Saad Ullah
Unibright Blockchain’s PoC
DB has partnered with the blockchain integration platform Unibright for its task. The largest railway operator in Europe has recently held a workshop for its employees, where Unibright led the activity and they collaborated on discussing possibilities of blockchain being employed by the railway company.
With intentions of cutting down on costs, Unibright developed a proof of concept for the railway operator, with a design that allows different aspects of a journey to be linked together. This includes travelling itself, different services, loyalty points, catering, hotel bookings and more.
For the across the board integration, Unibright used the Proof of Concept in which each activity was tokenized. The concept gives tokens, which can be purchased, sold or exchanged by customers for services and other activities. Regular customers can even be rewarded tokens under the frequent traveller and loyalty schemes.
Building on NEM
The ecosystem defined under the proof of concept is offered to be built on the NEM blockchain platform. The platform will be custom made with a dedicated framework for the railway economy, where tokens can be clustered together under specific activities. This allows even the most uninitiated customer to view and utilize the tokens
The actual DB platform is far from being developed at this stage, but the proof of concept shows that it has a lot of potential if deployed. Akram Sioud, the head of BD’s Sales Department believes the operator “can get one step closer to an independent acceptance of services of different suppliers.”
DB is not alone in the railway industry that is considering adopting blockchain technology for efficiency and smoother services. The Switzerland’s national railway service has also tested blockchain technology last month. The Swizz, though, have looked into the possibility of and identity management system to help increase the speed of paper based activities.
Saad Ullah
