Over the next 6 months we’re going to release a number of web3 features for our 10’s of thousands of users: Vehicle NFTs, the $DIMO token issuance, Trip NFTs, and more.

DIMO is excited to announce that we’re building these features on Polygon, and we're glad to have their support as we grow.

What is DIMO?

Ethereum demonstrated how closed and siloed financial infrastructure can be made more efficient with open and composable systems. The same opportunity exists in the physical world when moving goods and people - we just need some better digital primitives.

Automakers, dealerships, insurance companies, mobility ride hailing companies, and other players are fragmented in the same way as the financial world. To drive towards a safer, more equitable, and zero-emission future in the mobility industry, we need to change. That’s DIMO’s mission.

Building DIMO on Polygon gives both projects the ability to drive ahead in key areas. Over this partnership, we’ll build a new on-ramp that can help onboard millions of people to web3, advance the use cases for Polygon’s tech by widening the scope of what can be accomplished with NFTs, and develop new incentives for sustainable development in both the crypto and mobility world.

Bringing web3 to the masses

DIMO is built to support a new wave of auto and mobility applications. We’re working with startups and established companies to develop insurance, peer-to-peer car sharing, car marketplaces, data businesses, and more, built on top of data and connected vehicle assets owned by users. If developers can provide amazing apps and services on DIMO, it will make DIMO the best connected vehicle ecosystem for any driver, anywhere.  

To bring the users of those applications, we’ve launched an open-source connected vehicle app and are growing a hardware ecosystem that makes any vehicle from any OEM compatible. We’re also incentivizing connected cars with the soon-to-be-launched $DIMO token. In the DIMO app users link a crypto wallet to create an account and connect a vehicle via software or hardware giving them access to insights about their car and access to the DIMO app ecosystem.

$DIMO will exist on Polygon and will initially be used for governance, staking, and unlocking enhanced access to pro features. Naturally, the community can guide the development of the token over time, and developers will be able to build any application on the platform.

Our goal is to build a connected vehicle app so useful that non-crypto native users will be excited about the product. A key driver of mainstream adoption will be products built on crypto protocols that don’t feel like crypto products. Polygon fits with this alignment, and DIMO will be the first such product for millions of people who own a car.

Beyond PFP NFTs

NFTs have become wildly popular for their role in the art, fashion, and music industries, but a token linked to an art file is just the beginning. In DIMO, NFTs are building blocks for much more complex applications.

To build the DIMO developer platform, we’re establishing key primitives that will also demonstrate the extensibility of web3 technology in some never before seen ways. We’ll be launching a Vehicle NFT and Trip NFT, and empowering developers to use them to build new mobility experiences into their apps. .

Vehicle NFTs

DIMO unlocks the digital story of a vehicle’s life by allowing users to mint the digital identity of their most valuable IoT device. This digital identity (NFT) is the anchor for all driving data, insurance information and mobility use-cases.

As the vehicle is shared, driven, staked, the vehicle data is signed by a secure element on the vehicle, and automatically attached to the NFT as vehicle lifecycle history, stored off-chain. The NFT itself becomes a digital bearer asset, instead of just a JPEG.

At any point in time, the owner of the NFT can access this data or can grant access to a 3rd party (insurance, accident reconstruction, car-sharing, pre-sale inspection, etc).

Trip NFTs & Proof of Movement

DIMO allows a user to take a subset of the data streaming from their vehicle and wrap it up into an NFT. This NFT serves as the basis for a core concept in DIMO: Proof of Movement.

To use an analogy closer to the common crypto world, trips are transactions. As a driver, you should be able to store, privately, the history of your trips whether you drove to work, drove for Uber, lent your car out, etc. You should be able to take your safe driving history from one account to another.

As a global community, we should be able to agree that something like a car going from point A to point B really happened in the same way we can agree 1 MATIC went from one wallet to another when we look at the blockchain. DIMO is built to support Proof of Movement.

So Why Polygon?

The Polygon project is imbued with a few key properties that we support at DIMO.

First, they’re a team of builders who care about shipping products and who are investing a tremendous amount of resources in developing long-term Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. DIMO is a long-term oriented project, and our roadmap aligns.

Second, DIMO is committed to accelerating the transition to a zero-emission future and Polygon is a carbon negative proof-of-stake chain. We’ve deliberately designed DIMO’s tokenomics so that we don’t incentivize unnecessary driving or contribute to emissions with on-chain transactions.

Third, Polygon’s low gas fees make it possible for us to affordably deploy sophisticated smart contracts, provide a low-friction user experience with meta transactions, and settle transactions in seconds.

Fourth, Polygon is EVM based and is compatible with a wide range of useful and composable dapps. Apps like Tally, Snapshot, Gnosis-Safe, Collab.Land, Opensea, Metamask, and more are ready to go.

What’s up next?

• Vehicle NFT. Within the next couple of months, users will be able to mint their car as an NFT. In doing so, they’ll  create the digital identity of their car and be able to share their car socially.
• Token Launch. We’re busy designing and preparing the $DIMO token. You can read more about the tokenomics and distribution here.
• Trip NFT. Later in 2022, trip’s will go from being a web2 construct in the app, to an NFT that attaches to your Vehicle NFT.

What can I do now?

Download the DIMO Mobile app and connect your car. Don’t have a car? You can still create an account and generate your referral code to earn $DIMO when people who sign up with your URL connect their cars. You can also just Join the Movement by joining the DIMO Discord.