Why does DIMO Reward Connected Cars?

DIMO is building a user-owned connected vehicle platform. The goal is to make it easier for developers to build applications across any vehicle that make mobility cheaper and more efficient. The digital infrastructure for moving objects (DIMO) around the world should be treated as a public good so that users can use better apps and services.

To create this decentralized infrastructure DIMO needs to connect as many vehicles as possible while providing a great experience for early users and developers. Rewards are a useful method for solving the chicken and egg problem inherent in large networks, but that’s hardly the whole story.

Baseline vs Market Demand Signal

DIMO starts with a “Baseline Demand Signal,” which refers to the concept of rewarding drivers based on how long they've been connected, what type of car they drive, and what types of data they provide, even if there is no end customer using that data. As DIMO is getting started, this will be the sole driver of the rewards earned by users.

This baseline primes the network by incentivizing drivers to connect the types of cars and stream the types of data that we expect will be valuable to data consumers and app developers in the future.

Over time, DIMO, and the partners who participate in the ecosystem will add to the baseline with “Market Demand Signal,” which refers to what third parties are paying for their data.  If Alice opts into data monetization and Acme Corp pays to subscribe to a data set containing her information, Alice will earn a proportionate reward for her participation.

At DIMO, we hope to enable a wide range of mobility applications that make use of aggregate or individual vehicle data to create better applications and services:

In the early stages of DIMO's development, the vast majority of rewards for users will come from Baseline Demand Signal. As the network grows, this balance will likely shift the other way. This is comparable to other web3 networks like Helium, where their rewards from proof of coverage will shrink in comparison to rewards from data transfer over time.

Use of Rewards

The DIMO token is not yet live. Currently, the mobile shows "test points" which allows us to test and fine tune our rewards engine. It's very useful to the engineers to have this testing in production.

As a user, there won't be any value to these points right now. We cannot get specific today on exactly if and how these experimental points will entitle users to rewards.

In the future, rewards will be issued in the DIMO token, which will have some uses outlined below:

Initial Uses:

• Governance (controlling the DIMO Foundation / Treasury)
• Staking to access data and build apps
• Rewarding Testnet Contributors and Marketplace Participants

Potential uses pending regulatory analysis and community governance:

• Enhanced Access (Pro Features, NFT drops, API privileges)
• $DIMO as the native currency,
• Helium style burn-mint-equilibrium (Creating vehicle IDs, storing data on DIMO infrastructure)

Validity and Accuracy

In order to create the best infrastructure for the mobility world, DIMO needs to ensure the right kinds of connections and the security and validity of the data being created. Starting even in the early days of the DIMO network, DIMO validators layer data from centralized & decentralized sources to provide application-layer guarantees on accuracy and make sure spoofing is costly.

Get Started

Want to earn rewards and participate in the DIMO Ecosystem? If you have a connected vehicle app today like the Tesla app, FordPass, Toyota app, or something else, you can download the DIMO Mobile App on iOS or Android

If you don’t have an existing app, add your car to DIMO with the apps above to get on the list for the next time we drop hardware on shop.dimo.zone.