Over the past few years, blockchain technology has made remarkable progress, finding applications in fields as diverse as finance, entertainment, and supply chains. Now, a subsidiary of automotive giant Toyota is exploring the application of blockchain in the mobility sector.
According to Toyota, there have been few attempts to use public blockchains from a mobility perspective. The company aims to change that through the "Toyota Blockchain Lab." As part of its "Mobility 3.0" concept, the automotive giant is exploring how mobility can be integrated into social systems. Public blockchains, which automatically share status updates with a large number of people, are expected to form the foundation. This information comes from a recently published blog post.
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Automotive Data on the Blockchain
Mobility encompasses the combination of various pieces of information such as vehicle type, color, license plate, emblem, driving style, and the driver's facial expression. According to the blog post, the digital representation of mobility requires linking the characteristics of both the driver and the vehicle. Toyota summarizes the benefits of blockchain technology as follows:
- Linking these data improves programmability.
- A standard interface connects to different services.
- Tokenization of rights turns a car into a service unit.
The most extreme scenario resulting from these features is fully autonomous driving in the future. Autonomous mobility that no longer requires human intervention could function as a completely independent service unit. All rights would be handled on-chain. Toyota refers to such a blockchain-based account as a Mobility-Oriented Account (MOA).
Account abstraction on Ethereum
The traditional approach to creating a blockchain account for a car is to store the private key of an Externally Owned Account (EOA). According to the blog post, this poses a significant problem. If the private key is lost due to a failure of the vehicle's device, the account is irretrievable. In addition, EOAs have limited functionality. They require additional contracts to manage information about the car, making the system even more complex.
For this reason, the automotive giant is using the Account Abstraction Standard ERC-4337 for this concept. Account Abstraction represents accounts as their own smart contracts, separating the authentication process from key management. Account Abstraction ensures that the account remains intact even if the private key is lost. With this technology, Toyota believes it can meaningfully integrate mobility into social applications.
