Deutsche Bahn AG, a Germany-based, biggest railway operator in Europe, is all set to tokenize its ecosystem with the help of Unibright’s blockchain solution. The project includes working on the workshop content for an internal entrepreneurship program, through which the Deutsche Bahn (DB)’s ecosystem will be tokenized via blockchain technology.
The Background
DB is the biggest railways operator in Europe, earning the highest revenue in the industry worldwide during 2015. It has a grand customer base of around 2 billion every year. The company offers tickets, both standard and personalized, via website, app and ticket machine. Inclusive services like transportation, accommodation, and catering are also provided.
Akram Sioud, the BI developer and blockchain professional at DB, has convinced the company to take Unibright on board for developing blockchain based solution to put together all connected services. The three experts at Unibright are currently focused on a 4-week DB internal workshop to initiate the project, gather information and discuss implementation matters with the company’s selected experts.
Structural & Technical DB Ecosystem
In terms of structure, the Deutsche Bahn ecosystem already has the company and all its connected service providers on board. At the same time, the ecosystem is technically connected to datastreams of multiple participant companies empowered by APIs at one or both ends of the connection. These connections enable integration of the services onto a common platform as a part of the ecosystem.
Marten Jung, CEO of Unibright, states:
“One goal of the workshop concept was to define better, which players can be part of an ecosystem around Deutsche Bahn and to make proposals on how this ecosystem can be built. The result should feel natural to the customer and provide tangible advantage.”
Ecosystem Tokenization
Through tokenization, the participating values and assets will be converted into transferrable, partial, controllable and restricted-in-use tokens, which will act like vouchers or value representation with specific sense in DB ecosystem.
Daniel Benkenstein, CIO of Unibright, says:
“One goal of the workshop concept was to tokenize values and assets that can be part of that future ecosystem, and also to check on possible transformations of existing value-based systems like “BahnBonus-Punkte” (a reward program where a customer can collect points for each ticket purchase)”.
Choosing blockchain as the technology, Stefan Schmidt, CTO of Unibright, adds:
“The technical part of integrating existing players into a newly build ecosystem is not trivial. Therefore, one goal of the workshop concept was to show, which parts of the solution can live in a blockchain and how can they be integrated with the “off-chain world”, a challenge that is explicitly targeted by the Unibright Framework”
The Ecosystem’s Basic Workflow
The concept is to connect all parts of the journey via tokens, including travel miles, services, hotel bookings, services, transportation and other assets. The purchase assets can be transferred or sold.
Roles and Processes
- The issuing office defines new tokens to become part of the ecosystem, e.g. when a new provider is included
- The provider can offer his tokens for sale on a dedicated platform
- A collector transfers tokens from users to providers; either manually or automatically.
- The consumer manages his wallet to hold and monitor the different assets, represented by tokens.
On these roles the following processes are defined.
- Selling and buying tokens
- Collecting tokens
- Transferring tokens
- Issuing new tokens for new assets of new providers
The Utilization of Tokenized Assets
Different suppliers can define new assets and bring them into the ecosystem. These tokens can be (independently) redeemed for their initial purpose and be bought later to refill the personal balance.
A customer can gain big through option that connects and converts different assets from the ecosystem.
Proof of Concept Integration
The DB ecosystem consists of four aspects for PoS implementation.
- A token and asset model based on NEM features, including a basic REST-API,
- Views for the customer
- Views for the responsible designer of the ecosystem, using the Unibright Workflow Designer.
- Views for the responsible manager of the ecosystem, using the Unibright Explorer.
The NEM features
The given solution is built on NEM Protocol, offering different smart assets and operations based on NEM features.
- For each asset, a specific token is created, representing the balance of this asset
- For each token, a reverse token is created, modeling the claim to this asset as soon as the service is provided.
- All tokens initially are in wallets that are owned by DB.
- Every purchased travel leads to an account (wallet), assigned to a specific user, holding the purchased and claimed tokens.
The API-Supported operations are:
- Booking a journey
- Creating a wallet and purchasing tokens
- Transferring tokens
- Clearing
The Ecosystem Views
- Unibright Workflow Designer
With the Unibright Framework, a blockchain based process is designed visually, and all blockchain related objects are generated automatically. Unibright made proposals for managing existing and new tokens within the Unibright Workflow Designer, using the “Ecosystem Tokenization Template”.
- Unibright Explorer
With the Unibright Explorer, a business specialist can monitor the ongoing process without needing to know any blockchain specific know-how.
In Future
The teams are working to determine the potential of DB’s tokenized ecosystem that will also take into consideration the development of open and integrated solutions, addition of new partners, generating automated benefits and offers for the users and ensuring data privacy.
To know more about Unibright and this unique project it has started working on, please visit https://unibright.solutions/
