What if you could ride a bike and get paid for it? A team of three people developed an app that could potentially change the way we cycle, specifically working on our motivation: the app measures your cycling distance and rewards you with virtual coins that can be used on the blockchain.
The app called Pedal was developed during the world’s largest climate action hackthon (Climathon) which took place on October 27th in more than 100 cities around the world.
The hackathon’s purpose was to accelerate our ability to respond to climate change on a global scale, and it was the biggest event of its kind in history.
Organised by Climate-KIC, the EU’s initiative for climate innovation, the Climathon brings together the challenges of the world’s cities with the people who have the passion and ability to solve them. Get more info about the global Climathon here: climate-kic.org.
In Romania, the Climathon was organized in Brasov and Timisoara, and the UrbanizeHub team was at the Timisoara event, supported by Banat IT, the Timis Chamber of Commerce, ARIES Transilvania and other organizations.
Pedal, the first gamified blockchain biking app
Pedal was one of the winners in Timisoara and it incentivizes its users to ride their bikes instead of driving a car by rewarding them with virtual tokens according to the distance traveled on their bike.
Every time you ride your bike, either to go to work/school or just in your free time, and you have your smartphone with you and the Pedal app installed, you can get some virtual currency called Pedal Coin.
Riders will be able to sell, trade or spend these coins for goods and services as soon as they get accepted by vendors.
The motivation behind the app was to create an economic catalyst that can convince people to reduce their carbon footprint and become healthier at the same time. Blockchain technology can provide a medium for incentivizing people to think more about their health and the environment.
The app is still in prototype mode, and it will become available as soon as the Pedal Coins have entered the market via an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), which will start around February 2018.
