Commute Buddy-Ethereum Based Carpooling DAPP

Abstract

Carpooling has emerged as one of the most practical strategies for reducing the growing challenges of traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and environmental pollution, yet conventional carpooling systems that are operated through centralized platforms continue to face numerous issues that restrict their effectiveness and adoption. Existing solutions largely depend on intermediaries to coordinate between drivers and passengers, creating a system that lacks transparency, suffers from high service costs, and exposes user data to privacy risks and security breaches. Moreover, traditional systems are often criticized for inefficient dispute resolution, a reliance on single points of failure such as central servers, and the absence of mechanisms that foster accountability and long-term trust among users. These weaknesses make centralized carpooling platforms vulnerable to manipulation, biased practices, and technical outages, thereby limiting their scope as sustainable mobility solutions. To address these persistent challenges, blockchain technology—specifically the Ethereum ecosystem—offers a transformative alternative. Ethereum supports the development of decentralized applications (dApps) driven by smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements coded directly onto the blockchain. By embedding business logic into these contracts, processes such as ride creation, ride booking, payment settlements, user verification, and rating are automated, ensuring that interactions remain tamper-proof, transparent, and immune to third-party manipulation.