DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A PRIVACY-PRESERVING SEMI-PUBLIC BLOCKCHAIN-BASED RIDE-SHARING SYSTEM USING RAFT CONSENSUS WITH IPFS-ENABLED SECURE DISTRIBUTED STORAGE

Abstract

Ride-sharing platforms have revolutionized urban mobility, offering millions of users convenient and costeffective transportation. However, mainstream centralized platforms such as Uber and Lyft continue to face pressing concerns including data privacy breaches, high service charges, security vulnerabilities, and a lack of transparency due to centralized control. To address these limitations, this research proposes a semipublic blockchain-based ride-sharing platform integrating Hyperledger Fabric for secure and permissioned data management with Ethereum smart contracts for transparent ride booking, fare calculation, and payments. The platform leverages the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for immutable, decentralized storage and uses the Cosmos SDK to enable seamless interoperability between public and private blockchains. A user-centric pay-as-you-drive model is introduced to ensure fair and distance-based billing. Preliminary evaluations show that our system outperforms traditional blockchain consensus methods (PoW, PoA) in throughput, latency, and resource usage. At the same time, it remains economically viable with an operational cost of under 33,000 BDT per node. Future improvements include benchmarking with Hyperledger Caliper, transitioning from Vagrant to Docker for better scalability, and implementing backend services using Node.js or Golang with MongoDB for efficient metadata handling. Together, these enhancements support a secure, decentralized, and scalable alternative to existing ride-sharing systems.