Trustworthy Decentralized Last-Mile Delivery Framework Using Blockchain

Ala’ Alqaisi, Sherif Saad, Mohammad Mamun

2023

Abstract

The fierce competition in eCommerce is a painful headache for logistics companies. In 2021, Canada Post’s parcel volume peaked at 361 million units with a minimum charge of $10 per each. Last-Mile Delivery (LMD) is the final leg of the supply chain that ends with the package at the customer’s doorstep. LMD is the most costly process, accounting for more than 50% of the overall supply chain cost. Platforms such as Uber Eats and Amazon Flex help overcome this inefficiency and provide an outstanding delivery experience by enabling crowd-shipping using freelancer drivers willing to deliver packages in exchange for compensation. However, the current generation of LMD platforms that leverage crowd-shipping are centralized platforms and behave as intermediaries that charge commission fees. They lack transparency, and most of them, if not all, are platform monopolies in the making. This paper introduces the design of the next-generation LMD crowd-shipping platforms by leveraging Blockchain and smart contracts. A decentralized crowd-shipping platform for LMD that is scalable, reliable, secure and promotes fairness. The proposed platform connects the primary stakeholders of LMD without intermediaries. The stakeholders could use the platform to manage shipping and delivery, handle disputes, maintain fairness, and mitigate monopoly power. Our approach replaces the need for a centralized intermediator such as Uber by introducing a decentralized reputation model that executes over a cryptocurrency-less blockchain network. Our proof-of-concept implementation of the proposed framework demonstrates the potential of blockchain technology to decentralize the crowd economy. We used informal security analysis to illustrate how the proposed decentralized reputation model discourages misuse and encourages fairness between parties.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Alqaisi A., Saad S. and Mamun M. (2023). Trustworthy Decentralized Last-Mile Delivery Framework Using Blockchain. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies - Volume 1: ICSBT; ISBN 978-989-758-667-5, SciTePress, pages 54-65. DOI: 10.5220/0012090300003552

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icsbt23,
author={Ala’ Alqaisi and Sherif Saad and Mohammad Mamun},
title={Trustworthy Decentralized Last-Mile Delivery Framework Using Blockchain},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies - Volume 1: ICSBT},
year={2023},
pages={54-65},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012090300003552},
isbn={978-989-758-667-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies - Volume 1: ICSBT
TI - Trustworthy Decentralized Last-Mile Delivery Framework Using Blockchain
SN - 978-989-758-667-5
AU - Alqaisi A.
AU - Saad S.
AU - Mamun M.
PY - 2023
SP - 54
EP - 65
DO - 10.5220/0012090300003552
PB - SciTePress