Fighting Uber with blockchain cooperatives feat. Dardan Isufi from Eva Coop
This week I spoke with Dardan Isufi (@DardanIsufi), COO of the Eva Coop (@Eva_coop) which is a cooperative ride-sharing application based on blockchain started in Montreal and expanding to other cities. We discuss taking on Uber while trying to build a democratic and non-exploitative alternative like Eva.
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Transcript
Hello. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. I hope you are staying safe out there with the current corona situation and practicing physical distancing and social solidarity. This week, I got to speak to Dardan Issoffi, who is the COO of Ava Co op based in Montreal. Ava Co op is a ride sharing service, which is trying to fight back against other ride sharing services and platforms like Uber, like Lyft, by offering an alternative, which is not extractive and which is cooperatively owned by the riders and by the drivers. So it was a really interesting conversation to hear about the platform that they're creating and the blockchain that they're using since it's also a decentralized autonomous organization. And so, if you enjoy the episode, I hope you'll consider donating to my Patreon. I use the money to pay for the equipment, the server costs for the site, and the hosting services for the episodes. For being a patron, you also get access to the occasional contents that I create only for Patrons and to polls that help guide the topics that I cover in articles and podcasts. And so with that being said, here's the interview with Dardan from the Ava Co op. I'm sitting now with, Dardan Isufi, the COO of Eva Coop. So thank you for for coming on. And so from what I understand of the Ava Coop project, it's that it's trying to take on Uber and sort of these other extractive platforms and sort of taking them on by practically giving the same service, but with a different model, which is less exploitative and which gives more, democratic rights to workers on the platform. So I was wondering that's sort of the idea that I have, but how what is EVA and, like, how would you describe it to to people?
Well, first, thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure to, discuss about EVA. So you mentioned a key point, in your introduction is that we're trying to offer the same service or even better a better service to the people. So what is Eva? Well, we describe Eva as a cooperative ride sharing application based on blockchain. So the goal of Eva is to improve people's life through mobility. It's a ride sharing option to ensure a fast and safe and above all a sustainable and fair mobility. It combines a cooperative governance and a decentralized technology to protect the personal use of data. And the great thing about that is we're mixing two structures, one which is more, a governance structure and the second being a technological structure. We're combining both to give it into the end of the communities. And in and in the specific case of ride sharing, the communities are basically everyone. We're at some point in our life, we're all riders in a in a cab, in a Uber, in a EVA, in a Lyft, in a bus. We're, at some point in our lives, moving. So this is, the whole, the whole goal of EVA.
It's really interesting to me because it sort of has, at least from a from a socialist perspective, it has a bit of sort of a revolutionary seed. It's like how I would describe it. Like, you know, the whole idea of the sharing economy was was really big, you know, a few years ago and has sort of become part of a lot of our lives, where we use these platforms to engage. And it sort of shows the a little bit of the contradictions of capitalism a bit that, you know, we're sharing our resources, to each other freely, based on need rather than sort of market exchange. So it's, it's really something that, is, for me has a lot of revolutionary potential from a from a very small scale, I should say. But so you mentioned that it's a cooperative, and it also uses blockchain. So how does that work? And how does that differ from, you know, a a platform like Uber?
Well, I would agree with you that sharing economy was a game changer after the cry like, the economic crisis of two thousand nine, two thousand eight, and it came upon as this new thing in which we share the resources. We share the car. We share the house with, Airbnb, for example. However, these platforms, and I'm talking here about Lyft, Uber, Grab, Get, Airbnb, are based on an extractive model in which there's a middleman taking a quarter, sometimes even more more than that, of every transaction. For what? To provide a platform which is already already made, essentially. So how Eva takes form? Well, the first thing you need to know is that Eva is an app. For the for the coming of the people, you just go on your phone, open the app, and then well, now it's, because we're doing this COVID nineteen, quarantine, there's not a lot of rides and vehicles available in Montreal. But still, you can still order a ride. And for the coming of the people, it works the same. The payment is done online. You pay with your credit card. You don't have to, mess up with, private key, public key, a blockchain account. So the technology was made so that it's easy for my grandmother to use it. It's a mass market oriented technology. The way that EVA works, we need to see EVA a bit like McDonald's. So EVA is a social franchise model in which we have one blockchain based generic technology, which is used by these cooperatives. A co op is a company owned by the workers. There's different types of co ops. What we like in our model is multi stakeholders co op, in which we can include riders, drivers, the workers within the co op, even the support members, so the people giving, money to finance the co op. So the whole idea of the cooperative management is to ensure a democratic governance. So one member, one vote, no matter how rich is the member, how is like how involved is a member, and it's also to pull the resources. Because from every right, Eva takes 15%. Out of this 15%, so we pay,
all the And Uber is, is, like, I think 25%.
It's 25. Yeah. That's correct. So Uber and Lyft is the same, and we're taking 15%. Out of this 15%, we're managing the operations, the marketing, the member services, and so on, technical support. And if that at the end of the fiscal year, there's a leftover, well, this leftover can be shared among members. So the property is not shared among some shareholders in The US. It's shared among the drivers and the riders within the coop. So let's see it more concretely. In Montreal, Eva is the second largest ride sharing application right after Uber. We're we're we're we're bigger in volume even before Lyft in Montreal, and it's it's a 1,500,000, cities. I think the third largest or fourth largest city in Canada. So let's say in Montreal, we have our own co op. So there's a co op here in Montreal using Abba's technology and Abba's branding. We're now working to develop a co op in out in in in the province of Alberta. So there Eva will launch in Calgary. We're also right now working to develop Eva in New York. So there's gonna be another co op in New York. So every co op is locally rooted, is locally owned by its members.
So then is it sort of like the I don't know if you know much about the Mondragon model where it's sort of like a co op of co ops a little bit, or is it like each co op is a little bit separate and they just sort of go, like, who's doing the development? You know? Someone essentially or each coop has their own
We're not based on the model of, Mondragon, which we, we do, I think, consider as being a great model. We have in order to develop the technology and to raise, venture funds to fund a project, there's a corporation in which the IP is set. This corporation is made of developers and people involved to develop the technology and the whole infrastructure. Because aside from the application, there's a whole software management for every co op. There's the human resources man human resources management within the co ops that we built in. So there's this company. And then above this, there are the co ops. And the co ops, the cooperatives, the social franchises, decides of the feature they decide of the features to have within the application. So let's say I'm launching EVA in, in Pristina in Kosovo, and I would like, people to pay cash there because, most of the people don't have a credit card as as is the case from Montreal. So the coop will be requesting to have the cash payment, you know, procedure so that the company develops it and give it back, within their their application. The huge benefit from it is that what we need to consider, there's two things that made Uber and Lyft successful. The first thing is that by implementing their service in many cities, they were able to create a touristic market, which means that in most cities, 20 of the market share is from tourists, people from other cities. The second thing to consider is that these companies raise enormous capital to be able to market their application. There's a strange thing in sharing economy is that you need to control the demand nor the offer, nor the supply. Let's say I'm opening a market, a restaurant, I can control how many, chocolate bars I'm selling because I have a limited number of chocolates bar I'm selling. However, in ride sharing, it's kind of a free market in which you can you you need to control artificially the supply and the demand with several incentives, and this requires a lot of capital. So in order to have these two components with the which is the touristic market and the capital, we decided to have one generic technology. That means that someone traveling from Montreal to Calgary will be using the exact same application to travel in both, cities. However, the revenue extracted from the transaction will be kept within the coop of the city. Right. So there's no centralization of money. We're actually localizing the profits and the management.
But so then when you say okay. So, like, the the 15% cuts that ever gets is still going to the ever of, like, Montreal or ever of, the city?
Every co op has a social franchise agreement with, EVA Global. This is how we call it. And in Montreal, there's 5% going to EVA Global because EVA Global hasn't raised any capital. Our first goal was to launch, minimal viable product. And EVA, the co op here, raised 800,000, to launch. So we're we've been launching in Montreal since now ten months, I believe. We launched in late May two thousand nineteen. So, yeah, ten months. Mhmm. And now because our proof of concept is working, we're now working to raise capital within EVA Global so that we can fund other co ops. Because one of the problem of the cooperative model is the funding. It's very hard to get huge amount of capital because there's no high reward. There's a high risk, but no high reward. And an investor giving, let's say, a a million dollar with net co op has still one vote. It's it's the beauty of the co op, but it's also the kind of, thing that, well, investors aren't, you know,
like, in the the process. So we're trying to They give money so that they can have control and then they can get, you know, a bigger cut of the profits at the end, of course. Yeah. But the idea of Eva is that even though investors invest within Eva Global, the co ops remain
independently owned by the drivers and the riders, and we think it's important to have the riders on board. If we look taxi services, one of the big mistakes taxi services have done in the past is that a lot of them grouped into co ops, in in The US and Canada. I don't know for Europe. And in Canada, we have a we we had a lot of, taxi co ops, and every co op was, managed by the drivers. However, because they had almost a monopoly of, you know, taxi and riding in almost every city, they the co op weren't working in the best interest of the members, of the clients, of the of the users. So what we did in ever to avoid such situation, we included the writers as members within the co op.
That's interesting. So, so I'm curious what then is the the role of each member within the governance? I would think that the drivers would be a lot more, you know, vocal and a lot more proactive in what they wanted versus the riders, but there's a little bit of, like, of course, riders want cheaper fares and drivers want, higher prices. So how is that how is that sort of resolved, do you think, through this model?
Well, first of all, we need to acknowledge that we're starting. The whole idea of EVA exists since only two years now. And for us, it's a big experiment. Montreal is a big lab. The whole structure of EVA is a big experiment, and we're glad we're having this opportunity to seriously apply this theory of having a blockchain based application owned by the community. For sure, the drivers are more vocal. They're the one more involved. The first general assembly of the cooperative in month in, in Montreal was mostly, with drivers. I think there were less than five or six riders that, showed up just for personal interest, or maybe for the free food there. But, there wasn't any, you know, we have 25,000 members in Montreal, and there's only five, of them that showed up. So for sure, for the within the co op, the drivers are more incentivized to join because it's their direct revenue who's impacted by the the company. Mhmm. But the way it's done is that the coop every there's five categories of members within our multi stakeholder coop in Montreal. There's six categories of members within the corporate there that that has been registered in Alberta, and we're still figuring out for New York. Within the bylaws, every member has one representative on the board of representatives. So there's one person on the board representing the riders, one person on the board sending the drivers, and so far and so on. And within the bylaws, because we know that drivers are the key component of frac sharings, when it comes to time to share the leftovers, the per the profits, the surplus, within the bylaws, I think, and if I'm not wrong, I don't know for Alberta, but for Quebec is 60 or 50% of the profit must be shared among the drivers. So, we we acknowledge that within this business, drivers are the essential component because they're the one, you know, giving out their car, giving out their time to provide a service. And we know that within Uber and Lyft, a lot of drivers feel, powerless, powerless, within the structure, and they they, they don't have any, you know, any work to say within the governance. So we know that they're the one, and they're they're the one why we did this whole co op model because we wanted they're the the the they're the one with the best knowledge of the market, and, they're the one who know how the business should be run. Right. Right.
Oh, yeah. It's, it's interesting. I I actually, I was an Uber driver for a little bit, so I can, I don't know what
Where exactly?
When I was in, like, right after university. Because I wasn't making near enough money off of my job from to make things, to make ends meet. So I had to do Uber driving as well, and it was a it was an experience. So I think Did you like it? I mean if I had if I could already pay for all of my my rent and my food and everything else without it, then I probably wouldn't have done it. But you know it wasn't it wasn't a terrible experience, I don't think at least for me, I guess. But I'm someone who, I'm fine with sort of talking to random people. I didn't have I didn't have any, like, scary stories or anything, luckily. I avoided driving at night. So it was usually during the day, they weren't so bad. So you've you've mentioned, Eva is using blockchain, and I understand it's using EOS, I believe. I've also read that you would call yourself a decentralized solidarity cooperative, which I think is a very cool name. But so then is this, would you consider yourself a type of DAO as well, or you think you're somewhere kind of in the middle, so to say?
Well, the way we see ourselves is more as like a decentralized autonomous organization, which every structure within the whole social franchise ecosystem is independent and manages its own, no key elements. Indeed, we're based on the EOSIO technology. However, we have our own blockchain. So we basically fork the EOS blockchain. We're not using blockchain, we're using blockchain to ensure data privacy and to ensure data, you know, transparency. We're not using blockchain to to speculate on the on the mark public markets and and so on. We can I can you pay like with,
with cryptocurrency for your for your ride on Eva and that?
No. Not not yet. This is something we want to add in order to reduce the fees because every time people pay with credit cards, we're using a third party payment API, third party payment bridge, and we're paying some high fees for Visa Visa. And whenever the card is stolen, we need to pay back, charge, and so on. So it's it's get very it's getting very expensive. So eventually, we will add the cryptocurrencies, as a payment option. However, now the goal for us is to have a mass market product. I will say over the 25,000 riders that got over the 10 last month, 99% of them don't even know it's up is based on Blockchain. And when whenever they create account an account within their their app, they don't know, but they're actually creating a Blockchain account. And if they go in their settings, it's very funny because we have people asking us by email, what means this Blockchain ID? Because we have the Blockchain ID on the top of the profile picture. Yeah. So everything is decentralized. We don't have any component in the technology which is centralized. And the great thing about EVA, and this this is where it it becomes very interesting is that, Every co op, every social franchise has access to its data regarding the drivers, for sure, for security purposes, the riders, so the phone numbers and names, but they don't have access to any credit card information. And what's even cool is that every co op has access to this information, but the global entity has access to no information at all. Mhmm. So let's say there's a there's a criminal driving Montreal, and Interpol police calls us, at the global's office in Downtown Montreal asking us about information about this driver. Well, the only thing we'll be able to say is, well, call the co op because the co op, the cooperative, call the team there, add the inform add the information. We don't. So that's the beauty of EVA. We have a model that can scale up while ensuring data privacy. We we don't have leaks as as it happened with Uber, two or three years ago with millions of credit card information that were stolen. This cannot happen with with an EAVA because first, we don't have any credit card information. The credit card information is encrypted within the cell phone, and we we're using a clever cryptography to ensure that all the communication works within the system. And the cooperatives have only access to limited data in order to optimize and ensure that the operation in a safe, manner.
So then the really the the blockchain part is the registration of identity at the moment. Is that largely what you guys use?
No. I actually, everything is based on blockchain. All the transactions are are are written on the Blockchain. There's no information stored in any centralized server right now.
But so then if I, like, if I pay with my credit card, for a ride on EVA, it's there's, like, a recording of that transaction, but it's not using real,
Well, actually, let let's say we're you're paying a ride $20. This $20 is is converted within a token, a commodity token we have in within our blockchain. And then your transaction is treated with these tokens within the blockchain. So we have a utility token, which which has basically no value. It's a one for one. So EVA basically acts like a bank. So whenever we receive, let's say, 20 US dollars, we convert it within our tokens, then we pay the drivers, we pay the riders, and the driver well, I mean, we're taking from the rider's account, we're paying the drivers. The drivers then ask to be paid within their bank account, and then the co op is responsible to, to, to pay the drivers with with real money, obviously, because they have grocery to pay. They have funds. Yeah.
Sustain. So it's sort of so then you're using it sort of as well as, like, a a settlement layer that, like, at the end of, you know, the month or whatever, you sort of pay out what you need to pay out, based on what's been recorded on the blockchain a bit. Yeah. Actually, the way it works is drivers, they can they can request to be paid at any moment.
And then there's, some, you know, I think it's three to four business days for the co op to treat the payment, to market within the accounting book, and then pay the drivers. Because yeah. And this is how like, this is why the model is scalable because the structure is literally decentralized. Yeah. We don't need the permission of the San Francisco office to do something. The co op has all the tools within their own software to manage, the application.
Yeah. No. It's, it's really interesting hearing about this since, I mean, I remember, I don't know how many years ago it was when everyone was talking about how blockchain was going to decentralize Uber and like all these different platforms, but it took a while for it to actually happen. And, yeah, it seems like doing it as a as a co op is really the way that you decentralize it, which is interesting because I've, I mean, I've never heard a libertarian or some sort of, you know, anarcho capitalist talk about cooperatives.
There's a book once I've read, and they're talking about the cooperative model within the blockchain, and it's called the Blockchain Revolution by, Don and Alex Stapscott. There's I think it's it's a dad and a son in New York. And they've done a research project on us, on EVA, last year. And it was the first time I was reading it, and I was like I was asking myself how this idea of mixing the cooperative structure within blockchain never came up before. Yeah. And how comes that when we first started ABBA two years ago, like, it was we were, like, totally, like, in the dark. Like, there was no model we could, you know, get inspired with. There was no one we could talk to, in order to ask some questions about, hey, how it is to, to have a co op with blockchain and to go in a market that requires enormous amount of capital, you know, to start with. And, I mean, it took us two years no. It took us a year and a half before we launch our our first minimum viable product. So our our, our open beta. Now we have 25,000 riders rider members in Montreal. We have over 600 drivers and over a a 200 in the process of becoming drivers. It's it isn't easy, but it's something I personally think, and this is personal. It's personal statement right now. I think, is the future of Blockchain. We cannot add, only libertarian, ride sharing app and say, like, hey. I'm throwing out a technology like this in the city and use it the way you want to use it. I mean, there there are security norms to respect. I mean, transportation is highly regulated wherever you go in the world. At least in the Western world, like, transportation is highly, highly regulated. You cannot have anyone, any foe driving a cab without his background check verified every two years, the mechanical inspect inspection of the vehicle and so on. And for this, you need some sort of legal entity. You need to pay taxes because taxes are important to pay. Right now in The US in The US, people are dying of COVID nineteen because they don't have any public health care system, which is totally stupid. It's the only country in the world, modern country, which has no health care system. Right now in Canada, we're well enough. Like, we're looking at our slaughter neighbors, and we're like, oh my god. Like, this like, it's a freaking show right now. That's the the whole of the conversation you could talk about for hours. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. But what I mean is you need some legal entity to pay taxes to ensure the legal confirmity. And we don't want this entity to be another Uber, another corporate, which works for the interest of shareholders. We want this entity to be a workers owned entity in which drivers, well, optimize their revenue out of it. And there is no point for anyone to make extra buck over their labor. So this is why we think that our model is quite interesting. And, again, it's still an experiment. It's been less than two years. We've been pretty successful in what we've done here in Canada, and we're growing quite fast. And and and now we're closing a first round of funding within EVA Global for which we're quite happy. And I mean, even in the coop in Quebec, the state of Quebec gave us money. Like, the government there, their governments in the world are interested to have a local and social alternative to Uber because if you ask to any, municipal government, what are your worst nightmares? They will answer two things. The first one is Airbnb. The second one is Uber. These two companies are causing so much trouble in almost every city of North America. And for city governments to have a local and social alternative to Uber that better treats the drivers, that, localizes the economy in the city, well, they're happy with that. So for us, it's it's an experiment. We're building this, whole ecosystem in which we're kind of you know, there's I see that as like a triangle. Like, you have at one extreme, the capitalist platform, at the other extreme, the cooperative platform, and then to another extent, you have the decentralized platform. And we're kinda in the middle of these three. So we have some, well, the decentralized component is a technology. It's totally centralized. There's no centralized structure within our infrastructure. The cooperative, component is the governance structure within EVA in which the drivers and drives up one vote each. And the capitalist component, well, because we need capital in order to compete and fight against Goliath, is, the global entity of EVA, which raises equity, which raises the money in order to fund these co ops. Because in Quebec, we were lucky to get this, this first round of funding of 800,000 for the co op. I mean, when we started the co op, we're two members. There was Rafael and myself. And, normally, it's very hard to get, investment in the co op. Within a co op, normally, is the members who invest. But we didn't want drivers and riders to give the $10 to join the platform. So we had to tweak a bit our bylaws, and we were still able to raise the the funding because we had a project that was, that was, you know, sustainable. Yeah.
Nice. Yeah. It's, yeah, very cool. Yeah. I I imagine, it sounds like you guys have had a lot of, pretty interesting success so far, but this pandemic we're currently experiencing with, COVID nineteen, I imagine is causing a a little bit of a of a headache. So I'm just wondering how are you guys responding to it? It's yeah. I imagine it's not easy.
Yeah. Well, to be, very honest with you, the three last weeks have been pretty hard, for our members, for the business, for the workers. So, we didn't see it coming. The first thing we did is, we ensure that all the employees within the co op are safe, and now everyone is working from home. The second thing we did is we distributed masks and gloves and, all the security, items to the drivers. And we still have, I think, couple of 100 of masks left and gloves. And the third thing we did is, we messaged the riders asking them to not use EVA, which is a bit weird because normally we're, encouraging people to use our service because we're a transportation company. But due to COVID nineteen and because we're, respecting the government, the government, advice, we're trying to, lower the operation within the app at the minimum, as possible. The application is still up and running because it's it is considered by the government of Quebec and Canada as an essential service, because we're transporting nurses, doctors. I mean, there's all kinds of people using EVA for all kinds of reasons. However, the operations are lowered down. And, you know, when somebody asked me, like, you know, how bad can this be? I was like, hey. Even radical left wing anarchists are urging people to obey the state. This is how hard it is. You know, it's, it's it's a very complex situation, and we don't want to expose the drivers or the riders to the to the virus. We're right now working, however, as we'll say, I will say any good capitalist within every crisis, there's an opportunity. And we're right now working on, on providing a delivery service for grocery stores and, drugstores, in Montreal. So, the plat the the the functionality within the application will be launched on the Apple Store and Google Play Store next week, and we're, partnering up with several grocery stores, to deliver, these essential goods. So it's safe it's safer for the drivers, but they still get a revenue out of it. And we're helping the community and our, rider members to get the essential goods. So this is a pretty exciting project we're working on, and this is gonna be launched next week.
Oh, so some it's like a a b to b sort of, yeah, supply chain, I guess.
Yeah. Exactly. So we're not we're not, doing the Uber Eats model or the Foodora model. This market is, I will say, overrated, and there's I don't know how these companies are making yeah. There's DoorDash, all kinds of company. What we're doing is, like, companies and grocery stores who have online payment and order systems, right now, they're having billies of seven, eight business days of delivery because there's way too much demand out there. So our b to b offer will be for these companies to open their app, to have a corporate account, and just authorize, pay a monthly bill, and our rider members, our driver members delivering the goods, to the clients.
Interesting. That's very, capitalistic of you out. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. That makes sense. But
The thing is we we want to provide the revenue for the drivers, because it's a rough period. Most of the people have lost their job, and, even though the government of Canada is providing with enormous, you know, support, financial support, I mean, anyone who lost, his or her job, will now receive $2,000 per month for four months. I mean, that's that's crazy from so but still there are some drivers out there who have, like, families or several, like, different financial situations. And, they've asked to to have such service within the app. Okay. And it's it's way more safe than, than traditional ride sharing.
Yeah. A lot less, I guess, contact with with random people who may or may not be infected.
Yeah. Yeah. But we're still providing the service, for ride sharing. We still have, like, a lots of rides per day. I mean, we've dropped for around 50%, and every day is getting worst in terms of ride sharing. But it's normal. I mean, all businesses are in the same boat as us. Even Uber is, suffering from that.
Yeah. So then, I guess, once this pandemic is over, for the people who are out there and they really interested in EVA and they would like to start, you know, they would like to bring EVA to their own city. Is there a way to to go about that or does is there a process?
Well, this is actually how we work. We don't like the colonial approach of imposing a system within a city. We rather wait on the community to come to us and ask if their if our model is fit for them. And this is I mean, for for Montreal, we started it because we had we we needed to start at some point somewhere. But in the case of Calgary, we had a community of people there. Some were Uber drivers, some were not. And we had some first meetings couple of months ago, and now we're, wrapping up the insurance deal, and we're waiting to get our TNC approval license for, the Calgary launch, which will is supposed is supposed to be around June. And the same happened in New York. We had a community there, a group of leaders who joined us. They were, they were they had a huge expertise in co op, and, they wanted us to, to see if it could be possible. And now we're working with them, and we're business partners and launching EVA in New York. So, yeah, if anyone is interested and as for sure, we do require full time, involvement. It's not a side project. It's it's quite demanding. It's, and we do like people and groups who have, different skills, finance, management, even the transportation knowledge, the laws or regulations, because we always want to respect the local jurisdictions and the will of the people there. So with the extension of their government. So, yeah, we're always interested. Anyone I think we're, pretty fast. We we're I mean, send us an email or on the social media. We're pretty fast to answer everyone. We have a team, working on the social media, which is quite awesome and doing an awesome job, at least from my perspective. So, yeah. Anyone who's interested, just, email us and can have a first meeting. We have a team, only oriented with the global development, so the social franchises. I mean, sometimes that doesn't work for, several reasons. But when it works, we're all in and we're providing all the support for the from the cooperative incorporation to the launch.
Okay. So now I guess if is there, like, a should they reach out to your Twitter or, like, is there a, an application, like, on on your websites just as a a concrete thing that if someone is really wanting to do it, they can just do it now?
We don't have any, any application form online. To be honest, our online platform has to be updated, and Yeah. We're a bit lazy on that. But soon it will, we'll have a form for, such request. But right now, it's, we don't have any any such form. Okay. But all the web infrastructure will be updated once the open beta will be done. So this will be around end of April, May, June.
Okay. I I thought I thought it was, earlier. It was actually a pretty interesting point that you made that, like, you don't want to take a colonialist approach, which if you really think about it, like Uber, and all of these I mean, pretty much every single platform, that's out there right now that's, you know, run by, venture capital is essentially an American company based in Silicon Valley usually. So it's really I mean, if you think about it, it is a bit of an extension of American colonialism, sort of a digital digital imperialism, if you will, where they're extracting money from, I mean, even places like Canada or Europe where, you know, all you really have are are things like Uber. There isn't really a a local alternative. So, yeah, EVA sort of mixes the two where there's, I guess, international branding, but a localized, governance and profit sharing.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's the goal. I mean, it's an it's an experiment for us. And, as I mentioned, I don't know if we're if we're doing the right thing. And I we don't we don't pretend to have this virtue of saying that, hey. We're we're in a good track, but so far so good. People are embarking, are joining on, joining in for the journey and they're I mean, the app is up and running and, the proof of concept works. The cooperative management works, there's no crisis within EVA, there's no war between drivers and riders. So
Yeah. Yeah. So far so good. Yeah. Alright. Well, this was a super interesting conversation. I'm really interested in how it how it proceeds, and it's something that I I'm really, you know, I'm rooting for you guys and hoping, hopes hoping it works out well. But is there any last things that you you want to say? Or
Well, no. First of all, well, thanks for, having me on this, interview. It was great to meet with you. And, I think you're doing a pretty awesome job in, in explaining how, you know, Blockchain could be used in the best interest of the people. That's actually a thing we're wondering ourselves. How a lot of, civil society organizations and led groups, wider are are aren't using Blockchain, or, like, cryptocurrencies to avoid, the banking system, which is, you know, a total that this whole this whole banking system doesn't make any sense. But, yes. I say, I mean, you're doing an awesome job. Thanks for having us. And, for the people listening, you may follow, our development with Eva, our experiment, through Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Medium, GitHub. Am I forgetting one? Steam it. I don't know. Like, there's we're almost everywhere. So Yeah. Yeah.
I agree. I have to agree that, yeah. I if really we want blockchain and cryptocurrency to continue to exist, we really need to be looking for types of use cases like this that are, that are meant to benefit labor over capital.
And one of the yeah. And I totally agree. And the thing is, one of the one element that really hurt, Blockchain was the whole scams in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. People raising huge amount of money, for sometimes very interesting projects, but they were not doing anything. And that's why we we started a bit, upside down. We first developed the project, we launched a project, and now we're raising capital once we have the project up and running. And there's a lot of projects out there, which are very, very interesting. Some of them are blockchain based, some are not. If you look Fairbnb, it's, it's, I mean, we're we're closely, in close communication with these folks. We've met them in Barcelona three years ago. Airbnb is doing an amazing job, trying to build a sustainable alternative to Airbnb for the communities. And there's a lot of other alternatives, some mobility. In in France, there's Mobi Co op Mhmm. Which is a cooperative doing, long distances at our ride sharing. And, in Belgium, you have this, great co op, which is called, it's an art art coop. What's the name? You mean Smart? Yeah. Smartbee. It's a partner of EVA, actually. I'm I'm I'm so lost. Yeah. They're supporting us and, so, yes, it's smart be. Yeah. And, there's a lot of great, community based companies who are doing awesome jobs.
Well, thanks a lot. It's been a really good conversation.
Yeah. And take care during this whole, COVID nineteen situation for your family and yourself. And, wish the best of the luck. And, we'll keep in touch. Yeah. Thanks.
