Held on 9th September, 2021 at t.me/oddgemsfamilia Telegram channel.
It was my pleasure to host Bloxmove’s Founder & CEO, Sophia Rödiger, and Founder & CTO Dr. Harry Behrens for an hour-long AMA session. It was divided into two parts, First part being Sophia and Harry answering the questions from my side, followed by the second part which was a live community session where everyone was open to ask anything.
This AMA mainly covers everything related to Bloxmove. Will be worth the read as the answers are well detailed and explained in a very comprehensive manner.
Oddgems: Everyone, Please welcome Dr Harry Behrens and Sophia Roediger from Bloxmove. I’m really honoured and super excited to have you guys in our group!
Harry: It’s an honour and a pleasure to be here!
Sophia: so nice to meet oddgems family and friends.Oddgems: Before we begin, Can you briefly introduce yourself to our community?
Sophia: Sure, I am co-founder with Harry and our third one — Bernd — and as I said CEO of bloXmove, the technology brand of Power&Mobility. I am a business psychologist, author and has been shaping innovation, transformation and marketing initiatives in the digital mobility environment for over seven years. Most recently, I led the global startup hub as well as global transformation at Daimler Mobility.
During my time as head of startup scouting and investment I’ve met Harry — now the CTO of bloXmove, and our mastermind for everything around technology.
Harry: I am Harry, #silverlynx, CTO. So I handle the architecture.
Before spinning off bloXmove from Daimler Mobility I founded and led the Daimler Mobility Blockchain Factory where we built the software that has now become bloXmove over three years. My background lies in distributed computing.So to connect the stories:
Our CEO Sophia Roediger and CTO Harry Behrens have been part of the bloxmove journey since the beginning at Daimler and took a great part in the buyout and foundation of bloxmove. They are both experienced in the industry and build the board together with our CFO and COO. The board is supervising a constantly growing team and partnerships with investors, business partners and service providers. And Daimler invented not only the car, but also car sharing: car2Go (now shareNow).Sophia: einventing the car, mobility services like car sharing and the Mobility Blockchain platform which became bloXmove in May this year.
Harry: as well as mobility as a service with moovel — now reachNow.
If this is the start, then the rest of the AMA is going to be 🔥🔥🔥, so the first question…
Q What exactly is Bloxmove because many people still have confusion as to whether it’s an app or a backend protocol?
Sophia: I will start with the meta-view… to understand this USP of bloxmove, as you said oddgems we are not a front-end app that you can download and see on your smartphone interface… so we will not act as the next aggregator platform — which tries to connect all the mobility services in one front ent shop.
See us more as a connector in the background — we are a software infrastructure and connect all the different providers, their assets, and their transaction chains: so we run the fully integrated chain from identification to smart contracting to payment and revenue distribution.
Harry: bloXmove is also THE protocol for #DeMo — decentralized mobility.
That protocol is fueled by BLXM — our token.
This is used to pay for services and transaction fees on the platform.
#DeMo means vehicle owners, service providers, and customers can build, consume and deliver mobility services without intermediaries -
just like #DeFi delivers financial services purely as protocol — bloXmove #DeMo delivers mobility as a service as an end-to-end crypto protocol. It is via the protocol that our customers and stakeholders interact.
Sophia: what does it mean for the provider of business to business customers:
They keep their customer touchpoints the most important asset in the mobility space, because customer acquisition is the most expensive element in their operation, and right now with all the aggregator platforms like uber or freenow, Lyft etc. — they are the looser…
Harry: In addition operating systems is a major cost factor in mobility, especially if you want to bundle e.g. scooter, taxi, car sharing in one “Berlin all you can move” ticket.
Sophia: lose customers and revenue…and for you as an end-user of mobility: the result is a mass of different apps because every party tries to develop their own app.
Harry: With our decentralized technology, all of the operational overhead and cost can be reduced to the small transaction fees bloXmove charges.
QThis is simply out-of-the-box tech imo. So bloxmove will be connecting every service provider in the background to its customers? and will also handle the settlements too?
Sophia: Perfectly summarized… we are making the providers strong… and help them to connect in one alliance… and jointly operate end-to-end journeys.
Right, so as a user of mobility like you and us… you can use any favorite app as your entry point — it does not matter if it’s a bus, bike, or train… every party can offer you this end-to-end A to B ticket.
Harry: Settling is actually one of our key features. We are blockchain-based after all.
Q Coming to settling….Does Bloxmove do everything from settling different providers' accounts to customers' billing & invoices — all throughout his journey, no matter how many different kinds of travel modes he chooses?
Harry: This is THE shared ledger: the shared medium for financial settlement for the international mobility as a service market. We definitely settle B2B between the operators.
In the pure crypto play, the protocol also ensures the customer pays the deposit and rental to the operator (the customer never sees us in this scenario; she is a customer of the service provider; we are the protocol).
In the hybrid scenario in e.g. Europe the end customer uses fiat to pay the mobility service provider. In that case, we do not touch the customer relationship at all but settle B2B liabilities.
Oddgems: This is a major pain point of today, and if Bloxmove is going to solve this then honestly the future looks very bright. ☀️
Sophia: True, especially settlement for exactly one device and the exact number of km — super tricky for aggregators right now when it comes to payment and distribution between parties.
The benefit for the end customers on the streets in the cities is clear as well: fully integrated journey, easy processes, not 20 times registration for a new app etc…
QInteresting, so let's assume if an individual has just one app say uber or Lyft installed then can he opt for all the different modes of travel from point A to B via the same app utilizing bloxmove tech?
Harry: Yes, exactly. because whoever has the app — and the customer relationship — uses the protocol to book the other services and offers them to his customers.
bloXmove handles all of the contracting and settlement between these operators (b2B)
Sophia: Yes, in general, that's possible…
In the end, it is the decision of a provider like uber, freenow, Lyft, scooter 1, scooter 2, taxi 3… because based on a contract they can decide… yes I want to work with you as a bus company…
So in a hybrid world — where we still have contracts between companies for the operational model — the partners will decide with whom to work and which offers they want to add to their product bundle.
We stop the central way of intermediaries… which have no own fleet, or asset, but the power of customer interfaces and data right now.
Q So, how does Bloxmove differ from the other MaaS (Mobility as a service) platforms.
Sophia: No aggregation, more collaboration… this is what we offer and push because right now, the main MaaS providers act as an aggregation platform.. in the front end. This was a great idea to be honest but since 5–10 years we can see that this is not a successful approach as it is too slow when it comes to n to n integration with interfaces…it is very cost intense because everybody develops their own app.
Q So, what is the utility of the BLXM token?
Harry: In the “pure crypto” scenario:
BLXM is used to pay for decentralized mobility services, i.e. customers need to buy/have BLXM in order to pay for services and deposits.
The operator also needs BLXM to pay for the platform to execute the full transaction, contracting, and settlement.
Part of the token design is also a distinct deflationary measure: of all fully decentralized transactions, settled in BLXM we will burn between 10–40% for every transaction until we reach the minimum supply of 10 million token units.
The token also plays a role in how the community funds (54% of all supply) are managed. I.e. there will be a governance function that can be used only when staking the tokens for a given time.
Staking tokens as well as providing liquidity pairs will be incentivized with BLXM as well.
QI heard you will be burning tokens? Can you explain?
Harry: Once burning stops and we are down to 20% of the original diluted max supply, we will also allow other layer-2 tokens to be used as utility tokens. We will then recycle 10–40% of those to our stakers and node operators.
Sophia: if someone wants to do a deep dive… https://bloxmove.medium.com/blxm-overview-of-utility-ed037e163ec8
Q How is Bloxmove going to benefit from all of this, I mean what is the revenue model? Also, does the revenue model take into account the BLXM token as well?
Sophia: let’s start with the revenue model in the hybrid business to business world…. and Harry you can add the token context here.
So our business model is based on transaction fees… we told you that we run transactions from identification to settlement.
Harry: In the full protocol “emerging market” scenario: it is only BLXM that can be used to pay for transactions.
Sophia: This is where we take a very small fee — so scalability is the key here — and our technology has a huge potential for this.
Harry: in the hybrid scenario, i.e. in setups where our customers are regulated businesses in EU, China, etc., it is optional to pay either in “internal value units” (a form of closed-loop stablecoin we introduce) or in BLXM.
Q What is bloxmove’s relation to energy & power in general and how will Energy Web play a role here?
Sophia: This is our second strategic use case: power meets mobility. this is the reason why we chose the name Power&mobility for the parent company…
Harry: We are partnering with the Energy Web Foundation and 50Hertz.de (one of Germany’s four power grid operators)
Sophia: we connect electric vehicles like cars or scooters with the energy grid to make green energy more flexible…
Oddgems: 50Hertz is big in Germany as far as I know!!
Sophia: yes one of the biggest energy providers and very strong with renewable power…
Harry: 50Hertz has already more than 60% renewable power generation on their network. because this is highly volatile and cannot be controlled to match demand it creates situations where Germany ends up paying other countries to take beautiful green energy.
So we first pay to generate green power and then we not only give it away for free but even pay other countries to take it.
Oddgems: Wow, this is taking the whole conversation we had so far into another different dimension altogether!!
Oddgems: 💯💯🔥🔥
Harry: Because of that the strategy is to connect electric vehicles (through V2G tech) to the power grid and use them as living, breathing buffers.
Sophia: so this will become super exciting… because we can define new reward systems for “share and charge communities”… so people like us pushing green mobility and using more of those services.
Harry: So we are developing this infrastructure on behalf of 50Hertz (and others in the future).
Oddgems: 👀👀👀
Harry: The blue box here is bloXmove — the green box is the Energy Web foundations’ EW-DOS.
Sophia: and in this case, we show the interlink between blockchain systems…
Harry: Kai Schmied from 50Hertz and myself will actually talk about this on a panel later this month in Mittweida (Eastern Germany).
Sophia: Place to be — I can tell you!
COMMUNITY QUESTIONS
Tobes: So I read master ventures invested in BloxMove, what are the benefits from them. And are you guys going to announce more VC investors?
Harry: Well their benefit is of course to have received our tokens at an early stage of presales. We will also launch on their launchpad (PAID Ignition)
Oddgems: What’s Bloxmove relation with Ocean and Fetch?
Harry: We have no direct collaboration with Ocean nor Fetch. I personally know Trent and Bruce of Ocean but so far we have no direct working contact
Oddgems: Which countries/regions are you planning to rollout Bloxmove’s visionary tech?
Sophia: We start in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Netherlands due to our own networks, and our know-how for the mobility market. Next year we prepare the expansion to Asia.
David Leo: Large partnerships seem like they would be of great importance to this project. Other than the ones you have already mentioned are there any other industry partners you can announce now? Also, when will the BLXM token be available?
Harry: BloXmove will be launched later this month. We will announce it very soon. On partnership: we will announce a partnership with Ontology very soon as well as the Energy Web Foundation.
That’s on the pure crypto side, On the business idea, Sophia has an impressive list to present.
Steve Austin: I want to know bloXmove have any plan presale or private sale? if yes when will it start?
Sophia: IDO, public will be in 2 weeks… the pre-sale for investors is successfully closed…
Oddgems: why do you believe a platform like bloXmove can survive against big aggregators such as DiDi or UBER?
Sophia: we see several trends — first of all the shift in the user behavior, especially of younger generations — they want back their data ownership.
Next thing is: the providers know that they are in a weak position, losing customer touchpoints and money… so if you offer them a different way with benefits, this is interesting for us
Tahir Sheikh: What is different for mobility users so that you can bring more users because in the end, all mobile apps disturb the customer.
Harry: We enable providers to offer their users unique flexibility and seamless roaming across the whole mobility ecosystem. Customers only need to register once and use one app. Which app is up to their choice and the sales and marketing skills of each operator
Narasimhan: Which all countries in Asia that you plan to roll out?
Sophia: right now the best and most concrete talks are with china, and we have 3 people in our team who are located there, but Singapore, Taiwan, and India are very interesting as well.
Narasimhan: That’s great to know — India and China covers a big population base and hence adoption will be more
Sophia: right… but we know that the market dynamics are different ones there…For example, in China, you need one strong partner and brand as an umbrella to start a real business…
Narasimhan: Exactly
Sophia: and that's the great thing with such a family or other communities like you are — every person is a user of mobility and often every person has at least one or two contacts to another good company…
so the power of the community is very important for us when it comes to the ecosystem development
Blogabo: How BLXM tokens are included in Fiat transactions? Do buyback and burn still occur?
Harry: On the B2B settlement operators are free to use BLXM to settle fiat liabilities. We enable that through an internal liquidity pool, that acts as an “exchange office”.
Boye: Hi guys! I have noticed bloXmove is mentioned in the context of the conUBC architecture for SAP integration on Concircle’s website. Can you guys please elaborate a bit more on what your relationship is with Concircle? Cheers!
Harry: Here we are going towards two things:
1. For the hybrid scenario to enable fully automated accounting feeds into SAP.
2. potentially connect bloXmove to the baseline protocol
Ashutosh: Given the very practical use case for the $BLXM token, wouldn’t it be desirable that its price be, more or less stable?
Harry: I understand the very real and valid concern. We try to achieve two things, however:
1. stability for prices
2. rewarding those that are supporting and jumpstarting the protocol by coming in early.
We achieve that by always quoting prices (services and transactions) in FIAT (or e.g. USDC). You still pay on BLXM but always only what is quoted in USDC. This way you can both benefit if BLXM rises in value while still keeping transaction fees stable. Again: we use dedicated liquidity pools as the conduit for this
Tahir Sheikh: How can we participate in BLXM token if I may ask?
Sophia: In 2 weeks there will be the IDO day…
Harry: PAID Ignition date to be announced
Sophia: stay tuned in our TG or Twitter community… we would love to meet you there.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bloxmove
Telegram: https://t.me/bloXmoveCommunity
Oddgems: I think we should wrap it up now :)
Sophia: it was an amazing dynamic… you guys have fire and great energy
Oddgems: Thanks a lot Harry and Sophia for answering our questions. It was an absolute pleasure having you both here in our small family :)
Harry: Thank you all, thank you oddgems. Very good questions. Really loved the deep focus and high-caliber questions!
Best of luck Sophia for today's IAA event. 👍🏻
Sophia: we appreciate being part… let’s stay in contact…
Thank you.. we will rock a few physical stages in persona — totally exciting in these times…bye bye.. see u
Oddgems: I wish the entire Bloxmove team the very best.
Harry: We will try to exceed your expectations!
Bloxmove Links:
Website — https://bloxmove.com/
Twitter — https://twitter.com/BloXmove
Telegram — https://t.me/bloXmoveCommunity
Medium —https://bloxmove.medium.com/
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/bloxmove/
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/bloxmove2021/
Oddgems Links:
Twitter — https://twitter.com/oddgems
Medium — https://medium.com/@oddgemsofficial
Telegram Group — https://t.me/oddgemsfamilia
