Track: Masters Thesis Competition

Abstract

The shared economy, which originated in communal resource sharing, evolved with digital platforms like Airbnb and Uber in the early 21st century, transforming various industries. However, literature suggests that while many modern shared economy models have proven to be commercially successful, few of them focus on the prospect of improving sustainability as a primary driver. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of leveraging blockchain technology to track and improve sustainability in a shared economy scenario, while also contributing to an organization’s financial profit. A use case of shared last-mile delivery is proposed with the help of Ethereum Smart Contracts that will facilitate these instances of sharing on the blockchain, providing trust and transparency between parties. By providing this platform for shared delivery, the total amount of isolated deliveries, and therefore carbon emissions, will be reduced.