Former executives from online travel platforms have partnered with Binance-backed Travala.com to launch an Airbnb-like decentralized home-sharing platform that will accept payment both in cryptocurrency and by more traditional methods. The platform, named Dtravel, will operate as a rival to Airbnb, which has suffered as COVID-19 has severely disrupted travel around the world.
Fast Facts:
- Unlike centralized apps such as Airbnb, Dtravel is community-owned through decentralized autonomous organization the Dtravel DAO. The DAO structure allows peer-to-peer communication and voting through the native token of the blockchain — the TRVL token — which is coming soon to the Binance Smart Chain and the Ethereum Network.
- CEO and co-founder of Travala.com Juan Otero said in a statement: “Traditional home-sharing platforms are aligned with their users in the early stage, but over time that changes.” He cited high fees, a loss of host-guest relationships through centralized apps, and lack of access to crypto payment options as being among issues the Dtravel model would seek to address.
- Dtravel is not the first attempt to create a decentralized rival to Airbnb. The Bee Token project, created by former Uber employees, enjoyed early success after an initial coin offering in 2018, but eventually had to shut down due to a lack of users.