual drivers, mobility companies & driver unions.

We thought of two specific ways in which we can grow bloXmove’s mobility dApp in the real world: by creating truly decentralized driver communities (a grassroots approach) and by offering a Franchise Model to mobility companies/driver unions or other interested parties.

Our Cookbook for a Grassroot Franchise

Both the grassroots approach and the franchise model can be operated and built upon by people on the ground in any country or region around the world as we open-source our basic white label (flagship product) mobility dApp. This strategy aligns with our peaq partnership, where we offer our decentralized dApp as well: https://www.peaq.network/blog/bloxmove-joins-peaq-ecosystem.

To get this operational, we are producing a ‘Cookbook’ which describes all the necessary steps to get from our flagship/white label mobility dApp technology to a full-fledged mobility dApp in any region in the world. With this approach, we have a chance of sustaining and growing our mobility dApp all over the world, in a way that would not be possible by working with a single team or as an individual company.

Part of the Cookbook involves the help of our community, which is where the (semi-)DAO structure comes in. Community members can apply and participate by helping with the execution of tasks (quests) that contribute to the adoption of the white label dApp in targeted regions or countries. An example of this is community members approaching drivers or mobility companies, or a community member creating graphics or marketing material for an individual or company running our white label mobility dApp. Community members can get rewarded for this with tokens from the Foundation fund (token allocation per task based on votes via the DAO). Or, when the dApp is operational, via a compensation paid from the commission fees collected by the dApp operator/Franchise Taker.

Welcome our first Franchise Taker!

As you may have noticed, the daily number of rides taken since our previous publication in September dropped. The centralized approach and corresponding marketing promotions have been discontinued as the first and necessary step towards the Franchise model. The process to get to the launch of our dApp in general taught us a lot and showed us proof that our Flagship product works: passengers and drivers were connected via our dApp and rides were booked and completed! All this knowledge is included in the Cookbook and entails a great starting point for future partners and franchise takers.

This brings us to our collaboration with Mr. Joshua Joel Bako and Mr. Antipas Abalis Shingshak, two AUATON members based in Jos, Nigeria (AUATON stands for the Amalgamated Union of App-Based Transporters of Nigeria, previously AUATWON). After consulting them on our application at several occasions, we came to the conclusion that they would form great Franchise Takers: they have the (driver) experience, the network (both in Jos and outside of Jos) and they know business in Nigeria.

Let’s hear it from our partners:

We can now proudly announce that Mr. Joshua Joel Bako and Mr. Antipas Abalis Shingshak are our first Franchise Takers and will help grow the bloXmoveNG dApp in Nigeria.

Presently, we are conducting the handover of the bloXmoveNG dApp. When that is complete, we will share more information on the next steps to be taken by them. Stay tuned!

Let’s now close with their statement:
“The concept of decentralized mobility is a great one. It is driver friendly and we are please to be part of this great innovation as franchise takers”

The post bloXmoveNG: from Flagship Product to Franchise Model appeared first on bloXmove.

Introduction

Over the past couple of months, since we announced our transition to a DAO (starting with a semi-DAO), we worked hard to get the basics in place.

We would now like to inform you of what we have been up to during these last months and what progress has been made.

In parallel to this document, we will inform you in the coming weeks of the tools we have chosen for the governance and announce how we are realising our DAO plans.

Part of the reason we held back this report until now is that we are partnering with one of the leading companies in the area of DAO-building.

This brought with it information exchange, definition of scope, selection of tools etc. There is a vast number of tools we encountered. We needed to put attention and care on having the best fit for not only the (crypto) community governance, but also for the driver community to which our governance tools should provide a truly decentralised mobility platform. We are pleased to say that we have found a way to do so by working with sub-DAOs. An explanation will follow.

Now, first things first. We proudly present to you: our bloXmove Avatar collection!

The bloXmove Avatar is your digital ticket into the governance of the BLXM community treasury and source code.

When presenting proposals, voting or receiving funds the Avatar is your digital representative and provides your identification!

This means it’s a NFT collection which represents the DAO governance participants! The Avatar forms your digital identity for bloXmove’s governance!

Before diving into the utility and possibilities with an NFT Avatar (using our NFTicket protocol) for governance, we want to make one important point:
This initiative is 100% non-profit — i.e. the bloXmove team will not participate in any sales or other revenue from this initiative.

We provide the NFT Avatar at transaction fee cost to people providing liquidity. Alternatively, if you do not wish to provide liquidity, there is the option to purchase the Avatar. Money coming from sales goes directly to the DAO fund, this money is spent according to what the community votes for. So as we stated, this means that the Avatar is not intended to and will not generate any profit for bloXmove. It serves purely as a governance ID for bloXmove’s DAO.

The Avatars

You may be wondering what character we chose as a base for the Avatar: well, who else other than our iconic Silverlynx could fulfil that role?

We decided to release Avatars for our (semi-)DAO governance set-up as they can offer a wide range of benefits to you, the community. One of the many beautiful features of using Avatars is that they can ‘grow’ based on contributions to the bloXmove DAO, which in turn lead to additional benefits to its holders and therefore stimulate active DAO participation.

Avatar governance rights initially start out with voting for fund allocation and the opportunity to determine the functionalities and development direction of our products/services in the mobility sector. As time progresses, more perks and benefits will be added to the Avatars. These can include but are not limited to: travel discounts (only available in countries where the bloXmove mobility app is offered, e.g. in Nigeria), event access, staking/liquidity providing bonuses & more.

As briefly touched upon in the introduction, the Avatar can be obtained in different ways. Initially it is released to the ones who subscribe via our whitelist application (bottom of this page). Community members presenting a minimum of 20000 tokenweeks (One tokenweek is the number of tokens multiplied by the number of weeks the community member has staked them) can mint their Avatar for free (except transaction costs from your wallet).

People who do not want to provide liquidity and lock tokens, can purchase the Avatar after applying via the whitelist. As we stated, any money obtained via Avatar sales goes into the DAO Development Fund managed by the community. bloXlab, the team behind bloXmove, does not profit from the sales as this is not bloXlab/bloXmove’s business model.

After purchasing an Avatar, interactions and contributions to the bloXmove DAO ecosystem are required to obtain and maintain governance rights. An Avatar is charged with governance rights and voting power. Voting power starts at 1 (1 vote) and increases the more the Avatar holder contributed to the DAO.

Examples of contributions/participation include, but are not limited to:

Staking BLXM tokens for X weeks

• Providing a certain amount of liquidity (USDC:BLXM) to a DEX for X number of weeks

• Sharing and interacting with bloXmove content (Zealy quests)

• Contributing to the DAO via voting for the allocation of funds & the destination of funds

• To be included at a later stage: contributing actively by supporting development e.g. providing customers, drivers, marketing etc.

• Developers/programmers: building out the technical functionalities required/requested

• Etc.

Collection Size

There will be a maximum size to the collection of 1000 Avatars. We do not expect that the collection will sell out nor that it is needed to sell out as the Avatar is used for DAO governance. Avatars are obtained by providing liquidity, buying them in the initial sale, or by buying them off the open market.

NFT avatar pricing

The price of an Avatar (when not providing liquidity) is 50 dollars. Money collected from the Avatar sales is spent according to the community wishes.

Avatar Benefits

Further benefits of the Avatars will come to light in the coming months and be explained through separate articles. Of course, here also DAO governance can come into play and you will be able to provide your input on additional functionalities of the Avatars which we thought of.

Whitelisting

Whitelisting started on October 25th:

Pls. apply here: https://avatars.bloxmove.net/

The post Revealing the bloXmove Avatar appeared first on bloXmove.

1. Why did Bloxmove choose Nigeria?

A lot of questions come up on this point, so we feel it is important to emphasize the potential of the country.

In general: truly disruptive technologies tend to have a hard time in mature, heavily regulated markets. Incumbents defend their turf and society in general is more bureaucratic than “younger”, emerging markets. Disruptive technologies tends to create “grey” situations: because the technology is so new, there is often no precedent and no existing path to follow. This creates “grey” situations: it’s not been done before and no obvious way to book, document or audit is available.

Mature markets tend to discourage such situations and in general follow the conservative principle of:
“if it’s not allowed, better don’t try it”.
Compliance officers as well as data privacy and other regulating instances will then tend to discourage or even prevent such situations.

Emerging markets on the other hand tend to follow the rule:
“if it’s not forbidden, give it a try.”

Coming to specific advantages the Nigerian market offers:

• Nigeria is Africa’s biggest economy,
• It has a huge market in mobility with no public transport incumbents to speak of.
• It presents a typical “leap-frogging” opportunity, where a whole generation of technology which was created in other places and prevents the latest tech from gaining a foothold, is “leap-frogged” taking the whole market straight to the next generation of technology.
• Nigeria is also English-speaking (English being one of four official languages) and has a Common Law (i.e. same background as UK, US, Singapore and Ireland) legal framework where business is concerned.
• It is also the world’s most crypto-friendly country and the whole web3 and crypto space is full of young, passionate Nigerians leaving their mark on the community — among them the bloXmove community which has had active Nigerian community members from day 1.

2. Summary of Status Quo

The main topic of today’s AMA is the result of
our “traction sprint” which ran from July 15th to August 15th, 2023.

To recapitulate:

• June 1st we went live with internal pilot
• June 15th we launched the bloXmoveNG passenger and driver apps on AppStore and GooglePlay
• The month between June 15th and July 15th was used to gather feedback on how to go from pilot-level to ready for market.
• The major update on the app side was that we eliminated the dependency on an external wallet (Valora or MetaMask) by writing our own wallet logic into the app.

bloXmoveNG apps are now fully native web3 apps, with built-in wallets!

From here on forward it’s all about traction, i.e. market penetration.

As will be seen from the results shown below: we have achieved considerable momentum — starting August 1st. Since then we have seen a rapid increase of registered drivers and passengers and closely related app downloads.

3. Collaboration with independent driver union

bloXmove has always positioned its technology as enabling scaling without aggregation, i.e. scaling without the negative effects hyper aggregators, such as UBER and BOLT, bring to market fairness.

Our motto has been for a while

“STOP AGGREGATING — START COLLABORATING”

The situation on the ground in Nigeria has now provided massive positive reinforcement for this:
Due to the abusive business practices of the big hyperaggregators, mainly BOLT, thousands, possibly tens of thousands of drivers have come together to form a union.

This union’s main goal is to provide a balance against market domination and abusive practices by the hyperaggregators, such as 20–30% commission off drivers’ revenue as well as an arbitration practice that is tilted heavily against drivers.

We are in close negotiating phases (MoU: Memorandum of Understanding pending) both with the National Board as well as the Jos chapter of this union.

We already work with them operationally and it is through this collaboration that we have managed to onboard a major chunk of our new drivers.

We are running a promotional incentive for the drivers ( 10 litres fuel incentive for every driver that onboarded on the app) and this is going very well with over 300 drivers signed up on the app from promotional engagement. We have had 2 congresses in Jos between July 31st and August 11. Our engagement with this Union will be ongoing and we are close to completion on an ambassador deal with the major stakeholders.

This collaboration promises to be concluded soon and would then take bloXmove to where we always wanted to be:

In a cooperation with drivers to provide an e-hailing app which is designed:

for drivers, by drivers and with drivers.

Traction Summary

We now present a few numbers. These numbers are for a very short period (15 days between August 1st, when momentum started until August 15th when we took our snapshot).

In order to keep the community informed, we will continue to publish traction reports every 6 weeks; next report due end of September, 2023.

In sum: Habemus Momentum! — We got momentum!

Drivers

Passengers

Our Marketing Approach

As a new product just penetrating the market, we focus our efforts on trackable marketing activities. During the just concluded sprint, we embarked on a combination of on-the-ground and online sales and marketing activities. As already mentioned, we created a collaboration with a union of drivers who acted as ambassadors and pushed our incentives to attract drivers and passengers. This was kicked off by a small meet-up event organised for drivers where they got merch items after successfully onboarding on the driver app.

We then kick-started online campaigns targeted at both drivers and passengers to help boost momentum. The online campaigns were social media ads on our facebook and Instagram accounts. It was also backed with a demographically positioned Google display ad campaign to reach our target audience.

How do we intend to incentivise going forward, and what are our future marketing plans?

Going forward, we will be working based on the analytics we got from the previous campaign. These analytics have convinced us that on-ground marketing activities need to be more intensified with traditional marketing efforts, which include, radio jingles, live interviews or billboard adverts. This will keep us in the minds of acquired customers and those still at the decision-making stage.

We also hope to include some influencer marketing by working with important personalities and public figures to improve our credibility. And of course, social media marketing activities will also be extensive and backed with push-up notifications, and email marketing to both drivers and riders.

What messaging do you use to set yourself apart from competitors?

For the drivers’ app, we preach about our 5% commission benefit, which gives us a good chance, unlike our competitors, who take about 20% commission.

Then, for the passengers, we ensure that they know that riding with bloXmoveNG means sticking to the agreed fare. There are no unexpected increase in ride fares due to long hours in traffic. Also, our ride fares are more affordable than competitors.

4. BLXM Utility on bloXmoveNG : Presently, we are using “shadow Naira” on the bloXmoveNG app. shadow Naira are internal ERC20 tokens, which are minted (created) and burnt (destroyed) in direct reaction to incoming (mint shadow Naira) )and outgoing (burn shadow Naira) payments in real Naira coming from our Payment Service Provider (PSP).

We are currently finalising development on our multi-token platform (MTP). Once this is deployed, incoming shadow Naira will be automatically exchanged to BLXM to pay for transactions.

In this way, we killed two birds with one stone:

1. reduce friction for customers, who can simply use existing web2 payment methods.
2. activate utility for BLXM, by using incoming revenue to exchange for BLXM under the hood.

Going forward, we will activate burning of BLXM by the MTP.
The above should be fully activated before October this year.

In addition, we will explore options to see where and how we can activate BLXM as a front-end utility token as well.

The post bloXmoveNG: market traction AMA appeared first on bloXmove.

In what is probably the most BLXM important update for a while, we provided the background and rationale of the “Decentralization of BLXM”.
We are fundamentally and radically moving the structure of the project to that of what we will calling a semi-DAO:

• a fully decentralized project — i.e. operating in most ways as a DAO — which however,
• interacts with the regulated, non-crypto world through a corporate, non-profit entity being legally registered and regulated in an actual nation state (Singapore).

Decentralizing BLXM: Purpose and Objectives

Why decentralize: regulation and sustainable scalability

For bloXmove, decentralization is part of our mission and mindset. We believe that decentralized technologies (web3 and self-sovereign identities (SSI) and DID) provide infrastructure which empowers independent owner operators as well as prosumers (producing consumers).

On the other hand, there are also very firm reasons for centralized exchanges (CEX) to insist on decentralization. The main two are:

1. The token must clearly NOT be a security and NOT an investment product.
2. The token must have intrinsic utility (to a non-financial service).

A longer rationale with links to the actual requirements by Coinbase can be found here.

Roadmap and Outcomes: the “semi-DAO”

The roadmap to decentralization has been published as a Twitter thread here.

Having achieved one of the two core regulatory requirements: that of self-evident utility for the token, our next steps, which will be the focus of our work over the next 3–6 months, are:

1. Spin-off corporate entities: bloXmoveNG and bloXlab.
2. Ensure that no core team controls the project (this is a core requirement to avoid regulatory issues related to being classified as an investment product).
3. An independent and self-sustained community of developers drives the protocol and and tech stack forward — in line with the objectives and targets set by the semi-DAO.
4. bloXlab to serve the community in consulting or development — if so required by the governing body.
5. Fulfil the necessary requirements for possible listing Coinbase.
   (Pls. refer to the Disclaimer here)

Overall workstreams: Governance and development

The main workstreams will be highly iterative and will start in earnest in the first half of August.

We will bootstrap along two independent workstreams:

1. Community Governance (the “cooperative”).
2. Developer Community (the “source code”).

This article is written for the general public and focuses on how we will set up the BLXM “cooperative”, a.k.a. the semi-DAO.

What’s a semi-DAO?

We use this artificial term to describe a hybrid organisation which combines two core requirements:

1. Be decentralized in its governance (DAO-like).
2. Be a recognized legal entity in the world of nation states.

We will work in sprint-like iterations towards the first requirement.

These iterations will start by acquiring a core group of community members through our online communities. In close collaboration among the founding team and these core community members, we will propose the mechanisms and tools for:

1. Voting
2. Governance of the BLXM treasury
3. Process for Grant and Improvement proposals

We will also set up a token-gated discord channel, specifically for the developer community. Within that channel, code will be shared and the path towards full open-sourcing determined.

In order to fulfil the second requirement, we choose to operate under the umbrella of a Singaporean entity (the “BLXM Token Foundry Ltd.”), which is registered as a Company Limited by Guarantees (CLG) in the beautiful nation state of Singapore.

What is a CLG?
“A company limited by guarantee is a company without shareholders or shares. Typically used by non-profits and charities, this type of company is controlled by guarantors (members), who guarantee a nominal sum of money to the company in the event of its becoming insolvent or winding up. Profit is used to achieve the company’s objectives, rather than being paid to members.”

The roadmap in milestones

The above roadmap must be seen as a draft. We will be posting updates every month for the next months.

The post The BLXM Cooperative: a semi-DAO appeared first on bloXmove.

Major improvements to bloXmoveNG’s apps

In case you’ve been living under a rock (or just haven’t checked your app store recently), bloXmoveNG is the new web3 ride-hailing app ready to take Nigeria by storm.
Forget everything you thought you knew about ride-hailing — this app is rewriting the rulebook and adding exciting features you won’t want to miss!
Indeed, bloXmoveNG has just zoomed into town, and it’s here to change the game!

New features: embedded wallet and built-in referral

1. Bye-Bye app juggling! Welcome in-app wallet!

You spoke, and we listened! After carefully analyzing user feedback, bloXmoveNG has now integrated a web3 wallet right into the app!
No more juggling between different platforms, no more security concerns — just seamless transactions within our very own ecosystem. It’s like having your own personal chauffeur for your hard-earned crypto assets.

2. Wallet Recovery Phrase — We’ve Got Your Back!

Misplacing things happens to the best of us, whether it’s your car keys or that elusive sock that vanishes in the laundry. But fear not, because bloXmoveNG has your back! We’ve introduced a wallet recovery phrase in the app, so you can retrieve your digital treasures even if you temporarily lose your way in the blockchain jungle.

3. Referral Code Bonanza — Spread the Love and Earn Incentives!

We’re all about building a community, and what better way to do that than to share the love?

With bloXmoveNG’s spanking new referral code feature, you can invite your friends, family, colleagues and that random neighbour, you only see on laundry days, to join the party.
Not only will you be spreading the joy of convenient rides, but you’ll also be earning incentives in-app!

It’s a win-win for everyone!

Now, we’ve got some juicy insider info for you — this is just a sneak peek at what’s brewing in our development lab! The referral code feature is just a taste of what’s to come in our next major update. Trust us when we say, you’ll want to stay tuned for what’s around the corner. We’re pulling out all the stops to make your ride-hailing experience as exhilarating as a rollercoaster ride.

So there you have it, folks — bloXmoveNG is on a mission to revolutionize how you commute in Nigeria. Say farewell to the old ways and hop on board our web3-powered wonderland. With our own wallet, wallet recovery phase, and exciting referral code incentives, we’re setting the bar high and blazing a trail for the future of ride-hailing.

Don’t miss out on the action — download bloXmoveNG now, and let’s ride together towards a brighter, blockchain-driven tomorrow!

The post bloXmoveNG embeds web3 wallet appeared first on bloXmove.