I love the thought behind this. The biggest threat to Uber is not Lyft or taxis or any competitors, but the emergence of a decentralized, p2p ridesharing platform. Ridesharing companies already call themselves "p2p" but that's a farce. There is nothing p2p about a single $XXX billion corporation controlling millions of rides.

In the Uber/Driver relationship, it seems at first glance that Uber has all the power. But in fact, the drivers have far more leverage. A single driver can drive for multiple apps, and in fact a significant percentage of the drivers I meet are simultaneously using Uber and Lyft.

Currently drivers using multiple platforms are pretty much only using Uber and/or Lyft. There is no third competitor. But if one emerges, especially with superior driver incentives, drivers will use it, even before any riders are on the platform. Even if demand on a new app is sparse, drivers have no reason not to download it and run it on their phone alongside Uber and Lyft. In the meantime while they wait for supply to grow, they can just continue using Uber and Lyft. But if this "third competitor" offers far greater incentives than Uber and Lyft, then once it's supply side achieves parity with its demand side, drivers will prefer it to Uber and Lyft.

So what does a "third competitor" look like to Uber or Lyft? It looks like a company (or something else!!) that gives 95% or more of revenue to its drivers, i.e. operates on minimal margins.

What are the requirements of a true p2p ridesharing platform?

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- Bare minimum dependency on centralized third party resources

- Decentralized reputation and dispute resolution protocols

- Decentralized payment system, possibly involving an auction model

- Equilibrium of supply and demand

- Legal compliance without a dependency on a centralized market maker

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No technological barrier exists to any of these requirements.

The most difficult aspect of a p2p ride sharing platform would be legal compliance. How do riders vet drivers, and how do drivers insure themselves? Perhaps the solution is a third party, uninvested in the ridesharing platform, that controls the reputation, dispute resolution, and insurance system. Asking the ridesharing platform to carry those responsibilities will only result in bloat and overhead costs that cut into the margins of drivers. Whereas if a third party manages legal compliance, drivers can price the cost of it into their own driving services, instead of the platform "passing down" the cost to drivers (and exaggerating its magnitude).

The second most difficult aspect would be bootstrapping supply and demand. The supply side is relatively easy, as long as the driver onboarding cost is low. The demand side is more difficult, because people trust Uber and Lyft. Building that trust in a decentralized system would not be easy, especially without legal compliance.

I challenge someone to create the Napster of ridesharing. No central servers allowed, mobile clients only, no financial overhead per transaction. The next step would be to create the trusted third party responsible for legal compliance.

A p2p platform that achieves supply/demand parity and solves the legal compliance problem will destroy Uber and Lyft, because the centralized costs of a p2p platform are zero. The drivers price their own services and have incentive to find the most economically efficient legal compliance. Therefore prices are lower than Uber and Lyft, so ultimately people will prefer p2p over centralized.

sidenote: I'm from the Portsmouth area. If anyone at arcade city is reading this, reach out! :)