DEC Raise $9M for Decentralized Ride-Sharing App Teleport

Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), the creator of the decentralized ride-sharing app Teleport, has secured $9 million in a seed funding round.

The funding is targeted at empowering the ride-sharing platform to compete with other established traditional ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft. It will also be used to expand The Rideshare Protocol (TRIP) to allow other companies to build their ride-sharing apps.

The $9 million seed round was jointly led by Steve Vassallo at Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Foundation Capital and Thomas Bailey at Road Capital. It was further backed by investors like California’s Thursday Ventures, crypto-inclined 6th Man Ventures, early-stage fund 305 Ventures, and Common Metal. 

Many individual investors like Uber’s third-ever employee, engineer Ryan McKillen, as well as social media influencer Jake Paul, Flexport founder Ryan Petersen, and Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero were also contributors in the seed funding round.

Teleport, which is powered by the Solana blockchain, attempts to provide solutions to a series of problems encountered by traditional ride-sharing apps especially, in the aspect of giving control back to the drivers and customers. 

Teleport Takes Away Monopoly And Centralization

Trying to establish the cutting-edge difference between Teleport and traditional ride-hailing services, the Chief Executive Officer of DEC and Founder of Teleport Paul Bohm explained that Uber operates a monopoly system, giving it full centralization. Based on data shared by Bloomberg in June, the ride-sharing giant which takes a significant cut of the ride fee controls about 72% of the United States ride-sharing market.

Teleport runs a similar service but this time around without a centralized approach to it. Particularly, with the peer-to-peer technology which Teleport utilizes, the use of middlemen is eradicated. According to Paul Bohm, “We’re giving ownership to anyone who brings people using the protocol because the protocol should reward the people building it well.” 

While still in the works, the Teleport app is expected to go live before the end of this year, according to a statement issued by the company. The design is in such a way that both drivers and customers would not have to bother about familiarising themselves with the app. The only difference is the absence of a monopoly and the introduction of cryptocurrency.

Riders will need to pay for their ride either with a credit card or the United States dollar-backed USD Coin (USDC).