A transportation service similar to the renowned Uber is being developed on the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) in order to offer a higher level of decentralization to both customers and drivers.
Arcade City is the name of the project, and of its application in development, through which it will be possible pay with bitcoin for transportation services, home deliveries (delivery), among others.
Initially, the application will only be available to those who receive the early access (prior or early access), with which they seek to promote the formation of local networks where users live. For July this year, Arcade City promise make the official launch on the website and in the app stores for iOS and Android devices.
The use of the Bitcoin Lightning network makes it possible for payments in satoshis, the smallest unit into which a bitcoin is divided, to be made practically instantaneously and for free, since their commissions are extremely low.
In the aforementioned tweet you can see how simple and fast it can be to make a payment with LN. In that particular example, the LNURL tool was used, which makes it quite easy to send BTC payments on the Lightning Network.
The origin of the decentralized Uber in the Bitcoin Lightning network
Arcade City was born in 2016 as a response to a situation that took place in Austin, Texas, when the companies Uber and Lyft stopped providing services in this town. The urgent need for private transportation services opened the doors to a series of startup among which was Arcade City.
The project originally arose on the Ethereum network, where they raised funds through the sale of their ARC token. Nevertheless, they claim to have been scammed by its developers.
In a series of tweets of your official account, the team of Arcade City claims that the stolen funds were diverted to open an app similar to its own, which later ceased functions after having lost said funds in the hacking of the Parity wallet.
Despite the bitter pill, the start-up of the project at that time served them to test on a small scale what worked well and what needed adjustments in the execution of their idea; to be able to expand its branches to new horizons.
The Philippines is the foreign country where Arcade City has the best spread. This is followed by Brazil, where it is expected that the application can be translated into Portuguese to facilitate its use by the inhabitants of the South American giant.
Lightning’s Uber is just the beginning
Arcade City presents in its blog a utopian vision regarding the use of the Lightning network and its participation in the decentralization of all kinds of services. This is what the entrepreneur and bitcoiner Michael Saylor he calls “the service layer,” which is the last of his “Six-Layer Model of the Bitcoin Economy.”
The Arcade City team proposes the launch of its application for transport services such as a first step that leads to the inclusion of many other services on its platform.
In the event that projects like Arcade City prosper and deliver on their goals and promises, the exposure, adoption and use of the Bitcoin Lightning Network can increase considerably. This would favor the accelerated growth that the BTC micropayment network has been experiencing.