Last month, Build on DIMO teased Developer Licenses and applications built on DIMO. In this edition, the shiny end-to-end Developer License process, which interacts with the blockchain, is showcased, along with an interview with DIMO in-house builder, Laura.

Developer Licensing

Building on DIMO has never been easier. The DIMO Developer License is a gateway to accessing a range of APIs and tools that enable seamless integration with the DIMO Network. A Developer License lets you embark on a journey to retrieve data from tens of thousands of vehicles connected through DIMO hardware and software integrations.

Through a 4-step process interacting on Polygonscan, builders can now provision their own API access without the back-and-forth with a DIMO core dev. This self-service model on the blockchain is the DIMO Network’s first stride to building something grander. Here’s an overview of what the process looks like:

Still confused? Well, the abstraction and underlying decentralization mechanism should at least let you feel safe and secure as a builder. The DIMO community is committed to building a better developer experience. The Developer Console to orchestrate all the processes is currently in development. Check out below for a sneak preview.

Sign up with your provider of choice, the Build on DIMO Developer Console will be your one-stop-shop for developer needs.

Simply create an app and generate API credentials for your developers, simplifying the Developer License process.

Manage your apps for all environments in one consolidated view: sandbox or production.

Builder Interview

In this engaging conversation with a software engineer who embarked on her DIMO journey in 2023, delve into the intricacies of building with the DIMO API. Here's a glimpse into her experience, hurdles encountered, and the lessons learned along the way.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Sure, I'm a software engineer who joined DIMO fresh out of college in 2023. My work primarily revolves around building and testing APIs. Having some experience in the automotive field, DIMO presented itself as an intriguing opportunity post-graduation.

What app did you build using the DIMO API?

I developed the DIMO Trips Beta app, an authenticated version of our internal Trips app. It allows users to log into their web3 wallet and displays a list of trips they've taken.

On a scale from 1 to 5, how straightforward was the DIMO API integration process?

I'd say a 4. My perspective might be slightly biased since I've been involved in building some of the SwaggerDocs and the APIs themselves.

Were there any resources or tools that particularly helped you? Or something that could have made the process easier?

The SwaggerDoc pages were invaluable as they provide a clear baseline of what the requests and responses should look like.

Did you face any significant challenges during the development? How did you tackle them?

Yes, authentication on the frontend was a bit of a hurdle. Out of all the options, I ended up choosing Rainbowkit 🌈 to integrate with, but it took me about a month to sort everything out. 

How did the data quality and availability from the DIMO API impact your app?

The data quality and consistency are generally good. However, we did face some challenges, especially with device data and ensuring location-related data was accurate and timely. We had to do some heavy lifting on the client side to ensure data reliability.

Comparing your experience with DIMO to other APIs, how does it stack up?

The API documentation is quite comprehensive, especially for developers who may not have extensive experience. The clear documentation on authentication and examples provided are particularly helpful for newcomers.

How would you rate the support and documentation provided by DIMO?

Again, a 4 out of 5. The documentation is well-hyperlinked, and there's plenty of it to guide you through. It's basically documentation on documentation, which is great for learning.

Were there aspects of the DIMO API that you found more challenging or limiting compared to others?

Yes, the behavior of API endpoints isn't uniform across the stack. Some are token-based, some public, and others require privilege tokens. Recognizing and adapting to these differences was a bit of a learning curve.

What’s one piece of advice you would offer to other developers?

Read the doc 😀 - sounds simple, but it's crucial. The documentation is there to help and guide you through the process.

--

Hope you find this Q&A session insightful. It sheds light on the practical aspects of working with the DIMO API but also underscores the importance of documentation, adaptability, and the right tools in overcoming development challenges that you may also face.

Join the Community

Join a community that’s eager to innovate. The DIMO ecosystem offers a supportive space for developers to share ideas, team up on projects, and explore the future of digital mobility. Plus, the DIMO Foundation's Ignite Grants program is here to support your projects financially, so pitch away. Engage the DIMO community and core devs in a conversation and learn more in the #built-on-dimo channel on our Discord server 🥳

Hello, innovators, creators, and thinkers! Today marks a significant milestone for all of us in the DIMO community as we unveil something special designed with developers in mind. Whether you're a seasoned developer, a hardware enthusiast, or someone just starting your journey in the digital world, we're excited to introduce our new developer newsletter: Build on DIMO.

Our mission is to empower developers of all backgrounds and expertise levels to innovate, create, and transform the digital mobility space. With that in mind, we're thrilled to showcase our redesigned landing page and developer documentation, crafted to provide you with an intuitive experience as you build on DIMO.

Our developer documentation has undergone a transformation and is now more accessible than ever. Read on to explore the wealth of resources available to you.

Authentication Walkthrough

Authenticate with DIMO

Security is paramount, and gaining access should be straightforward. The new authentication guide simplifies the process, ensuring you can securely access the resources you need without a hitch.

Hello World Example Codes

DIMO Hello Worlds

Nothing beats the excitement of building something new. The Hello World examples are your first step into the world of DIMO development, offering clear, concise code examples that pave the way for your projects. We welcome contributions from the open-source community to showcase your favorite framework or library with DIMO components.

Data Availability Widget

This simple widget showcases the data availability coverage for each connection type. Whether you are developing for Teslas, trucks connected using the DIMO AutoPi, or fleets connected using the DIMO Macaron, we got you covered. Validate the data availability to facilitate making informed decisions on your development strategy.

Identity API (GraphQL) References

Dive deep into the GraphQL-based Identity API, designed for seamless integration and access to blockchain data. Our comprehensive references guide you through every step, making access to public data a breeze. With the Identity API, a developer can easily see what the DIMO Network is all about and generate meaningful insights from the overall analytics of the network.

Rest API References

With the future API state in mind, we have designed an easy-to-follow REST API reference, taking you down the route of creating and minting vehicles all the way to trips and valuations. Use your wildest imagination to build delightful applications for your targeted audiences, and be on the roadmap of a decentralized mobility world with DIMO.

Coverage for Hardware Developers

We haven't forgotten about the hardware wizards among us. Our documentation now includes dedicated resources for our open hardware infrastructure, providing the insights and guidance needed to create & launch cutting-edge devices and integrations.

Join the DIMO Developer Community

Building on DIMO is not just about accessing resources; it's about becoming part of a vibrant, innovative community. We're committed to fostering a supportive environment where developers can share ideas, collaborate on projects, and push the boundaries of what's possible in digital mobility. Whether it’s a farcaster frame with your vehicle NFT or the next Facebook for cars, you’d be surprised to see how many enthusiasts, thinkers, and builders are out there. Join #built-on-dimo in our Discord server or contact us to find out more 🎉

Sneak Peek into DIMO Engineering

We’ve been working really hard on building the protocol, and here are the list of things that we think you might be interested in learning more about or even help build:

• Featured Builders: FleetLogic
• Developer Licensing & SDK
• DIMO Hello World: Sample Web App

We welcome contributors from anywhere in the world, whether you are just getting started with DIMO or are a decentralized vehicle network expert, we want to hear from you. Reach out to us in our Discord server to see where you can contribute. Not to mention that we also have the $5M DIMO Ignite Grants program that is up for grabs 💰

Get started today

The future of mobility is in your hands, and with Build on DIMO, you have everything you need to start creating. Join us in shaping the future of digital mobility by sharing and subscribing to our newsletter.

This is none other than ETHDenver, a yearly showcase of the latest and greatest developments in the Ethereum ecosystem since 2018. This year was the event’s seventh iteration, and each year it has drawn more attendees, welcomed more web3 projects, and hosted more side events than hours in the day. Mirroring the evolution and growth of the conference itself was DIMO’s presence. From DePIN focused satellite events, to significant mentions by speakers on the main stage and beyond, to a bustling booth, the DIMO Network was out in full force. More than a trend, DIMO demonstrates how DePIN gives blockchain a real-world use case through the power of decentralized hardware.

EthDenver 2024

DIMO was an official sponsor of the main event and planted a DePIN flag at Spork Castle with the DIMO booth. From those getting their first introduction to DIMO’s mission, to diehards ecstatic to see DIMO in attendance and eager to whip out their app to show off their fleet of cars already connected to the network, the team greeted the thousands of attendees and spoke about the intersection of mobility and IoT. With the recent launch of the DIMO developer API, conversations with devs interested in building on DIMO took center stage.

DIMO co-founder Rob Solomon made a big impact on Friday with two different speaker sessions. First up was a panel on the Atlantis main stage titled “From Bits to Atoms: How DePIN Is Making Crypto Real”. He was joined by fellow industry experts Shannon Wells (Head of Ecosystem Growth at Livepeer), Mustafa Qazi (Research Engineer at 6th Man Ventures), and Adam Wozney (Head of Community at Akash Network). They chatted about all things DePIN, and Rob shared his conviction that a global mobility network can only function when it’s a grassroots effort to eliminate intermediaries and restore power to the individual car owner.

Later that day, Rob was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to speak directly to hackers in the BUIDL Hub. On the Neptune Stage, he gave a demonstration of a special prototype that showcased what buying a car will look like in the year 2030. Rob took the audience step by step through a potential UX, and explained how it wouldn’t be possible without blockchain. Using a stack of decentralized auto apps, he shared only the necessary verifiable credentials, browsed an on-chain vehicle marketplace, and performed an authenticated trade-in. These sorts of experiments get us one step closer to never having to visit the DMV ever again.

There was also one special DIMO shoutout during one of the premiere fireside chats at ETHDenver. Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO, Joseph Lubin, was asked by a moderator to list any cool web3 projects he was currently interested in. He argued that we’re on the brink of scalability, and asserted that DePIN projects have the potential to cross the chasm to mainstream adoption. Furthermore, Joe referenced automotive-based solutions and listed DIMO as one of his favorites! Lubin has always been a thought leader in the web3 space, and is a self-proclaimed futurist constantly thinking about the long-term impacts of blockchain. This endorsement from one of the most prolific entrepreneurs in crypto is a strong signal that DIMO is tackling the right problems and building sustainable, scalable infrastructure for the months, years, and decades to come.

Proof of Data Summit

The Proof of Data Summit was a gathering focused on evaluating the data management landscape in the decentralized era. Hosted by Ceramic and DIMO partner Tableland, it brought together visionaries, innovators, and leaders at the forefront of DePIN. The DIMO team was thrilled to be a part of the DePIN track programming, and co-founder Yevgeny Khessin joined to add his domain expertise to the conversation.

First, Yev joined a panel with Marla Natoli, Strategic Partnerships at Tableland, and Manolis Nikiforakis from WeatherXM. It was a discussion on "Collaborative Futures: DePINs and the Decentralized Web". 

Next, Yev gave a presentation on "Transforming Vehicle Data Use". He deep dove on the different use cases for vehicle data, and conveyed the true potential of a decentralized mobility network. 

IoTeX R3AL WORLD

IoTeX also hosted their showstopping R3AL WORLD side event for the second year running. Over 45 speakers came together to share their experiences on the burgeoning DePIN space. It was an all day affair full of panels, presentations, demos, and project showcases highlighting all the various use cases that physical infrastructure enables. Yev joined another panel at the event focused on ZK Proofs & Data Markets, and explained how in the future you can obtain an insurance policy without compromising your sensitive driving data.

IoTeX also used the event as a platform to announce an upcoming DePIN report. They want to create an informational resource that provides a comprehensive overview of the growing DePIN sector. DIMO contributed network analytics along with other projects such as Helium, Lattice, Borderless Capital, Textile, Starpower, and many more. Keep your eyes peeled for the official publishing of the report, and check out this video from the conference that teases a sneak peek.

DePIN Meetup

The week wrapped up with cozy DePIN Meetup, co-hosted by DIMO, Halborn, Sushi, io.net, IoTeX, peaq, Borderless Capital, and Starpower. A mass of DePIN fans piled into Roostercat Coffee House to swap stories over a cup o’ joe and listen to panels from the people building the future of IoT solutions. It was a great casual conclusion to a week of celebrating Ethereum, and thanks to all the DIMO community members who made it out!

So Long, Denver 👋

The whirlwind of a week went by in a flash, and a multitude of learnings were gathered from all the events and conversations throughout the event. The DIMO team got to see what messaging resonated with attendees. The everyday driver was interested in an ‘app store for your car’, while the privacy-minded web3 enthusiast was excited about the potential of gaining more control over vehicle data.

DIMO also formed valuable relationships with numerous DePIN projects building in the space, and a spirit of collaboration was present between teams working on distributed infrastructure solutions. Heads-down work behind the computer is important, but getting out in the world, socializing the mobility mission, and speaking directly to users is an integral part of building consumer applications.

ETHDenver has matured into one of the flagship blockchain conferences, and the DIMO team was thrilled to be a part of the energy and innovation on display this year. Thanks to anyone who stopped by the booth to say hello and share how DIMO has changed your daily driving experience. Stay tuned for announcements about other conferences DIMO will be participating in later this year.

One year ago today, the DIMO Network started its engine with its mainnet launch. Enabling the 2023 airdrop, ongoing token issuance, token holder governance, and on-chain vehicle minting & pairing began a road trip toward the world’s first decentralized, open, connected vehicle network. For too long, car manufacturers were the only ones benefiting from driving data. Additionally, using service providers for maintenance, repairs, EV charging, or insurance was confusing and often a ripoff due to lack of information.

DIMO helps flip the script. Now drivers are being rewarded for participating in a new type of automotive ecosystem. Individuals are empowered with access to vehicle analytics, and can leverage DIMO Rewards in a transparent marketplace.

In honor of the anniversary, we wanted to share some of the most interesting analytics from the wealth of data being produced by DIMO connected vehicles around the world.

Total Miles Driven by DIMO Drivers

DIMO drivers really put the pedal to the metal this year, and racked up a whopping total of over 153 million kilometers (95 million miles) driven!

That’s more than 1AU, the distance between the sun and the earth! Think about that next time you’re watching a sunset…

To put in more terrestrial terms, DIMO users drove around the earth 3,815 times!

Highest Valuation

On the other end of the spectrum, one driver could fetch a pretty penny for this monster of a machine. The most valuable car connected to the DIMO network is the exotic 2021 Lamborghini Huracan, coming in with a valuation of $416,761.4 USD!

Highest Speed

This one is for those speed freaks out there. The fastest speed recorded in the past year was a Tesla Model S that hit a hair-raising 268.76 kph (167 mph) on the A2 section of the German Autobahn. Fun fact: although the German government recommends a top speed of 80mph, there are de-restricted sections of the Autobahn where there is no speed limit.

Number of Countries Reporting Data

DIMO has gone global. We’ve been thrilled to see drivers from all over the world find value in the DIMO app and hardware devices. Currently there are over 81 unique countries represented in the network, with support for more coming soon.

Most Miles Traveled By Individual User

One road warrior led the pack with the amount of distance traveled over the past year. This DIMO user totaled an astronomical 175,705.91 kilometers (109,178.59 miles) traveled!

That’s 481.38 miles per day, 3369.70 miles per week, and this user would have driven around the Earth 4.38 times! A round of applause to whoever pulled this off, whether they’re a long-haul trucker or National Park hopper.

Number of Car Manufacturers

Car brands have always been a cultural source of pride and community, and it’s awesome to see so many different types of vehicles represented on the DIMO network. To date, there are vehicles from 71 unique car manufacturers on the network

Top Car Manufacturers

1. Tesla - 6,936

2. Ford - 5,255

3. BMW - 4038

Car Manufacturers with Only 1 Car on the Network

While Tesla, Ford, and BMW owners may have loads of fellow drivers in the DIMO network, there are a handful of car brands that are being represented by a single diehard user. Below are an assortment of automakers that have only one vehicle on the network. If you drive one of these vehicles, go and get connected to give them more friends on the freeway!

Total Baseline Rewards Issued

It is beyond exciting to witness the amount of baseline rewards issued in the past year, because that’s where we achieve the dream of value flowing back to the user for their contributions to the DIMO network. In total, there have been over 57,300,000+ $DIMO tokens distributed to users, which at the time of writing is worth over $13,179,000 USD.

Total Value of All Cars on the Network

We believe the future of vehicle data will be even more monumental than the sensitivities around smartphone data, because there is such valuable physical hardware behind that data. A car is an extremely significant purchase for anyone, therefore its privacy should be even more of a priority. If the estimated valuation of every vehicle on the network were added together, it would total over $750,000,000+ USD. That’s even higher than the GDP of some countries!

Total Cars Connected to the Network

To wrap it all up, it is astounding to look back and think that when Mainnet launched on December 12th last year there were 1,400 cars on the network. Today, there are over 28,000 vehicles connected with 30k on the horizon. A semi-truck sized thank you goes out to each and every user for helping to grow a network that puts the driver first. 

For a decade or more, onboard computers and cameras in vehicles have been installed by automakers like Tesla, Ford and GM. The processing power and data collection capabilities of these powerful tools have been kept in a walled garden, and drivers have had little to no access to their data. But these cameras and computers, and the platforms that consume this data, don’t have to be owned by automakers alone. Users can play a role in building that infrastructure. That’s how DePIN fits in.

With NATIX, drivers can earn by contributing to a real-time digital twin of the world. With DIMO, users can collect their own vehicle data, access insights and then share that data with providers who offer data-driven maintenance, insurance, and more.

To kick off this collaboration, NATIX users will receive exclusive discounts on DIMO hardware via the offers native in the NATIX app. Similarly, DIMO users will earn an exclusive 20,000 NATIX welcome points in two easy steps. Following the link at DIMO marketplace, downloading the NATIX app and registering will give 10,000 points and another 10,000 points will be issued upon their first drive.

Automotive services, mobility, and mapping are huge industries, and NATIX and DIMO are at the forefront of introducing new technologies that will disrupt them. User participation is key. If you’re interested in expanding the capabilities of your car and participating in building the future, check out our friends at NATIX in the DIMO Marketplace within the DIMO Mobile app.

If you're already a DIMO user, you can jump right into the 👉📱 DIMO Mobile app and get started with NATIX for yourself or download the DIMO Mobile app to get started with both. 

Learn more about NATIX and how to contribute to building a digital twin of our world. 

About DIMO

DIMO is an open-connected-vehicle protocol and network that puts car owners in the digital driver’s seat, giving data back to drivers and helping them earn rewards. DIMO lets users collect their own car data and securely share it with an ecosystem of developers and services. Drivers get insights about their vehicles, contribute data to the open ecosystem where it can be used to build new technology and applications, and earn DIMO rewards for participating.

About NATIX

NATIX Network is an open geospatial Intelligence network enabled by proprietary AI technology and the Internet of Cameras. NATIX’s flagship product “Drive&” uses driver assistant apps (e.g. dashcam and navigation), token incentives, Computer Vision AI, and smartphone cameras to crowdsource real-time data and create a digital twin of our world. The network enables a new era of real-time applications ranging from autonomous driving to smart city services.

Refresher — How rewards work

There are two ways to earn DIMO Rewards: 1) Baseline issuance and 2) Marketplace issuance.

Baseline Issuance refers to the concept of rewarding drivers based on how long they've been connected and how they're connected, even if there is no end customer using their data. The goal here is to prime the network by incentivizing drivers to connect the types of cars and stream the types of data that we expect will be valuable to data consumers and app developers in the future.

DIMO users and apps should be rewarded based on the value that they generate to create a more direct link between incentives and optimal behaviors. Those who create the most value for the network should have the largest $DIMO rewards and the biggest voice in its future direction.

Marketplace Issuance refers to rewards earned when data is consumed by developers and partners. When users transact with licensed DIMO apps, such as Tenet, Caribou, and Vehicle Genius, those users receive additional $DIMO tokens and some $DIMO is burned.

To maximize your rewards, you should be keeping your vehicle connected and look for ways to spend in the marketplace.

Baseline Calculation

Baseline rewards are calculated using a points formula. All users earn points based on a bunch of variables, and the number of points you earn dictates your share of that week’s issuance.

One variable of points earned is the type of connection your car uses to connect to DIMO. The type of software and the type of hardware has an impact. The DIMO AutoPi provides a starting point of 6,000 points per week, while the DIMO Macaron provides a starting point of 2,000 points per week. So ⅓ of the rewards.

However, the additional points gained for maintaining your streak — the connectivity of your car over many weeks — is the same for both devices: 1,000 more at each level. So a DIMO Macaron at its maximum streak earns 5,000 points per week, and a DIMO AutoPi 9,000. This means the Macaron improves relative to the AutoPi, earning 5/9ths of the rewards after 36 weeks.

All of that is detailed here: https://docs.dimo.zone/governance/amendments/dip2a1

Which device is right?

Both devices allow users to access the DIMO Marketplace and earn rewards, and in this case it’s very dependent on how much of the marketplace you use.

You might see now that the absolute rewards are higher with the DIMO AutoPi, but you shouldn’t base your decision off rewards alone. Visit the product pages of the DIMO AutoPi and DIMO Macaron to learn more.

Marble: Your Digital Wallet for Insurance

Marble has built a unified digital wallet that offers members the convenience to browse, evaluate, discover, make payments, and receive incentives on their insurance premium transactions. The company's extensive network of insurance carriers provides users with a range of options, ensuring that they get the best possible coverage at an affordable price.

Savings Now and At Renewal

Using Marble in the DIMO Marketplace, DIMO users will receive personalized quotes from multiple insurance carriers in minutes to get easy access to the best policy at the best price. Once users are signed up with Marble, their policy will continue to be monitored for savings opportunities. Marble’s technology automatically shops for the best price, without compromising the quality of coverage. 

DIMO + Marble =  Lower Insurance Premiums

Here are the simple steps to get detailed insurance quotes directly from the DIMO marketplace when this integration launches:

1. Share your current insurance policy information using Marble's policy sharing tool.

2. Choose the vehicle(s) you want insurance quotes for.

3. Confirm your name and home address.

That's it! You'll receive custom insurance quotes within seconds, and you can select a quote and proceed with the purchase in a few minutes. Better yet, you'll earn $5 in $DIMO Rewards just for checking your custom insurance quotes through Marble.

What Does This Mean for the Future?

While we are happy to introduce this experience to DIMO users now, we are even more excited about how this partnership can shape the future of data-based insurance policies. While no driving data is shared today, DIMO and Marble are working closely with insurance providers on identifying paths to creating a truly customized insurance experience for all connected DIMO drivers, in a way that protects users interests and privacy. 

The insurance industry has long relied on external factors outside of actual driving habits to price insurance policies. They study trends and spread risk across all insurance policies, resulting in everyone paying more, regardless of their actual behavior.

Marble and DIMO are setting out to change this. By working directly with Marble’s network of insurance providers, DIMO is positioned to disrupt the insurance industry and introduce smarter insurance products that take into account real world driving data. We think this is how car insurance should be, and we are excited to work on bringing it to market in the coming months. 

DIMO Data Credits

The first recipient is Matt English, a software engineer with experience across ConsenSys, Gemini, and Upshot working on novel DeFi primitives, smart contracts, and other protocol engineering. He’s building a smart contract that will convert the $DIMO token to stable DIMO Credits via oracle services.

The ability to convert the $DIMO token into a stable DIMO Credit lays the groundwork for potential data consumers and developers to pay for access to user data (assuming the user grants them this access).

If developers hold $DIMO tokens, they are able to mint DC anytime, or they can simply pay in $DIMO, where conversion to DC and payment is combined into one step that happens in real-time.

This is beneficial for developers who are not yet ready to make the leap into crypto or accept the volatility that comes with it. Rather, they can use a custodial solution or smart contract wallet to hold a simple and stable credit, providing a very similar experience to other products like AWS and their credits and Infura and their compute units.

It’s important to note that this work is somewhat exploratory: core team members have outlined a possible path forward for DIMO Nodes and DIMO Credits here, but this has not been formally voted on.

DIMO Nodes

Second recipient of this announcement is Phil Hutchins, an engineering leader with extensive experience including as the former CTO at Storj Labs, a decentralized cloud storage platform and currently CTO of Proof of Impact.

This project will provide the Foundation tools that will in the future make it easier to run DIMO Nodes. As noted above and in this document (DIMO Nodes and DIMO Credits), the path to DIMO Nodes has not been firmly established in governance, or from a technical perspective. Despite that, this project wraps the creation of all of the open source automation tools and scripts necessary to deploy and manage a DIMO Node. Additionally, documentation will be created throughout the process and made available to everyone.

Specifics include creating a repository which holds the recipes for node environment creation, working with DIMO to deploy to GDPR compliant locations, and research around getting automation listed in various cloud marketplaces.

These efforts are a large step towards democratizing ad the ability for people and businesses worldwide to run their own DIMO Node, which will decentralize the network as a whole.

Want to apply for a grant?

Learn more information about the program at dimoignite.org or apply directly on our application form here.

Outlined here are a few key aspects of the device that have generated the most questions.

DIMO Mobile + Helium IoT = Cheapest Telematics Device

Most telematics services — whether you are using the built-in connectivity or an aftermarket device — have a subscription between $5-$15/month to keep vehicles connected and data flowing. The DIMO Macaron avoids this recurring cost by launching on Helium, a LoRaWAN network that sends data wirelessly at a fraction of the cost.

At launch, the DIMO Macaron will use LoRaWAN only, with the Bluetooth offload expected to arrive in early 2024. The device is designed to send data over LoRa approximately every 30 seconds. This action will be passive whenever the car is being driven, and because the device’s power requirements are so small, the device can also send a heartbeat with data when the car is off (more on what data below).

With Bluetooth, the frequency of data will increase to every 1-5s, depending on the vehicle and its CAN bus, so long as the device owner’s phone is in the car. This creates a sort of active (BT) and passive (LoRA) mode and creates redundancy of connection.

The Macaron will have 3 years of connectivity included in the upfront cost of $99 alongside the coming feature of Bluetooth data offload from device to the driver’s phone. Compared to the average telematics device that would run $300-$400 over 3 years, it’s a huge win for drivers and fleets. The devices are not pre-loaded with DC, but these DCs are being provided by Digital Infrastructure Inc. Our modeling estimates that the average driver will require about $0.25 in DC per month (based on estimates like this one for the average miles driven per year).

It’s worth noting that if you have been running a Helium hotspot — whether just one or a whole country’s worth — the implications of the DIMO Macaron add up. Each connected car in your hosted area could contribute $3 in spend over the next 3 years. A small number per vehicle, but at thousands of vehicles, it adds up. 

Vehicle Data

The DIMO Macaron is capable of querying approximately 32 signals from the CAN bus per vehicle, and can be used to query for and clear error codes (DTCs). What particular data will be available for your vehicle varies — not all data is available to be read on every car. We’ve explained some of the nuances of reading data from vehicles before and made a bunch of progress on expanding the data each car provides. We’re expecting to see a lot of strides forward on vehicle data.

Practically, that means that the Macaron today can send all the data that the AutoPi can, but with less frequency.

For the DIMO Macaron specifically, there are a few additional layers. First, given the constraints of sending data over LoRa and the possibility that even after BT, the driver does not have the paired phone, the DIMO Macaron is equipped to store approximately 1,500 hours of driving data. This data can be uploaded later, meaning that even if drive data is not uploaded at the moment, a complete record is available.

One novel aspect of the DIMO Macaron is that its power draw is far lower than the AutoPi, which uses a Raspberry Pi. This means that the DIMO Macaron can query and send data while the car is off. It won’t run all the time, but it will check-in and send a few key data points, like GPS location, battery voltage, fuel level, and more every few hours. This delivers peace of mind from your car remotely — you’ll know if a surprise is awaiting you when you get back to your car.

After launch, we’re going to be working to optimize the signals that the Macaron collects and sends to improve the user experience and the data available to developers via the DIMO Platform. 

A Professional Grade Device

The DIMO Macaron was built by Hashdog, a subsidiary of JDI, a company with a long history of manufacturing IoT and OBD2 devices.

Together, we’ve been able to engineer a device that maximizes the CAN system interface allowing for in-depth vehicular diagnostics and real-time data collection from your vehicle and uses minimal battery during vehicle inactivity, so you can even get some data off the device when the vehicle is off.

There are also a number of security features built into the device. We’ll share more about Macaron security in the future in more depth, but the secure element integrated with the device prioritizes security and data validation. Minting the device itself on chain ensures device and data integrity, as well as a certificate of DIMO compatibility and complete traceability and validation of the manufacturing history.

The hardware expertise that has gone into the device makes the DIMO Macaron makes the device a reliable option for individuals or fleets.

You can now pre-order the Macaron for delivery in November.

See you on DIMO.

DIMO Macaron is a first-of-its-kind connected vehicle product that helps any driver or fleet level up their vehicles. It's a gateway to the first open vehicle connectivity network (DIMO), and connects to a global, decentralized network (Helium IoT). It comes from a world class manufacturing partner, JDI. Nice facts, but why did we build the DIMO Macaron?

Great digital experiences and personal data ownership shouldn’t be gated by high prices or complicated interfaces. Technology should make saving time and money and improving our everyday lives seamless and easy, and automotive technology has lagged behind every other gadget in the home.

Besides how you listen to music and follow directions, the digital toolkit for your car hasn’t changed in decades. Your dashboard is no longer analog, but the information it provides is nothing new. Your ability to access your car’s data or integrate it with other applications remotely is either non-existent or stuck behind a subscription. DIMO is changing that with a mobile app that users love and now, a growing number of ways to connect any kind of vehicle.

Cars are the second highest cost center for most people after housing. The average cost to own and operate a new car in the US is nearly $900 a month.^{https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-ownership-crosses-10k-mark/} Maintaining your vehicle can be a source of anxiety, pride, or both. DIMO makes it easy to track and use your car’s data to maximize your car’s value, performance, and safety. Here’s what sets the DIMO Macaron apart:

Data, Rewards, Marketplace

Error code reader meets GPS tracker meets Fitbit meets marketplace meets airline reward point for your car…

Coupled with the DIMO Mobile app and the DIMO Marketplace, drivers and fleets can connect and track their vehicle(s), understand the health of the car, and find time and money savings for maintenance, insurance, roadside assistance, fuel, and more, all in one place without spending hundreds of dollars or getting locked into a subscription. 

Even better, anyone using the device can tap into the DIMO Rewards system, earning rewards for sharing aggregated, anonymized data with network partners like CoverageCritic and taking care of their vehicles with approved service providers.

 The DIMO Platform allows 3rd-party developers to build features and apps for DIMO Macaron users, serving like an “app store” that works with any car. These 3rd-party services will continue to enrich the DIMO Macaron experience, which already includes GPS, error code reading, vehicle valuation tracking, a digital glovebox, and the ability to book services through the DIMO Marketplace.

As DIMO adds features, users will see an expanded set of vehicle capabilities — it’s like opening up your car to upgrades.

The Cheapest Connection for your Car

There is no cost-effective, and easy connected car experience for 99% of cars on the road today. Tens of millions of households have equipped smart home devices, use wearables every day, and can tap into a digital experience for almost anything in their life. But the most complicated and expensive machine they own is still dumb — unable to tap into the universe of digital services to solve its own problems.

The DIMO Macaron is the cheapest way to turn your non-connected, non-IoT car into a connected, IoT-enabled car. By using Helium’s LoRaWAN network and Bluetooth (coming after release) we’ve reduced the connectivity costs to a fraction of the overall cost of the device. Existing connected vehicle technology will cost $8-$15 per month in connectivity, and some automakers charge more! — $99 with the Macaron covers the hardware and 3 years of connectivity.

This is the most affordable way to have an always-on vehicle health monitoring, trip-tracking, and service-booking digital experience for your car. Whether you’re paying for the app your car maker can provide or have an older car without that option and use 3rd party hardware, the DIMO Macaron is cheaper, especially over the long run as subscription fees add up. It’s a huge win for drivers and fleets.

Building DePIN

If you’ve been paying attention in web3 lately, you may have seen a new term: Decentralized Physical Infrastructure, or DePIN. In our view, DePIN is about building the bridge between real world and great digital experiences (some are calling this “phygital”.) For all the emphasis on the metaverse these days, we still live in the physical world and spend most of our lives and money in it. DePIN is an extension of the web3 principles — digitally created trust, incentive structures, and user ownership — to more realms beyond the financial.

The DIMO Macaron gives web3 enthusiasts and regular people around the world the best opportunity to try a new class of crypto application: a DePIN app. In fact, by leveraging the Helium IoT network, you’ll really be using the first composable building blocks in DePIN. We know how much web3 folks like to be early, and now is your chance. 

You can now pre-order the Macaron for delivery in November. See you on DIMO.

Before you dive into our newest DIMO Improvement Proposals (DIPs), we want to remind you that you as a DIMO token holder can delegate your voting power to anybody or delegate to yourself so you can vote directly on these proposals. This must be done within the next seven days before the vote goes live. Also, note that proposals are in “Review” for a week prior to the vote, so feedback can still be incorporated.

Better yet, any person or group with a sufficient number of tokens between them can submit a proposal for voting. For now, sit back and read a quick summary of the changes that are up for vote, starting today!

Did someone say new hardware?

It’s time to start decentralizing the DIMO hardware ecosystem! DIP-10 is a proposal to grant a license to Hashdog to produce new DIMO-compatible hardware that runs on Helium’s network. This Mini OBD Dongle will sell at a lower price point (both in terms of upfront cost and ongoing connectivity) due to its LoRaWAN/Bluetooth connectivity. .

In general, granting licenses to new manufacturers will broaden the ecosystem and foster competition with different options for performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.

With a new type of hardware connection comes an update to rewards

As a consequence of introducing a new hardware connectivity option, the DIMO Network must also account for how this device will be rewarded from the pool of weekly baseline issuance.

In DIP-2, all software and hardware connections were given their weekly point calculations based on how much data they stream to the network and how direct the connection is.

So in DIP-2 amendment 1, the newly proposed Mini OBD Dongle is allocated weekly points commensurate with the type and amount of data it streams to the network. You can see how the new Mini OBD Dongle hardware connection fits in the table below!

The DIMO Foundation gearing up…

Lastly, there are two amendments geared towards helping the DIMO Foundation prepare for the network’s next phase.

DIMO has demonstrated impressive growth and excellent technological progress. Combining this momentum with shifting market conditions, the aforementioned DIMO-compatible hardware launching soon, expansion into new geographic regions, and the beginnings of the DIMO app and hardware ecosystem currently taking shape, it’s time to be bold!

DIP-6 Amendment 2 grants the DIMO foundation the ability to increase loans to market makers, and adds additional funding to the DIMO Foundation’s annual budget to enable additional exchange listings.

DIP-6 Amendment 3 furthers the DIMO Foundation’s flexibility moving forward by authorizing new terms for selling tokens. This will help the Foundation diversify its holdings, fund ecosystem grants, and other initiatives in a more market efficient manner.

It’s truly an exciting time to be building on DIMO and hopefully the culmination of these proposals gets you excited for what’s to come!

Your participation is encouraged

Voting will go live next week on Thursday  (8/24) at 1pm EST, and we encourage all token holders to participate.

As a reminder, you will need to delegate your tokens to yourself, some of our trusted community members, or anybody else with a wallet address on Polygon. More detail to come soon in the DIMO #governance Discord channel, see you there!

Together, the companies intend to empower consumers with the information and tools needed to easily make informed decisions about their vehicle repairs and maintenance. This integration will offer customers unparalleled convenience and peace of mind, ensuring they receive top-quality service from trusted auto repair professionals.

“We are thrilled to provide DIMO users with access to RepairPal’s vast network of Certified Repair facilities, all pre-screened for quality, reliability, and customer satisfaction. This will enable drivers to effortlessly locate and connect with trustworthy professionals in their area when they are in need of automotive maintenance or repairs. Matched with the Fair Price Estimator, we aim to empower consumers to make informed decisions based on accurate estimates, fostering trust and transparency in the industry.”

- Kathleen Long, Chief Revenue Officer at RepairPal

"Drivers have been left in the dark for far too long when it comes to finding the best prices for vehicle maintenance and repairs. Our partnership with RepairPal is another huge step towards DIMO’s mission to provide all drivers with their own car data, so that they can make informed decisions about their vehicles. Just imagine: not only do you no longer have to wonder what that error light means on your dashboard, but you can scan the RepairPal network to compare and find professional mechanics — as well as price estimates. That’s time saved, money saved, and power back in the hands of drivers.”

- Alex Rawitz, cofounder of DIMO and the COO of Digital Infrastructure Inc.

By combining their resources, expertise, and commitment to customer satisfaction, DIMO and RepairPal aim to revolutionize the way people connect with their cars as well as approach automotive repair and maintenance with trust and confidence.

About RepairPal

Established in 2007, RepairPal connects consumers with certified trustworthy mechanics throughout the US. Large, trusted companies including USAA, CarMax, and Consumer Reports send their members and customers to RepairPal Certified shops, knowing they will get high-quality repairs at a fair price.

In today's rapidly evolving world, the future of mobility is being shaped by innovative technologies and user-driven initiatives. Bluedot, a pioneering company dedicated to seamless and sustainable transportation solutions, has partnered with DIMO, a user-owned digital ecosystem driving change in the automotive industry. This partnership marks a significant step towards creating a future where data shapes infrastructure, emissions are reduced, roads are safer, and life behind the wheel is truly enhanced.

The shared missions of Bluedot and DIMO are revolutionizing the way we drive and interact with our vehicles.

For drivers, DIMO offers a range of benefits, including the ability to save money, learn how to better maintain your vehicles, and actively contribute to a future where driving apps work for the owners, not just the companies that build them. By sharing their data, drivers become active participants in creating a more efficient and user-centric automotive ecosystem.

What does Bluedot do?

Bluedot understands the challenges and opportunities associated with transitioning to EVs. Through their seamless and scalable solutions, they empower drivers and businesses to embrace electric mobility. From providing charging infrastructure solutions to offering banking services, Bluedot supports individuals and organizations in making the shift towards a more sustainable transportation ecosystem.

Bluedot shares a similar vision with DIMO in driving sustainable mobility solutions. The company is dedicated to creating a world powered by electric vehicles (EVs) and supporting the transition to sustainable and efficient transportation. With a focus on innovative technologies and personalized services, Bluedot aims to streamline the adoption process, simplify operations, and optimize energy usage, ultimately paving the way for a sustainable, electrified future.

Bluedot <> DIMO

The partnership between Bluedot and DIMO is a powerful collaboration that combines their shared visions and expertise. By merging Bluedot's seamless and scalable solutions for sustainable transportation with DIMO's user-owned digital ecosystem, this alliance aims to shape the future of mobility in a profound way.

Bluedot and DIMO's partnership represents a game-changing approach to sustainable mobility. By merging Bluedot's expertise in electric vehicles with DIMO's user-driven ecosystem, they are revolutionizing the way we drive and interact with our vehicles. Together, they are shaping a future where data informs infrastructure, emissions are reduced, and life behind the wheel is truly enhanced.

DIMO’s newest feature is set to revolutionize how consumers approach car maintenance, making check engine light anxiety and even untrustworthy auto shops a thing of the past.

Most error code readers on the market do exactly that: read error codes. They’ll give you a code and maybe a basic definition of the issue, that’s it. DIMO devices are able to read an error code, give you a detailed description, and provide both self-help tips and full-service options to fix the problem entirely, making this a massive time and cost saver for every driver.

2 out of 3 U.S. drivers do not trust auto repair shops. DIMO is here to solve that problem entirely–putting you in a position to avoid getting scammed by a mechanic, giving you complete confidence to understand what is wrong with your car before you bring it to the shop.

First, make sure to get the DIMO x AutoPi Device

This is the only way you’re able to access the error code reader feature. Cars that connect to DIMO without hardware unfortunately are not able to access the benefits. With a cost of $349, and bulk discount prices, the DIMO x AutoPi will pay for itself in no time by allowing you to save at the mechanic or avoid the mechanic altogether.

Plus, DIMO Rewards really make that price tag worth it.

If you have questions about DIMO's error code reading feature, you can read more here.

1. Access the error code widget on the Vehicle tab. You must be with your car to proceed.

2. Tap on the “Tap to Scan” button

3. Start your engine

4. Turn off engine - enter accessory mode

5. Connect with bluetooth

6. Learn what’s wrong with your car

If you have questions about DIMO’s error code reading features, read more here.

How DIMO gives you options to actually get your car fixed

DIMO's error code analysis feature integrates with partners in the DIMO Marketplace to create seamless repair experiences while earning DIMO Rewards in the process.

Vehicle Genius subscribers can send error code data to their Pit Crew VG team for diagnosis and repair cost estimates, plus the convenience of scheduled repairs with local, high quality vendors. Savings, ease, and rewards built into one subscription!

This feature will continue to grow over time, allowing users to fully take advantage of their DIMO data by making educated decisions based on expected costs of each repair and guidance from the Vehicle Genius team.

For users who want to schedule their own maintenance, DIMO is working on an integration with RepairPal, the leading network of vehicle repair shops in the U.S. RepairPal will provide accurate repair cost estimates and will enable easy repair scheduling directly within the DIMO app. These integrations empower car owners with expert resources and rewards for a seamless vehicle repair experience.

Introduction to DIMO

DIMO is a connected vehicle platform that is bringing one of the largest economic sectors in the world, the automotive industry, on-chain in order to build a more efficient system that makes owning a car a more cost effective and better experience. DIMO is far deeper than a “drive to earn” model, and we’re reinventing the digital infrastructure that exists in the mobility world to facilitate a world that is more user-centric.

Cars are increasingly software-defined, but stuck in a “flip phone” era. Their data is spread across thousands of entities of different types: automakers, insurance companies, state DMVs, dealerships, and other retailers. This is reminiscent of the financial world where crypto has shown the potential to disrupt finance through decentralization, breaking down silos, and reinventing finance’s digital infrastructure on-chain. This hurts consumers in multiple trillion-dollar markets, holds back automation and electrification, and is a privacy nightmare.

A new approach is needed.

Today, DIMO is live with the first network client, the DIMO Mobile app for consumers and fleets, almost a dozen partners, and over 16,000 cars connected. Let’s learn more.

What most people get wrong about DIMO: Big Data vs. User Data

Upon hearing the idea of user-owned data collection on DIMO, many assume that the goal is to build the biggest possible data set and then monetize that aggregated and anonymized data with big enterprises. While this will exist as one use case, it’s important to understand that this is not the full vision of DIMO — it’s a small part.

The bigger, far more valuable vision is a system that allows drivers to share their data directly with companies they want to transact with, enabling both sides to take advantage of new infrastructure for data exchange that makes transactions more efficient and opens up new possibilities and products. Why is this the case?

Automotive companies from individual developers to large enterprises care far more about getting data from individual cars. If you’re a large used car marketplace like Vroom or Carvana in the business of buying and selling cars, it’s more valuable to you to be able to know exactly what’s going on with a specific car you have in inventory or could buy vs. what’s happening in aggregate across 1 million cars. The same is true of insurance companies and any other business in the auto-world: you can better price or deliver a service to a customer when you have data specifically on them instead of in aggregate.

The DIMO solution is to make this world feasible by ensuring that users are in control of their data and can choose to share it when and with who they would like. You may share your error codes with a maintenance provider one day and your trip history with a business miles logging app the next like connecting your wallet to your favorite DeFi applications.

This model still has powerful network effects because each new user represents a new customer to the ecosystem, not just a new marginal data point. As more users connect their cars, those are more customers for developers and partners to services.

So what does the network look like today and where is it heading?

DIMO Network Growth: Vehicles and Users

Number of connected vehicles and number of vehicle owners. Many households have more than one vehicle, and DIMO is onboarding more and more fleets. These vehicle IDs are naturally sybil resistant since DIMO is performing verification work on these as they are minted and after.

The graph below shows two on-chain metrics: number of connected vehicles and number of vehicle owners. Many households have more than one vehicle, and we are onboarding more and more fleets. When a car is added to DIMO, an on-chain vehicle ID is created, which is how this number is generated. Users who are minting this vehicle ID own it in their wallet. They can transfer it (in the case of creating a car to help someone else onboard to DIMO) but most of the time they hang on to the id.

Importantly, these vehicle IDs are naturally sybil resistant since DIMO is performing verification work on these as they are minted and after.

Before millions of users are using future apps like DeFi car loans or insurance products built on DIMO data, the network needs to grow. Again, each new driver is not just a data point, but a new customer for the dozens of partners already building or planning to build on DIMO.

Tracking this number is akin to tracking active addresses on an L1 or L2. The number of active addresses gives an indication on the health of the protocol as it shows the number of potential customers.

Bringing the auto world on-chain (as much as we can)

Much has been written and much effort has been put into bringing financial businesses into the blockchain world. You don’t need to look farther than every article written about how some bank or payments company is looking to get into crypto. It’s been a slow road seeing these businesses get started

One of the missing pieces in our opinion is that in our interconnected economy other businesses outside of the financial sector have never had an incentive to adopt crypto. Why would a car insurance business get involved? There’s never been a reason. If one of the world’s largest economic sectors — the automotive industry — moves slowly on-chain, it can provide a big incentive for other industries too as well.

But it’s a delicate balance. Many of these enterprises are antiquated and won’t have an appetite to touch crypto at all. In building DIMO, the Foundation is looking for ways to support intermediaries that will allow traditional auto enterprises to access the on-chain vehicles and drivers of DIMO.

Today, that looks like the cart below. These are rewards payouts (to DIMO users) for transactions between DIMO users and ecosystem partners. With only a handful of partners live (but many more in the pipeline) the Foundation is helping to put some of the transactions between partners and drivers on-chain.

Ecosystem partner transactions are really the key KPI to watch with DIMO. These transactions indicate partners showing up and spending money to acquire data and users. Right now, these numbers are subject to off chain reporting cycles (partner closes business and reports it to the DIMO Foundation a month later) but DIMO is working to speed up that reporting and make it seamless.

As this number starts going up, it’s a direct measure in the value of the DIMO Network. When users share their vehicle data with a provider for access to services, it closes the loop in building the network.

Build when disruption is happening

One of the many reasons we love building DIMO is that the auto industry is in the midst of several massive transitions. Connecting cars, electrifying them, and introducing automated driving systems are huge changes to an industry that has companies over 100 years old.

We always like to start with the consumer impact. What does this mean for drivers, today? It means that as people get new cars (or manage their old ones) the connectivity of that car will increasingly become a factor in the overall experience of owning it. Does your car have an API where you can pull the data or a developer can? Does the software update on the car frequently? Is that a pain point or a benefit?

When a car is minted on DIMO, the make of the car is one of the pieces published on-chain. The resulting data tells us something about how easy it is to interface with that car’s data. If you believe that the software running on a car is important to its value (note: the car’s internal software, not the infotainment system where you probably want CarPlay) then this is a great indicator about which car makers are building better software or more open cars.

Track which cars are connected to DIMO to see which OEMs are embracing software openness:

A critical not-yet-on-chain KPI: Total Value Connected

As we’ve shared a few times in this report, the auto industry is not very on-chain. That means many exciting and important KPIs are not yet on-chain either. Since DIMO is building in a space that has not yet had much attention from the web3 world, it’s on DIMO to make many of these primitives accessible.

One of the best measures of the network’s growth and potential is the value of the vehicles connected to DIMO. Cars are usually the second largest spend category for most consumers, so it’s unsurprising that even +16,000 cars connected produces a very large number when it comes to the value of those cars connected. Today, there is over $300M worth of cars connected to DIMO.

Why is this number so interesting other than just being big? Each of these cars will need maintenance, insurance, financing, and will eventually be sold used 2-3 times. The Total Value Connected (TVC) thus represents a major value indicator for the DIMO Network.

Better web3 products and onramps

DIMO’s founding team has been in crypto for years. 2016/17 and then DeFi summer was an amazing boom to participate in. But something happened and for the last few years it’s been copy pasta and hype. We’ve watched crypto eat its own tail as much of the industry tries to bring new people to crypto with the same overly-financial and technical products.

We’re excited to bring a product to market that does the most possible to minimize the mindshare that web3 jargon and UX has on the product experience. A great product shouldn’t constantly remind you of the tech it's built on, it should just be a great experience that makes your life better.

Cars and the economy built around the industry is one of the largest sectors in the world and represents one of the largest consumer spend categories. Making an impact here can impact billions across the world. As we build DIMO, that’s our mission — make car ownership better for everyone.

With the passing of DIP-8 on June 16th, the DIMO Ignite Grants Program is officially open for business. The Ignite Team has been allocated an initial $2,000,000 ecosystem fund to support builders and developers who can accelerate innovation within the DIMO ecosystem.

If you or anyone you know is looking for funding to contribute, come check out our website www.dimoignite.org to apply!

The Ignite Grants team has the following core goals:

1. Accelerate development and innovation: Key infrastructure, public goods, and applications accelerate DIMO’s development and adoption. Ignite will tap into the creativity of the community by soliciting innovative ideas and proposals from the public.

2. Enhance project security: Bounty programs, specifically those targeting security vulnerabilities, incentivize ethical hackers and security researchers to identify and report potential weaknesses in the DIMO protocol’s code. This can help improve the project's security and protect it against potential threats.

3. Grow the contributor base: Rewards for specific tasks will attract skilled developers, designers, researchers, content creators, and other professionals, and will foster more general community engagement, participation, and excitement.

What requests for proposals the team is prioritizing

The Ignite team is excited to review any and all ideas that community members submit, but they’ve also identified a list of higher priority proposals:

1. DIMO Compatible Hardware - Contribute to building or testing hardware that is compatible with DIMO and AutoPi. One example of this would be a dash camera.

2. AV Data Processing & Storage - Adding video and other advanced telematics support to DIMO network and client applications. Integrating data from ADAS systems: Tesla FSD, OpenPilot, and more.

3. Direct OEM Integrations - Unlock a broader set of vehicles that users can connect to the DIMO Network with minimal friction.

4. DIMO Clients - DIMO Mobile is the first example of a DIMO client and we would love to see more clients emerge for different use cases. Clients are applications that allows users to interact directly with the DIMO protocol.

5. Payments Infrastructure - Facilitate seamless transactions between DIMO network, users and marketplace partners.

6. DIMO Applications & Partners - DIMO connectivity can create incredible user experiences. If you want to build a DIMO-powered application, we want to hear from you.

7. Host & Patron Tooling - Host & Patron tooling will supercharge the process of onboarding new users onto the DIMO Network by making it easier for deployers to find new willing hosts, automate & manage payouts, and more.

8. Improve the DIMO Connected Car Experience - Add support for more vehicles and data fields across different car manufacturers so more users can get more value out of their DIMO experience.

9. Quests - A service in which DIMO driver’s can gamify and social share their experience with each other and earn bounties. Think things ranging from quest involving mapping, to sharing socials, to refueling, to roadtrips. Anything that leverages DIMO data is a plus.

If these proposals do not apply to you, we still highly recommend you apply with your proposal! The more applications, the merrier.

Meet the team

1. Sam Lewis - DIMO Contributor (Chair)

2. Rob Solomon - CFO Digital Infrastructure Inc. (Director)

3. Yev Khessin - CTO Digital Infrastructure Inc. (Director)

4. Andy Chatham - CEO Digital Infrastructure Inc. (Director)

5. Bryan Peters - Co-Founder of Sobol (Contributor)

6. MoreReese - DAO Builder (Contributor)

7. Avi Atkin - Product Manager, 3Box Labs, ex-Ford (Contributor)

We couldn’t be more excited for this new development and can’t wait to see the amazing builders who join the DIMO ecosystem. If you have any questions or comments on the program itself or application process please reach out to [email protected].

Better yet, any person or group with a sufficient number of tokens between them can submit a proposal for voting. For now, sit back and read a quick summary of the changes that are up for vote, starting today!

The Creation of the Ignite Grants Team

Ecosystem grant teams are a common practice amongst well known protocols, and DIP-8 proposes the creation of the Ignite Team. The Ignite Team would be a DIMO ecosystem grants team allocated $1,000,000 in stable tokens and 10M $DIMO to fund world class initiatives and builders. 

While the DIMO core team and others are continuously pushing the protocol forward, grant funding empowers the entire community to contribute in specific ways, both big and small, to expand the DIMO ecosystem. The Purpose & Mission section of DIP-8 summarizes the main motivation behind the program well. The Ignite team aims to:

1. Accelerate development and innovation: Key infrastructure, public goods, and applications accelerate DIMO’s development and adoption. Ignite will tap into the creativity of the community by soliciting innovative ideas and proposals from the public.
2. Enhance project security: Bounty programs, specifically those targeting security vulnerabilities, incentivize ethical hackers and security researchers to identify and report potential weaknesses in the DIMO protocol’s code. This can help improve the project's security and protect it against potential threats.
3. Grow the contributor base: Rewards for specific tasks will attract skilled developers, designers, researchers, content creators, and other professionals, and will foster more general community engagement, participation, and excitement.

The proposal dreams up categories and examples that a grants program could bring to life such as account abstraction, DBC Decoding, Dash Cam hardware, security audits, Web3 Turo, and more. What would you build?!

So how is the team set up?

The proposed Ignite team is made up 7 individuals (to start) with expertise in web3 ecosystem development, connected vehicle technology, and enthusiasm for the DIMO community.

This team is responsible for operationalizing a host of processes ranging from hosting grants and bounties, sourcing grantees, managing and compensating the grantee pipeline, transparent reporting back to the DIMO community, and much more.

For specific details on each team member, their operating structure, and how to apply for a grant, make sure to check out DIP-8 before the vote!

Marketing Grant #1

The next proposal, DIP-9, requests the allocation of funds from the DIMO Treasury to Digital Infrastructure Inc for growth and marketing purposes. These funds would be unlocked in tranches under specific milestone or initiative based terms.

As DIMO increases in popularity, it’s time to put the pedal to the metal. This includes the goal of pushing towards mainstream non-crypto adoption and reaching consumers through conventional channels. Broadening DIMO’s reach means more cars will connect and more developers will build on DIMO, accelerating the flywheel. The DIP calls out the core use of the funds as follows:

1. Incentivize user adoption: Create initiatives that educate and encourage new users to join the DIMO network, and try its services. This can drive sustained user adoption and increase overall engagement with the project.

2. Increase brand awareness: Work to raise awareness of DIMO, ensuring that the brand is consistently and effectively communicated across different platforms in a trusted manner. This includes facilitating education and high-quality conversation amongst our community.

3. Develop and manage partnerships: Establish and maintain strategic partnerships with influencers, affiliates, and other relevant organizations to help expand DIMO’s reach, amplify its messaging, and build its credibility.

4. Expand DIMO’s footprint into new regional markets: Expansion presents several unique challenges ranging from prioritization, marketing, localization, demand for specific services, legal compliance, etc, that we will seek to push forward.

So why Digital Infrastructure, Inc? This team is uniquely qualified given their provent rack record of growing the DIMO protocol to date (over 14,000 cars connected on explorer.dimo.zone), their extensive growth and marketing experience, and domain knowledge across connected vehicles and web3. This team has also proven to act in good faith of the DIMO community.

DIP-9 unlocks ecosystem funds for Digital Infrastructure, Inc to double down on methods that have worked before, and new high value initiatives that require up-front cost. Think things like more user token-incentive programs, referral & ambassador programs, influencer marketing, conferences, advertising, and more! Some of these initiatives represent the opportunity to get in front of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of potential new users.

As always you can check out DIP-9 for more comprehensive details.

Upgrades to $DIMO on Ethereum Mainnet

Lastly, a smaller but important change! There’s a proposed amendment to DIP-1 that gives $DIMO on Ethereum Mainnet comparable voting functionality to the $DIMO token on Polygon. Specifically, it gives holders the ability to delegate tokens to another wallet of theirs or to someone else who can vote on their behalf.

As more $DIMO is bridged back to Ethereum Mainnet, it’s an opportunity for holders on both chains to participate in governance!

Your participation is encouraged

We’re scheduling a Discord AMA next week on Thursday (6/8) at 1pm EST, opening the vote on Friday, and would encourage all token holders to participate. As a reminder, you will need to delegate your tokens to yourself, or to some of our trusted community members. More detail to come soon in Discord, see you there!

DIMO Insights for Personalized Carbon Offsetting

DIMO's powerful data insights can accurately predict the carbon emissions produced by specific vehicles. With this information, car owners can not only better understand their carbon footprint but also take proactive steps to reduce it. The Carbon Offset Company then uses this data to offset that carbon output in the real world by planting trees.

Tree Planting: Real World Ways to Offset Emissions

At DIMO, we believe in the power of the real world. That’s why The Carbon Offset Company's approach to carbon offsetting is so aligned with our values. The Carbon Offset Company takes a holistic and verified approach to carbon offsetting through straightforward tree planting initiatives. Tree planting projects don’t just offset carbon emissions, but they also help restore habitats and local ecosystems. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce oxygen, making them a vital part of any carbon offsetting strategy. They also act as homes and food sources for wildlife, restore watersheds, protect coasts from erosion, improve water and soil qualities and much more. Learn more about past and present projects here.

Why use The Carbon Offset Company?

In the DIMO Mobile Marketplace, DIMO users are able to see a personalized recommendation to offset emissions based on their vehicle. The ability to see emissions specific to their usage is not only an interesting insight but also a more motivating piece of data than more generic averages. Through their app, users can easily purchase their personalized offset. For anyone who’s ever struggled to balance their environmental concerns with their practical everyday transportation needs, DIMO and The Carbon Offset Company is a great solution.

What is Caramel?

Caramel offers a convenient and safe way for anyone to sell their car privately. Caramel enables you to connect directly with private buyers, ensuring that you receive the full value for your vehicle. If you've ever wanted to make more money selling your car privately and avoiding the dealership, but have been scared by the complexity and work involved, Caramel can relieve that stress and help.

Using DIMO data with Caramel to make a confident sale

DIMO, on the other hand, specializes in leveraging vehicle data to unlock the full potential of your car.

In the DIMO Mobile app, you can get real-time insights into your car's performance, maintenance history, and other essential metrics like a data-driven vehicle valuation, allowing you to make informed decisions about your car's worth.

In the near future, DIMO users will be able to send their vehicle data directly to Caramel with the click of a button. This can include data points such as the make, model, year, odometer, and VIN number of the vehicle for sale. Caramel will leverage this information so that any buyer can purchase your car in a matter of clicks. Not only does this help sellers skip steps, but it creates a transactable link that can be added to any marketplace listing with verifiable DIMO data. This makes it easier for buyers and sellers to have confidence in their private party transaction. Something that's only possible through DIMO.

One of the significant advantages of this partnership is the opportunity for customers to earn $DIMO Rewards when they buy or sell a vehicle when they access Caramel on the DIMO Marketplace. This additional incentive enhances the value you receive from your car sale, adding an extra layer of benefit to the partnership. DIMO Rewards are like an airline reward point for your car, or even your entire fleet. Whether it’s tires, maintenance, or vehicle sales, you benefit when you use the marketplace.

The partnership between DIMO and Caramel brings together the power of data-driven valuations and a secure platform for private car sales. By leveraging DIMO's advanced technology and Caramel's comprehensive services, sellers can more easily navigate the stressful and complicated process to maximize the value of their vehicle via private party sale.

Why use Caramel?

While selling a vehicle privately offers the potential for greater value compared to selling to a dealership, it may not be the best choice for everyone. Private sales require additional effort and potential interactions with buyers, which come with their own set of risks. Caramel removes most of these risks, allowing you to realize greater value alongside greater ease and safety. We encourage you to consider your individual circumstances before deciding to sell your car privately. If you're looking to make a private sale, Caramel is one of the best ways to go.

Ready to unlock the full potential of your car sale? Visit the DIMO Marketplace within the app today to learn more about Caramel and how you can leverage their secure platform to sell your car privately. 

Say goodbye to traditional selling methods and embrace a streamlined, data-driven approach with DIMO and Caramel.

The web2 rideshare industry is flawed, and it’s hurting everyone

Uber and Lyft claim to take a 25% fee off of every financial transaction. Drivers say they take even more. In the vast majority of the U.S., Uber and Lyft are the only options for ride-sharing companies. This virtual monopoly leaves no incentive for either company to lower their fees or innovate.

This cuts driver profits. Any rideshare driver will tell you they’re not happy with Uber and Lyft fees, to say the least. Yet, both centralized companies have still failed to reach profitability in the current economic model. The biggest problem in the driver gig economy is that workers aren’t getting paid enough real money.

Meanwhile, consumers aren’t getting a great product, but they're paying higher fees. Uber’s fees have jumped +80% since 2018. Safety and reliability issues with Uber and Lyft have plagued consumers. Unsafe and poorly maintained vehicles are common, and can make the rider experience unsafe and unreliable.

These issues put Uber and Lyft in a strange predicament that is hard to escape:

1. They can’t pay drivers more while operating at a loss.

2. They can’t continue to raise the price of rides or they’ll lose riders.

3. They can’t build a better project or transition to web3 without hiring more developers.

Uber and Lyft have a duopoly. They have little incentive to invest in improvements to their product because of their high market share of both drivers and riders. Despite high adoption, there is low loyalty amongst both groups. Drivers often drive with both companies simultaneously, and consumers check both apps in search of the lowest ride cost. As closed platforms, only high cost, internal dev teams create new features.

The way to improve the ride-sharing industry is to build an innovative solution that can maximize profits for drivers while simultaneously lowering fairs for riders. Only decentralization can solve this problem.

How to take out the middleman? Decentralize it.

Customers win when there’s more competition. Decentralization makes mobility-based applications easier to produce. When the go to market cost decreases, competition increases.

The DIMO platform lowers the barrier to entry for any startup founders interested in web3 projects for the rideshare industry. Uber and Lyft have spent millions, if not billions, of dollars developing their app features. Through DIMO's decentralized platform, developers have access to a prebuilt infrastructure with verified driver data, vehicle information and trip details. DIMO provides an open, secure, and neutral protocol that utilizes blockchain technology.

If building a decentralized ride-sharing application is 100x easier, there is an opportunity for small teams to build apps that compete with some of the world's largest tech companies.

A web3 rideshare company that builds an app with an efficient team of 10-30 can charge 5% fees instead of the 25% that Uber charges, upending the industry economics. Lower barrier to entry will create a free market in the rideshare industry. With lower startup costs, developers can focus resources on value creation for users and drivers while still reaching profitability. Better prices and features will encourage the transition of riders and drivers from legacy web2 products to new web3 apps.

To make it even easier for new developer projects, DIMO is already working towards mass adoption of rideshare drivers into the DIMO platform through a native token reward system and attractive benefits in the DIMO Marketplace.

DIMO Rewards gives drivers and fleets benefits, like airline reward points, for connecting and using DIMO. You can receive rewards just by spending money on your car or fleet like you normally do on maintenance, financing, warranties, tires, and more. As a matter of fact, cars are the second highest expense and in the US, the annual cost of owning a car crossed the $10,000 mark. That’s a lot of dollars people can earn rewards points on.

For example, if someone spends money on fuel, maintenance, or even car accessories, they can earn rewards. Users can convert those rewards into cash or use the rewards within the DIMO ecosystem. The rewards are also ownership in the DIMO project as a whole, so can be worth holding on to.

It's a win-win situation for drivers because they get rewarded for the money they're already spending on their car and it encourages them to continue using DIMO-associated services. In a nutshell, it's like a loyalty program for car-related expenses, making it more rewarding for drivers to maintain and enjoy their vehicles.

How do people earn DIMO Rewards?

To get started with earning DIMO tokens, people can follow these simple steps:

1. Create a DIMO account: The first step is to sign up for a DIMO account on the DIMO Mobile App. Sign up with Google or Apple and then you can create a reward wallet.

2. Link your vehicle: Next, connect your car. Some can connect right away with a software connection, others need the DIMO hardware device, which is like other car diagnostics devices except it’s internet-enabled.

3. Connect with participating merchants: Users should explore the DIMO ecosystem in app to find participating merchants, such as gas stations, repair shops, and car accessory stores. These merchants are part of the DIMO network and will offer rewards in the form of DIMO tokens for eligible purchases.

4. Spend and earn: When users spend money at participating merchants for car-related expenses like fuel, maintenance, or accessories, they'll earn DIMO tokens as a reward. The amount of tokens earned will depend on the specific promotion or offer provided by the merchant.

5. Manage and redeem rewards: Users can check their DIMO token balance, view transaction history, and redeem tokens for discounts, deals, or services within the DIMO ecosystem through their account. They can also manage their tokens using the DIMO mobile app or web platform.

By following these steps, users can easily start earning DIMO tokens and take advantage of the benefits offered by the DIMO Rewards program.

Where does vehicle data fit in?

Data plays a crucial role in making the auto transactions in the DIMO marketplace more efficient:

Personalization: Data helps tailor offers and promotions based on individual user preferences, driving history, and vehicle needs. This ensures that users receive relevant deals, making it more likely they will engage with the platform and its participating merchants.

Predictive maintenance: By analyzing vehicle data, the DIMO platform can predict when maintenance is needed and provide timely reminders to users. This not only helps drivers maintain their vehicles more effectively but also creates opportunities for targeted offers from service providers.

Seamless transactions: Data integration between the DIMO platform and merchants allows for a streamlined transaction experience. Users can easily earn and redeem tokens without having to deal with complicated processes or additional steps, making the entire experience more efficient and user-friendly.

Fraud prevention: Data analytics can help the DIMO platform detect and prevent fraudulent activities, ensuring that transactions within the ecosystem are secure and trustworthy.

Market insights: Data collected from user transactions and behavior can provide valuable insights for merchants within the DIMO network. These insights can help businesses optimize their offerings, pricing, and marketing strategies to attract more customers and boost sales.

Real-time updates: By leveraging data, the DIMO platform can provide real-time updates on token balances, transaction history, and available offers, enabling users to make informed decisions and manage their rewards more effectively.

Overall, data plays a pivotal role in enhancing the efficiency of auto transactions within the DIMO ecosystem. It helps create a more personalized and seamless experience for users, while also providing valuable insights and security for both the platform and its participating merchants.

Starting today, support for $DIMO has been added on Coinbase, one of the world’s top cryptocurrency exchanges. This will provide a significant increase in reach and accessibility for DIMO users, device manufacturers, app developers, and other ecosystem participants. Coinbase is specifically supporting $DIMO on the Ethereum blockchain and tokens on Polygon must be bridged to Ethereum before they can be deposited into Coinbase. Instructions here.

About Coinbase

Coinbase is a secure platform that makes it easy to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrency. With over 100 million users and 245,000 ecosystem partners in over 100 countries, Coinbase is among the most trusted cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. The company is committed to making cryptocurrency more accessible, secure, and easy to use for people around the globe.

Token addresses for $DIMO:
On Ethereum: 0x5fab9761d60419c9eeebe3915a8fa1ed7e8d2e1b (link)
On Polygon: 0xE261D618a959aFfFd53168Cd07D12E37B26761db (link)

Always make sure you are interacting with the correct token address. The DIMO Foundation and its affiliates are not responsible for lost or misplaced tokens as a result of the actions of users or third parties.

About DIMO

Vehicle owners use DIMO to get more out of their cars. DIMO apps allow them to collect, use and monetize the data from their vehicles, which can be connected using the DIMO Mobile app, along with devices available at shop.dimo.zone.

$DIMO is the native token of the DIMO protocol that is issued to users and contributors. When drivers connect their cars, stream data, and interact with applications, they receive $DIMO.

$DIMO is useful for creating devices that can stream vehicle data, developing applications, voting on how the protocol works, and more. To read more about $DIMO and how it works, read on here.

Ampchampment is a specialized company that focuses on cutting-edge technologies such as decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN), the Internet of Things (IoT), and Web3. With a team of experts in these areas, Ampchampment is committed to creating innovative solutions that empower individuals and businesses to take advantage of emerging technologies.

We are pleased to announce that our devices are now more accessible than ever in Europe, thanks to the new pricing structure that offers exceptional value to individuals and businesses alike. Our partnership with Ampchampment is a critical step towards a more sustainable, decentralized, and connected future.

Ampchampment currently distributes DIMO Hardware in North America, and Europe, with plans to expand distribution to Asia and Oceania in the future! If you're located in Asia or Oceania, click here to join the waitlist to be notified when distribution is available.

We have worked hard to ensure that our devices provide an intuitive user experience and simplicity, and we are pleased that Ampchampment has found the pleasure in testing them extensively.

At DIMO, we are excited to work with Ampchampment and empower individuals to take control of their digital lives and seize the opportunities presented by emerging technologies. Together, we are confident that we can create a brighter future for all, leveraging the power of data to drive innovation and positive change.

Head over to the Ampchampment shop at https://ampchampment.com/en-en to get your DIMO device today! Use code DIMO10 to get 10% off your order!

Follow Ampchampment: 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ampchampment/

Discord: https://discord.gg/M7G7MeCGXp

DIMO tackled this problem head-on.

Our in-app wallet has massively improved the DIMO user experience, allowing for just about anyone to connect their car to DIMO, no matter how technologically inept. Since DIMO launched the in-app wallet earlier this year, DIMO has had only 0.01% of support tickets related to the in-app wallet. In other words, Web3Auth’s in-app wallet is seamless, resulting in practically zero complaints, even from users new to web3.

This would not be the case if Web3Auth’s integration wasn’t absolutely seamless. With Web3Auth, DIMO Mobile has become an efficient and secure marketplace for the automobile industry, paving the way for new opportunities and partnerships in the realm of automobile crypto projects.

Integrating Web3Auth and DIMO: Why is this exciting news for the auto & crypto industries?

Simplified Authentication System

Web3Auth eliminates the need for users to create a non-custodial blockchain wallet, which can be a tedious and time-consuming process. Instead, users can simply sign in using their email address, like a Google or Apple address, and have the wallet creation happen in the background.

This means that users don't have to deal with the complexities of managing a blockchain wallet, and they can focus on using DIMO's features and services.

Improved Security

Users new to crypto can fall victim to hacks and phishing attacks, often due to the fact that they make mistakes managing their keys or find themselves clicking on unknown links. Web3Auth mitigates this significantly, if not entirely, since users are using familiar and secure authentication methods like Google with a link to the blockchain to verify their identity on sign-in.

By integrating Web3Auth into the DIMO Mobile App, users can be confident that their personal information and assets are protected.

Interoperability

Web3Auth is designed to be interoperable with a wide range of dApps and wallets, making it easier for users to switch between different platforms without having to create new accounts or passwords.

As DIMO gets ready to launch its developer platform, there will soon be dozens of apps built on DIMO that allow users to sign in with the very same authentication method provided by Web3Auth, ensuring a smooth onboarding to any DIMO app.

The Impact on the Automobile Industry and Automobile Crypto Projects

The integration of Web3Auth into DIMO Mobile is a game-changer for the automobile industry and automobile crypto projects. It makes it easier for car owners to access the DIMO platform and enjoy the benefits of blockchain technology without having to navigate the complexities of managing a blockchain wallet. The simplified onboarding process offered by Web3Auth opens up new opportunities for automobile industry stakeholders to collaborate with DIMO and other web3 projects to build innovative solutions that improve the driving experience, promote data privacy and security.

The best part? We’re launching a competition to see who can drive the most referrals over the next two weeks. Scroll to the bottom of the post to check it out?

How does it work?

Share your referral code

On the Market tab, you’ll find the “Refer a friend” section. From there, you’ll be prompted with a unique code you can share with your friends. You’re able to spread this code far and wide, or with them directly. You can also have your friend scan your QR code in DIMO Mobile, which you can find on the top right of the Account tab.

Sign up with a referral code

To use a referral code shared with you, download the DIMO Mobile app and hit “Have a referral code?” Enter in the referral code you received, and then jump right back to the onboarding process. The whole process takes just seconds.

Collect your rewards!

Once your friend has connected their car for 1 week, both of you will receive 50 $DIMO, which will show up under your Rewards tab and in your wallet. The 50 $DIMO reward applies no matter the method of connection. Whether it’s a free connection via Tesla, another software, or a hardware purchase, the rewards are the same.

Just remember, you earn far more with a hardware connection, so encourage your friends to buy DIMO Hardware to up their weekly baseline $DIMO rewards.

Make sure to note...

1) You can only refer someone who has not already connected a car.

2) Referral rewards are sent out 1x per week on Mondays along with other earned rewards.

Have any questions or issues?

Reach out to the DIMO support team, and they’ll be happy to help. You can always join the DIMO Discord for a quick answer from the team or the community.

Bitcoin is incredible as a secure store of value because its tokenomics (the rules by which BTC is issued and consumed) are rigid and predictable in their design. We love Bitcoin, but $DIMO is not meant to be an inflation proof digital gold. Rather it's a utility token that powers a dynamic protocol that is constantly evolving. In this piece we’ll cover how $DIMO tokens are used now, and how they could be used in the future to maximize the utility for DIMO users.

Principles

Before considering how DIMO’s token design should evolve, it’s important to first establish guiding principles. Good tokenomics for DIMO must:

1) Incentivize and reward positive contributions to the network. For DIMO this means users who generate valuable data and spend in the marketplace, hardware OEMs that make it easier to connect, and developers that build apps and integrations.

2) Not deter other participants like automakers and app developers. Despite the dynamic nature of DIMO and its tokenomics, there should be zero doubt in the minds of Ford, Geico, Uber, or the DMV that DIMO will always remain a neutral, open, and reasonably priced platform to build on. They need to have full trust that they can build their business on DIMO without any possibility that the rug will be pulled out from underneath them.

3) Be sustainable. Token burn shouldn’t result in a future where there are no tokens left.

4) Be reasonably predictable. The token supply shouldn’t rapidly inflate and the prices to utilize DIMO shouldn’t wildly fluctuate.

5) Be implementable. We live in the real world and tokenomics must be technologically feasible, commercially enforceable, and comply with regulations.

6) Vest authority with a decentralized and aligned community of stakeholders.

7) Be simple and understandable.

Tokenomic Mechanisms

There are several solid tokenomic mechanisms that comply with the principles and they can be deployed in any combination with one another, so long as each principle is covered. Some of these mechanisms have already been implemented and some could be introduced in the future. 

While the blockchain industry hasn’t typically embraced ambiguity in future protocol design, it’s time to get past this. The sophisticated use cases and governance frameworks of protocols like DIMO allow us to safely iterate on token design over time. You wouldn’t expect or want Google to lock in their budget for the next 100 years and it’s time to stop expecting the same from networks that exist in a dynamic environment.

The table below gives a high-level of relevant mechanisms, with more detail on each following.

Note: All mechanisms except the last one are live in DIMO tokenomics today, but all can be improved on as discussed below. I expect the community to play an active role in expanding on these mechanisms over time.

Baseline Rewards

Booting up a two-sided market is a big challenge. It’s hard to build up demand if there isn’t any supply, and it’s hard to build up a supply if there isn’t any demand. For DIMO to be a success, it needs to build up the supply of drivers and connected vehicles on one side and the demand for that vehicle data and connectivity on the other.

Helium showed how decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) can build up a robust supply side of a network with token rewards while the demand side catches up. DIMO’s Baseline Rewards are designed to accomplish the same thing for DIMO. Each week 1,105,000 $DIMO are issued to drivers simply for remaining connected. Vehicles that have maintained a connection for longer, and that send richer data, earn more than others.

Baseline Rewards could be a promotional mechanism for bootstrapping where these rewards shrink to zero over time as demand picks up. In this future, users would earn $DIMO through another mechanism, such as the ones listed below, and would also join to get value from apps.

Or protocol revenue could be recycled back into the Baseline Rewards Pool to top it back up and keep it going indefinitely. 

$DIMO tokenholders will make the decision on whether to continue Baseline Rewards or let it wind down depending on how use cases emerge and the network evolves.

• Status: Live today
• Similar to: Helium
• More info: DIP-2
• Principles conflicts: Isn’t sustainable forever without topping up
• Future: Either let it fade out or top up the pool to keep it going

Promotions & Airdrops

One of the oldest and most frequently used tools that projects employ is the airdrop. An airdrop most often refers to the mass distribution of tokens to reward users who participated in the network in the past. These show that the project values its early contributors and also helps to decentralize the network governance among loyal users.

DIMO has already deployed one airdrop of up to 67.5 million tokens to users who connected their car, purchased a DIMO miner, and/or referred other users. More details on how that was done can be found here.

The idea of conducting multiple airdrops is growing in popularity and DIMO could continue to design and deploy new airdrops or special promotions to launch new regions (e.g., Mexico, Australia, Dubai, Korea), new products in the marketplace (e.g., a smart insurance app powered by DIMO), and new device categories (e.g., motorcycles). While most airdrops have been retroactive, it’s possible to design a compliant airdrop that lays out rewards for a specific action a user could take in the future.

Grants, bounties, and other types of similar promotions have long been effective ways of rewarding developers and other ecosystem partners.

• Status: One airdrop conducted
• Similar to: Most crypto projects
• More info: Airdrop Announcement
• Principles conflicts: None
• Future: The community can consider a grants program, as well as additional airdrops

Flat Protocol Fees

DIMO can capture value from usage via flat network fees for various on-chain actions, such as adding a car and transferring a miner.

Flat fees have the benefit of being easy to enforce and the drawback of being unrelated to the value created in those transactions. For example, should transferring a car on-chain cost the same for a new Ferrari and a fifteen year old Ford Taurus? At least DIMO would be in good company among blockchain projects with such fees. It costs the same to send 10,000,000 ETH as it does to send one, which is both a feature (fairness) and a bug (regressive).

Today, the network charges a 25 $DIMO fee per hardware miner. Up to 70% can go back to the device manufacturer if the device stays connected over two years. This generates revenue for the network that can be used for funding development or rewarding drivers. It also incentivizes the manufacturer to build quality devices that users will like.

Natural examples of on-chain transactions where fees could be added in the future include: vehicle creation; vehicle transfer; sharing a vehicle; minting a trip; transmitting data; and/or emitting a credential (although this may not always be on-chain). Already, the DIMO Mobile app trains users to expect other fees in the future by warning them their 10 $DIMO minting fee has been waived.

Such fees alone could generate sufficient demand to drive the DIMO Network. Each year hundreds of millions of cars are built and resold and trillions of trips are taken. Even the smallest fees could generate billions in revenue at scale.

• Status: Live today
• Similar to: Bitcoin, Ethereum
• More info: DIP-4
• Principles conflicts: Can disincentivize positive contributions (e.g., charging to mint a trip) but amounts should be small, if implemented, and should be worth the benefits received
• Near-Future: Add additional fees and equate to a fiat value rather than a quantity of $DIMO (e.g., $5 USD worth of $DIMO)

Lock-up for Licenses

Parties that require the trust of DIMO participants should have skin in the game and a long-term incentive to do the right thing. One way to accomplish this is by requiring that they bond (lock-up) $DIMO tokens in order to maintain a license and deploy products to the network.

A bond in this context is comparable to a security deposit, like one you might put down when you move into a new apartment. If the licensee misbehaves, they may have some or all of their bonded tokens taken away. While this is not a staking program that generates yield for the licensee, it does force them to be long-term holders of the token.

It’s important to use this requirement sparingly for select trusted parties since it creates a barrier to entry. It’s wise to have a major device manufacturer jump through these hoops, but foolish to have a small app developer put up significant time and resources just to start experimenting on their exciting consumer app.

Today, licensing is a requirement enforced on-chain for hardware manufacturers. It’s actually impossible to connect a DIMO Miner without an on-chain license and a payment of the flat protocol fee. Licensing requirements have already been passed for node operators and clients, but these haven’t been implemented as an on-chain license just yet.

• Status: Live today
• Similar to: ETH, MATIC (and all other proof of stake chains), GRT, LPT 
• More info: DIP-4, DIP-5
• Principles conflicts: None
• Near-Future: Add additional licenses and implement a mechanism to rebalance the bonded amount based on $DIMO market price (e.g., if price doubles, the bonding requirement is reduced and some bonded tokens are returned to prior licensees)

Vehicle Data as a Service

Vehicle data and connectivity is valuable, and apps and data consumers will pay to get it. These connections can either be monetized with a universally defined fee structure or a revenue sharing agreement.

Fee structure

For example, a fee structure might be arranged such that it’s free for certain volumes and types of data, then $0.25 USD worth of $DIMO per car per month to stream its location, another $0.25 to stream its telemetry data, and another $0.50 per month to send commands (such as lock and unlock) to the car.

Both Helium and Hivemapper use such a format for assigning a fixed price to a unit of data. And similar to both, DIMO could introduce a data credit for each data type that simplifies the process of spending a volatile $DIMO token.

Revenue share

Currently DIMO employs a revenue share arrangement whereby Digital Infrastructure Inc., the first licensed node operator, helps to store and sell aggregate and anonymized user data for the best rates it can get, passing along 90% of the revenue to users in $DIMO. By not assigning fixed prices to data, the network preserves optionality and enables price discovery and competition across node operators. In a future with multiple node operators, users will be able to opt-in with those that do the best job of monetizing their data, effectively turning node operators into data coops.

Fees generated from data as a service could power the network on their own. McKinsey estimates that the data from advanced connected vehicles will soon reach $600/year before you even deeply consider the more advanced applications that can be built with that data. 

Today, 1% of these fees are burned, 9.9% goes to the node operator, and 89.1% goes to the user. In the future, these fees could be reallocated and flow back into the treasury, get burned, go directly to the users selling their data, and/or top up rewards pools.

• Status: Live today
• Similar to: Helium, Hivemapper 
• More info: DIP-3, DIP-5
• Principles conflicts: None
• Future: Add additional node operators to increase competition and/or migrate to a universal fee structure once more is known about the nature of data demand

Rebates & Direct User Incentives

DIMO makes it easy for apps to offer sign-on bonuses to users. Let’s say a bank wants to give a user a bonus for refinancing their car. This is live today, and such payments go to the user in $DIMO.

Any app is also free to offer ongoing incentives to users in $DIMO as well. Eventually this type of rebate could become explicitly part of variable token fees as described later.

• Status: Live today
• Similar to: Airline miles earned by signing up for and using credit cards
• More info: DIP-3
• Principles conflicts: None

Variable Transaction Fees

The most fair and highest opportunity tokenomic mechanism is also the hardest to implement, at least today.

Wherever possible, marketplaces and payments infrastructure opt to take a bulk of their revenue as a percentage of transaction volume rather than as a flat fee. Credit cards take 2-4% of each swipe and Apple takes 30% of all payments made in iPhone apps. Uber, Turo, AirBnB, and eBay all take most of their fees as a percentage.

Why is this better?

First, it means it makes it possible for businesses to offer new or cheap services to users. An iPhone app that doesn’t charge users doesn’t pay anything. Similarly, a free app that helps owners compare their lap times and car stats from the track shouldn’t have to pay much. 

Second, businesses only have to pay when they themselves have money flowing in to cover fees. If you sell sneakers on eBay and your volume and prices fall, you pay less. An app that helps users sell expensive cars has enough cash changing hands to afford greater fees.

And, together, this creates the biggest opportunity for the platform. DIMO has the opportunity to build the new rails to power the $10,000,000,000,000 automotive industry and adjacent services. Capturing even a few percentage points of market share and taking even half a percent in fees would mean billions in revenue for DIMO. It turns out a lot of money is spent on cars.

What might this look like using examples and a 0.5% fee?

Someone selling their car in a DIMO powered online car marketplace for $10,000.

$10,000 * 0.5% = $50 USD converted to $DIMO and captured by the protocol

Someone makes their $75 monthly insurance payment to a DIMO powered smart insurance app that allows you to pay per mile.

$75 * 0.5% = $0.375 USD converted to $DIMO and captured by the protocol

These fees could be burned, flow back into the treasury, be returned to the user as a partial rebate (like an airline point), and/or top up rewards.

The biggest challenge with this mechanism is in scalably enforcing that fee. If you share your car data with Geico for cheaper insurance, whereby you eventually login on Geico and put in your credit card, how can the DIMO protocol know how much you’re paying?

This responsibility could be pushed to the node operators that serve data to these businesses. As a condition of their license, they could be required to maintain a terms of service that requires a fee collection for vehicles they report data on. Fees could then be burned, shared with users, or stored in the treasury. This is effectively how Braintrust works.

Even this is challenging though. What happens if a broker uses DIMO data to connect a driver to an insurance company? Is the fee only on the broker's commission? How can DIMO get a cut of that monthly payment if the insurance company isn’t directly using DIMO data?

The more likely option involves moving more payments infrastructure onto blockchain rails, and this should happen over time. This seems likely, especially when you consider how slow and expensive existing payments infrastructure is.

This may seem far-fetched now, but consider that if the iPhone were pitched to you in 1995, you wouldn’t be able to imagine how Apple would make billions on its 30% app store fees. There were no cell data networks, it wasn’t safe to put a credit card online due to lack of encryption, and “apps” at that time were physically bought in office depot on floppy disks or CD-ROMs.

We bet that, in 2035, cars will have wallets, payment rails will be updated, and it will become increasingly feasible to route payments appropriately, safely, and easily with blockchain infrastructure. At this time, implementing such a percentage based fee should become easy.

• Status: Hypothetical
• Similar to: Braintrust (and Visa, Apple)
• Principles conflicts: Difficult to implement today
• Future: Consider introducing at a time when DIMO and blockchain adoption make implementation feasible

Balanced Flows

It’s important that sound tokenomics do more than just extract fees wherever possible and reward contributors. They must also be sustainable (can’t burn away completely or flow uncontrollably in one direction and get out of balance) and they must ensure that the privilege to govern DIMO remains in the hands of aligned stakeholders.

Some of the mechanisms listed above create inflows of resources (e.g., fees) and some create outflows (e.g., Baseline Rewards). It’s important that any implementation consider the available resources and all potential inflow and outflow scenarios to ensure that the appropriate amount of tokens remain available and in circulation to create the right incentives and keep the network usable.

Currently, there is no automated rebalancing mechanism in place. Inflows are limited as demand starts to build up and a massive reserve of tokens is allocated to cover the outflows. Token holders will be able to vote on specific interventions (e.g., adjust the Baseline Rewards formula, reallocate tokens, etc.) or implement new mechanisms to automatically keep flows in balance.

One popular mechanism to accomplish this is Helium’s Burn Mint Equilibrium. Explaining how this works could be another equally long post, but the important takeaway for our purposes is that there are ways to programmatically tie inflows to outflows and to place guardrails around them to prevent wild fluctuations in distributions.

Balanced Authority

It’s also important to consider the implications on power dynamics for designing the balance of token distributions. As explained here, the $DIMO token gives the holder rights to vote on how the protocol works. Ideally, drivers, automakers, app developers, and other stakeholders will remain in the appropriate balance when it comes to governance authority.

Currently, $DIMO tokenomics ensure nearly all authority rests with drivers and, to a lesser extent, hardware manufacturers. This will have to be addressed in the future by either finding ways to get $DIMO into the hands of automakers and app developers (where they earn it or they need to buy it) or by altering the governance structure to ensure they have a voice. There have been discussions in the past that perhaps the automakers should get a cut of the rewards for connected vehicles since they build the components that generate the data and can be instrumental in onboarding users and expanding data availability if they cooperate. This is something that should be considered more in the future.

The Optimism Collective took a page from the US Constitution and established a bicameral legislature. One house governed by tokens and another governed by key stakeholders. For various governance votes, both houses have to agree.

In the context of $DIMO, a similar structure could mean that the $DIMO token holders, primarily made up of drivers, might have to also get the support of a coalition of automakers before changing certain key pillars of the DIMO protocol.

Payment Denomination & Data Credits

The choice of how to denominate fees can be flexible, but there are tradeoffs. Due to the historical lack of liquidity and exchange availability, DIMO currently prices all tokenomic amounts in $DIMO. While simple, this has the drawback of subjecting participants to volatile fluctuations in the fiat cost of transacting on $DIMO. The 25 $DIMO per device fee could be dramatically cheaper or more expensive (priced in USD) depending on the week.

As DIMO becomes more available, it makes sense to alter the token design to price such fees and deposits in USD equivalent amounts. E.g., a rule specifying that creating a device costs $5 USD worth of $DIMO.

One way to do this would be by altering the nominal $DIMO fee for each transaction based on the current market price. Helium does this with their implicit burn mechanism. This is convenient, but it’s more challenging to build pricing oracles into every service, harder for users to calculate tax implications, and less predictable for users.

The data credit is another popular tool that other projects have introduced to achieve a similar effect. As mentioned earlier, Helium popularized the data credit in the blockchain world, but such credits have a long history in the traditional setting as well (e.g., AWS credits).

These work by allowing users to convert large chunks of token before they’re needed, leaving them with credits ready to be spent. This way, users can avoid holding a volatile $DIMO token as well, which is good (simple and safe for them) or bad (they have no skin in the game) depending on how you look at it.

Shortly, amendments will be introduced to redenominate the pricing of fees and bonding requirements in DIP-3, DIP-4, and DIP-5 to USD equivalent with an implicit burn style implementation to start. All payments will still be in $DIMO, this would only affect the amounts charged. After, a community discussion will be had on the benefits and engineering effort to implement a data credit model.

Driving Ahead

DIMO can take over the world’s mobility infrastructure and be a massive success as currently designed, or with some of the changes suggested above, or with other changes not mentioned in this document, so long as the principles are adhered to.

Proposals that seem to make sense to see sooner than later include: dynamic repricing of fees and bonding amounts paid in $DIMO to move up or down with market price and the addition of new flat fees, charged in $DIMO, for minting, sharing, and transferring a vehicle. 

Do you agree? DIMO truly is a community owned project and anyone is free to join the Discord and join the conversation in the # 🧠token-design channel. 

The foundation has been laid and it’s time to build.

For community members interested in DIMO hosting and fleet operations, Hotspotty will offer an array of tools to manage deployments, host payouts, and more, right in the Hotspotty interface. Using DIMO’s open platform, users will be able to login to Hotspotty.

If you’re interested in being one of the first to get access to DIMO, we encourage you to sign up for the waitlist here and to purchase your DIMO devices through the Hotspotty affiliate link. Use code HOTSPOTTY for $10 off.

Rumor has it that Hotspotty is cooking up something else for the emerging DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) industry that we both belong to, and DIMO is excited to be part of it. More details to follow… 🤫

While thousands of users are already connected, the DIMO Network is still in its first year and you can be one of the first to start storing your vehicle data and helping to build collective data sets that empower user-owned, decentralized physical infrastructure.

If you’re a developer, fleet manager or other party interested in learning more about the DIMO the connected vehicle ecosystem, please reach out to [email protected]

About Hotspotty

Hotspotty is a turnkey software platform to manage the entire lifecycle of deploying and operating decentralized infrastructure networks. Hotspotty's mission is to empower anyone to earn passive income by participating in the exciting DePIN space. Learn more at https://hotspotty.net/.

About DIMO

DIMO is a connected vehicle platform built for drivers and developers. Connect your car and use the DIMO marketplace to get access to better services that save you time and money or add new features to your vehicle.DIMO’s mission is to increase freedom of movement, and give people greater mobility options. Learn more at www.dimo.zone or download the DIMO Mobile App.

Cars are complicated, and there could be some instances where vehicles that we expect to be compatible simply won’t work. Our support team ([email protected]) is prepared for troubleshooting and testing, and we’ll happily work with you if you run into issues connecting your car.

If you’ve been waiting for support to expand, we’re glad you have stuck with us and we’re excited to offer you a discount to get started with DIMO:

For cars made between 2008-2011, the vast majority of them have never been connected to the internet. DIMO allows you to bring your car into this decade. 91% of new vehicles sold in the US in 2020 were connected to the internet in some form, and that number is growing quickly to 100%. From capable vehicle apps that show vehicle data and allow you to control your car, to the ability to track and manage ownership virtually, connected cars' capabilities are growing exponentially.

Connected car features shouldn’t be limited to just new cars, and we are proud of the fact that we can now usher in the future of vehicle ownership to even more vehicles.

Want make sure your older car will work? If you head to explorer.dimo.zone and look up your car, you can see if any are already connected, like in the image below. This means we do support your vehicle! If yours would be the first of your make, model, and year, there’s a chance we’ll need to do some testing to make the connection smooth, but again, our support team can help make things work.

Why should I connect my vehicle?

With a recent app update packed with new features, there has never been a better time to connect your daily driver, or your entire fleet. DIMO allows you to have all your car's data in one place, making maintenance, refinancing, lowering monthly payments, and other cost-saving tasks as easy as possible. With the DIMO Marketplace, you're able to access similar services that you're paying for today at a discount, earning $DIMO rewards for every purchase.

Haven’t been following along with the game changing benefits DIMO offers? Here’s a quick refresh to get you caught up.

A new look to $DIMO Rewards

Users earn DIMO rewards three ways: baseline rewards for connecting their car, marketplace rewards with each marketplace transaction, and referral rewards when you refer a friend.

In the app, you'll be able to see a detailed breakdown of your earnings in two sections: “Your earnings” and “Network earnings”.

In Your Earnings, you'll see a breakdown of your $DIMO earnings by vehicle, including your streak and integration method. Additionally, this section will display earnings from marketplace partners.

The Network section provides overall DIMO Network statistics like cars connected, total miles driven, and all-time baseline $DIMO distributed. This enables users to gain insights into their rewards relative to the growth of the DIMO Network.

Vehicle Valuation

DIMO gives some power back to drivers with our vehicle valuation feature: real-time resale values through several sources all in the palm of your hand. For most car owners, deciding when to resell a car usually involves scrolling endlessly each week through several different sources, or simply picking the best low effort offer available. With DIMO, you’ll have these sources tracked for you, allowing you to figure out when and how you’d like to sell.

Here’s the breakdown of what you’ll see in the DIMO mobile app:

Retail — What a dealership expects to sell your vehicle for

Trade-In — What you can expect to receive from a dealership after an appraisal

Instant Offer(s) — What a vehicle-purchasing site is willing to offer you for your vehicle site unseen with limited information

The DIMO Marketplace

The new Market tab, and it’s the most important part of DIMO. The DIMO Marketplace showcases cost-saving services, vehicle utilities, and will come to include games and add-ons that make owning a connected vehicle more rewarding and fun. When using these services, drivers earn $DIMO rewards.

Whether you’re registering your vehicle, booking maintenance, refinancing, enrolling in a quest, turning on a WiFi hotspot, or selling your car, you’ll find a partner or utility in the DIMO Market tab. When you transact in the DIMO marketplace you exchange data with the service provider you’re working with, leading to more efficient and valuable transactions. Data is the driving force.

At the moment, third-party Marketplace partners are all US-based. There will be DIMO Mobile app add-ons available globally in the near future, and we’re working to bring international partners to the DIMO Mobile app so that every driver has access to these cost-saving or car-enhancing services.

Here are a few of our favorites that you can use today:

YourMechanic - Have your vehicle maintained at your home or office by a mobile mechanic

Caribou - Take control of your car’s finances

LeaseEnd - Save money when you refinance or break your lease

Tenet - Lower your EV monthly payments with stacked tax credits and refinancing assistance

Vehicle Genius (join 400+ users on the waitlist) - A simple subscription that saves you time and money on your vehicle ownership spend

Well you can do that with DIMO, a decentralized user-governed protocol. As a DIMO user, you can vote on any proposal that materially impacts the relationship between the user and the products in the DIMO ecosystem. While much of the work to create those proposals has been carried out by the DIMO Foundation, any person or group with a sufficient number of tokens between them can submit one for voting. For now, sit back and read a quick summary of the changes that are up for vote, starting today!

Removing the marketplace “dollar peg” and making the marketplace pay in $DIMO

If you have not yet been deep in DIMO tokenomics, this may sound unfamiliar or strange. Let’s start with the first question you’re probably thinking: Dollar peg?

DIMO tokenomics have never attempted to peg $DIMO to the value of $1 in the market. However, before the token was available on the open market and had a readily available price, the DIMO Foundation needed a way to calculate the amount $DIMO that would be required when a 3rd party wanted to pay for data on the DIMO network. A $1 “peg” made things simple, but since the token now has a price, that peg for marketplace transactions is useless.

The introduction to DIP-3 amendment 1 summarizes it well:

This amendment removes the peg for converting fiat or other crypto into $DIMO when marketplace rewards are generated for users. If passed, the DIMO Foundation would 1) provide this service by converting using the market price for $DIMO as determined by popular price oracles and 2) would be able to use its best judgment to limit or deny this service, or to use a higher price for $DIMO if, for example, it determines there isn't sufficient actual volume or genuine price discovery to give legitimacy to the market price.

What’s the outcome? Companies that show up to consume DIMO user data, either in bulk or to purchase one user’s data at a time in transactions, must pay in $DIMO to consume that data. There are a variety of ways this can happen, and in many cases, companies like Digital Infrastructure Inc. will help to abstract away the token requirement so that companies building on DIMO can avoid the complexity of holding tokens in custody, balance sheets, etc.

If you’ve been waiting to understand more fully how the demand for the token is created, this is an important first step. Future writing will dive into how this works in more detail as well. The important thing is, there is a simple model for developers and businesses to utilize the $DIMO token in paying for data access.

Wait, since when are there amendments?

If you have been involved with the governance process of other open source projects, you may be used to the idea of “improvement proposals,” but new to the idea of amendments. These are relatively new, and in fact one of the proposals up for vote allows the community to govern the project in this way.

DIP-1 amendment 1 actually edits the governance rules to allow amendments, which makes for a much simpler and easier governance process.

Referrals are returning!

One of the brand new proposals on the docket involves bringing back one of the top requested features: referrals. DIMO had a referral program in early 2022, but it was deprecated in favor of eventually re-building it on-chain so that it could be more directly linked to the rest of the rewards infrastructure.

DIP-7 creates a referral program that gives 50 $DIMO to a user each time they refer other users, and gives 50 $DIMO to the user that gets referred. If passed, the DIMO Mobile team will build referrals into the app in the next 1-2 months. If you’ve been waiting to refer your friends and family or just strangers on the internet, the milestone is near!

Market Making and Sellable Tokens

Continuing to fund the development of the DIMO protocol requires a multi-sided strategy to bring income into the DIMO Foundation. When you couple trading activities — not by the Foundation itself but by third parties and the free market — and the ability to sell tokens from the treasury, the Foundation can generate income using its supply.

Tokens were already earmarked for market making in DIP-6, but in DIP-6 amendment 1 some of those tokens are being repurposed to make them available for the foundation to sell them instead. It’s a relatively small percentage of the treasury, but the foundation will continue to use all the tools it can to ensure the longevity of DIMO.

Staking vs. Bonding

Perhaps the most minor of the proposals as it is a semantic change is DIP-4 & 5 amendment 1. It relabels the term "staking" to "bonding" when describing how ecosystem partners lock their tokens in order to receive a license. After many, many discussions with community members, we learned that "staking" was a confusing term.

The Motivation section of the amendment should be clear to most people:

Many are confused by the term "staking" as used in DIP-4 and DIP-5. "Staking" in the context of blockchain projects usually refers to an activity whereby users lock up tokens for the purposes of earning a yield.

In DIP-4 and DIP-5, "staking" refers to hardware manufacturers, node operators, and client publishers putting up tokens as a security deposit as a condition of receiving a license. There is no yield for staking.

Your participation is encouraged

If you’ve already delegated your tokens to yourself, or had others delegate to you, you can head to Snapshot and vote now!

If you haven’t, it’s unfortunately too late to vote in this round, but we encourage you to do so now so you’re ready for the next proposal.

Our goal is to bring this value — the value of data ownership and connectivity — to every car in the world. The path to mass adoption is just as important as the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re driving change by providing must-have benefits instead of focusing solely on trading $DIMO rewards for car data.

Read more about DIMO Mobile’s v1.8 update, and share with your network to spread the word.

Introducing: The DIMO Marketplace

The Rewards tab is now the Market tab, and it’s the most important part of DIMO. The DIMO Marketplace showcases cost-saving services, vehicle utilities, and will come to include games and add-ons that make owning a connected vehicle more rewarding and fun. When using these services, drivers earn DIMO rewards.

Whether you’re registering your vehicle, booking maintenance, refinancing, enrolling in a quest, turning on a WiFi hotspot, or selling your car, you’ll find a partner or utility in the DIMO Market tab. When you transact in the DIMO marketplace you exchange data with the service provider you’re working with, leading to more efficient and valuable transactions. Data is the driving force.

At the moment, third-party Marketplace partners are all US-based. There will be DIMO Mobile app add-ons available globally in the near future, and we’re working to bring international partners to the DIMO Mobile app so that every driver has access to these cost-saving or car-enhancing services.

As we have opened this up in small doses to users in the last few months, many are already taking advantage of powerful services listed on the marketplace, saving thousands of dollars on everything from monthly payments to maintenance and earning $DIMO for every transaction.

Here are a few of our favorites that you can use today:

YourMechanic - Have your vehicle maintained at your home or office by a mobile mechanic

Caribou - Take control of your car’s finances

LeaseEnd - Save money when you refinance or break your lease

Tenet - Lower your EV monthly payments with stacked tax credits and refinancing assistance

Vehicle Genius (join 400+ users on the waitlist) - A simple subscription that saves you time and money on your vehicle ownership spend

The DIMO marketplace is also your key to bringing your friends and family to DIMO. By the end of 2023, the DIMO community will have access to a global marketplace of 100s of services that allow you to utilize your data, save time and money, and earn $DIMO tokens for the money you already spend on your car. There’s never been a better reason to share a product.

$DIMO Rewards Visualization

Since most users will earn most of their rewards through marketplace services, this is also the home of your Rewards data, and the rewards system has been completely refreshed. Now, you'll be able to see a detailed breakdown of your earnings in two new sections: “Your earnings” and “Network earnings”.

In Your Earnings, you'll see a breakdown of your $DIMO earnings by vehicle, including your streak and integration method. Additionally, this section will display earnings from marketplace partners.

The Network section provides overall DIMO Network statistics like cars connected, total miles driven, and all-time baseline $DIMO distributed. This enables users to gain insights into their rewards relative to the growth of the DIMO Network.

We’ve also updated the rewards line graph visualization and are introducing a new earning historical breakdown. The earnings history has been broken down into four categories: baseline, referrals, marketplace, and other so that you can see where your earnings are coming from.

For most users, the marketplace earnings will become the best way to earn DIMO. The new interface keeps your earnings organized, making it easier for you to track your progress with all the ways you can earn $DIMO rewards.

Making DIMO more attractive to all drivers

Using your data in the marketplace to save time and money shouldn’t be limited to the tech savvy. Our top priority is making DIMO Mobile as easy to use as possible. We’re continuing to improve the onboarding experience and creating seamless web3 features that will feel like any other mobile app whether you’re a blockchain pro, or a retired grandfather who spends his time scrolling through Facebook.

On top of these big updates and new features, the app has undergone several bug fixes, updated error screens, and copy updates to ensure a smooth transition into vehicle data ownership.

Improved Onboarding

Previously, users have had to select their make, model, and year when adding their car to DIMO. The v1.8 update to DIMO Mobile gets rid of that problem, allowing the DIMO AutoPi to automatically read your vehicle’s VIN and use the response to set the car data, or as we call it, the “device definition.”

This results in a much smoother onboarding flow and allows us to easily add more vehicles supported by DIMO without any future app updates.

With this update, we’re expanding support for vehicles to 2008 and newer from 2012 and newer! We expect to see some bugs along the way for VINs that we can’t read, but as usual, we have a process in place to come back and read those VINs.

Am I earning? Awaiting Data? What’s this all mean?

We’ve heard and seen confusion from users about whether or not their vehicle is properly onboarded, connected, or whether or not it’s qualified to earn. These are important “states” that users should not have to think hard about.

In 1.8, we’ve simplified vehicle states. Now you’ll see: qualified, needs to drive, and not connected. As a user, you should easily be able to understand whether your car is in good standing, streaming data, or if there are further actions to take.

In-app Shop

If you’ve ever wanted to browse the DIMO Shop in the app, now you can! Within the Market tab, you’ll find a new shop has been added to the app, allowing users to purchase DIMO devices, swag, and other great products for your vehicle. This section displays DIMO Hardware and other accessories and links out to respective product pages.

This app update means a lot to the DIMO core team, and it should to the community as well. The Marketplace — where users can save time and money, extend their car’s capabilities, and earn rewards — is one of the final major pieces that is now finally going live to the public. With hundreds of providers to be onboarded this year, every driver will find something of value in the DIMO Marketplace soon. Join us for the journey.

1. Similar to the battery in your cell phone, the battery in an electric vehicle is happy when it’s between 20% and 80% charged. 

2. Frequent charging on level 3 chargers degrade the life of the battery over a long term period.

3. Generally the battery will last longer if the average depth of discharge is lower. Discharging your battery fully from 100%→ 1% and back to 100% is harmful.

How can DIMO use car data to calculate a Battery Health Score?

Using data from level 3 charging, undercharging,  to build a score of how well a driver is taking care of their electric vehicle battery. In the future, we will add insight into the expected lifetime of the battery by counting charging cycles and mileage.

By assigning weights to these metrics based on their importance, we're able to construct a 100 point scale to determine an EV battery's health.

Level 3 charging frequency = 20% weight

Time in undercharged range = 20% weight

Time in overcharged range = 30% weight

Average Depth of Discharge = 30% weight

Breaking down DIMO data from a test driver

This driver keeps their battery in the “Happy Battery Zone” for about 70% of their driving. They are undercharged 14.15% of driving and overcharged 15.51% of driving. They also frequently use a level 3 (aka supercharger), for about 86.22% of their total charging, which lowered the Battery Health Score immensely.

Using DIMO data to visualize battery health

As a result of this charging and driving behavior, this driver’s battery health score would be 49.63%, mostly based on the fast charging and the high average depth of discharge. For comparison, the average depth of discharge is 50.4%, the average amount of level 3 charging is 24.7%, and average battery health score is 74%.

With DIMO visualizations, this driver is able to see the full breakdown of why their score is so low, and learn what they can do to improve it.

Battery Scores predict degradation and lifespan of your EV battery

Battery degradation is extremely hard to predict and analyze as it is dependent on a multitude of factors. These include weather, level of aggressive driving style, charger type used, charging frequency, etc. While calculating battery scores won’t allow users to know exactly how much their battery is degrading, it can help predict degradation trends and inform EV drivers how to better treat their batteries to ensure minimal degradation.

Battery health metrics could make or break the value of an EV on the market.

The batteries are the most expensive component of an electric vehicle. So where a vehicle may show 50k miles on the odometer, that will not take into consideration how the battery has been treated in that time. A battery in a vehicle charged from level 1 or 2 chargers and kept between 20% and 80% state of charge will have a longer usable life than batteries treated differently.

As with gas engines, batteries will experience some degradation regardless of driver behavior, but the bottom line is this: how your battery is treated affects the vehicle’s life and under normal operating conditions you can get hundreds of thousands of miles without issues.

Fast charging can be detected based on the vehicle data collected. The specific impact of charging with a level 3 charger will vary by vehicle (e.g. battery size, weather, etc.) but overall level 3 charging decreases the life of a battery when compared to level two or level one charging.

We can use the percentage of driving taking place outside the “happy battery zone” and the percentage of charging that takes place at level 3 chargers to grade how DIMO users are treating their batteries.

Interesting findings from DIMO user battery scores

• There are some heavy supercharger users: 5% of drivers (53 out of 1,145) charge more than 90% of their miles added from level three chargers.

• Not surprisingly, these drivers typically have low scores: The 141 vehicles with scores under 65% add an average of 79.83% of their miles from level three charges and have an average depth of discharge of about 61.91% (while they drive undercharged for only about 6.78% of their miles and overcharged for about 13.77% of their miles).

• Scores are more impacted by supercharging and average depth of discharge vs undercharged or overcharged.

• Top scoring batteries are rarely supercharged: The 161 vehicles with the highest scores (over 82%) have an average of 2.76% of their miles added from supercharging and the global average for miles added from supercharging is about 24.71%. Further, these vehicles with the highest scores have an average depth of discharge of about 39.63%, where the global average is 50.42%.

Over time we plan to integrate more variables - things like climate around the vehicle and software updates can provide a more accurate picture of battery health and vehicle valuation can be given to DIMO users. 

Further Reading

The DIMO Insights team has also explored scoring ICE vehicle drivers for compatibility with electric vehicles, and an expected amount of their normal driving behavior would be satisfied by only level one or level two charging only at home. Drivers could get an estimate of how much level three charging might be necessary with their driving patterns in advance of an electric vehicle purchase.

• Between January 19, 2022 and November 4, 2022, DIMO connected Teslas have charged for a combined 86 years

• These drivers have driven farthest on level 2 charging, yet spent the most amount of time charging on level 1.

As DIMO scales, localizing support for the project further is key. We’re taking a step in that direction with our first international Authorized Reseller, FreshMiners.

Based in the Netherlands, FreshMiners was founded with the goal of broadening accessibility to crypto for all and educating users about how crypto can embrace innovation and sustainability. The company has brought crypto mining hardware to users across Europe, and is expanding its impact now to crypto use cases like DIMO, which go beyond just currencies.

“FreshMiners has already proven to be a great partner,” said COO of Digital Infrastructure Inc., Alex Rawitz. “Not only are they helping to sell devices locally, but they understand the full vision of DIMO: create an ecosystem that rewards drivers for using automotive apps and services built on DIMO.”

"For us, as a supplier of various IoT devices, DIMO is a great product. Not only do we support the vision 100%, but we also see great interest in the market," says Wilko van Dorresteijn, Managing Director FreshMiners.

If you’re looking to purchase a DIMO device in the Netherlands or Belgium, we highly recommend visiting the FreshMiners site. You’ll find a knowledgeable team that can help onboard you, and help you onboard your friends and family to a web3 product that they might not even know is a web3 product.

DIMO Reseller Program

Are you interested in becoming a reseller? DIMO works with companies and individuals who run relevant ecommerce sites or provide automotive or fleet services. DIMO is selective in the partners it chooses to work with, but we’d like to hear from you. Fill out this form to apply.

This feature will bring many more users and vehicles into the DIMO Ecosystem, and paired alongside the in-app wallet powered by web3Auth, it will introduce people to web3 products in the best way for mass adoption: without them realizing the great product their using touches the blockchain.

A DIMO user can now have a friend or family member download DIMO Mobile, create an in-app wallet (no seed phrase knowledge required) and track another user’s car. Data sharing is already available, and as more functionality is built, both users will be able to interact with the DIMO marketplace, making for a better car ownership experience.

Something else cool for the crypto people: the permissions for the vehicle are built on-chain as roles on the Vehicle ID NFT. If you’re interested in how that works, this is the article for you.

Vehicle sharing privileges: What exists today?

Currently there are four permissions. More can always be added in the future. Today users can designate another user to:

• View their car’s data such as tire pressure, oil life, and fuel level

• Use commands such as lock/unlock, and (trunk/frunk for Teslas)

• View the vehicle’s location

The diagram below shows how the owner of a particular Vehicle ID can allow other individuals (based on their Ethereum address) to view certain permissions. The permissions are built into the existing DIMO Vehicle ID contract. You can view an example transaction of granting privileges here.

The smart contract allows you to grant 1 or many privileges at the same time.(setPrivileges) Mostly, we expect users to grant more than 1 at once.

Sharing your car with a contract

Today the use-case is focused on granting other people access to your vehicle since the primary way users interact with DIMO at the moment is via the consumer-focused DIMO Mobile app. However, leveraging the composability of the blockchain, the 0x address that you grant could also be a smart contract.

As an example, in the future there could be a special privilege to manage renting out the vehicle that you could grant to a rental contract or another application’s address. We’re excited to see someone build a car rental smart contract at some point!

How are privileges defined?

Crucially, the Vehicle ID smart contract is upgradeable and allows for the creation of new privileges per a governance vote of DIMO token holders.

Example Transaction

In a transaction, the user submits their vehicle tokenID, then the privilege ID they wish to grant along with an expiration time. Right now, the expiration time is set to 1 year by the DIMO Mobile app, but eventually this will be customizable.

FAQs

Any maximum number of people you can share with? 

Nope! Share your vehicle data as much as you'd like

Can I revoke sharing permissions?

Of course.

Is there any way that doing this could accidentally give away my vehicleID? 

Ownership of the VehicleID is not a privilege, so this is not feasible in this transaction.

No! Come on down and connect your gas-powered car to DIMO! We accept vehicles of all shapes and sizes. We’ve onboarded everything from Porsches, to street sweepers, to 18 wheelers.

Not every vehicle will have the same amount of data available. Every car speaks its own language, and we’re working endlessly to translate them all.

The compatibility requirements as of February 22, 2023 are as follows:

• The car must be from 2012 or newer (this will change in the coming months)

• Currently supported locations are: US, Canada, EU, UK, Norway, and Switzerland.

Do I need hardware to connect?

Depends on your make and model! For the vast majority of cars, a hardware connection is required. However, software connections, when available, give you a free and easy way to connect to the DIMO Network.

Teslas can connect for free! Just download the app, and follow the instructions.

Besides Tesla, the vast majority of cars (EVs and gas powered) require a hardware connection. However, there are some exceptions!

If your car has an app associated with it (and you’re subscribed to that app), you may qualify for a free connection to DIMO! For more information, click here to see if your car is compatible, and download the app to get started.

If you’re having problems connecting one way or another, reach out to [email protected] or message us on Discord

Can I put DIMO Hardware in a friend’s car?

Yes! We have a more advanced set of features coming that will allow you to set up your family and friends and define roles and rewards, but for now, you can set up the car under your account and share your car with them.

These instructions explain how to do it.

What wallet should I use?

New to crypto? Definitely use our In-app wallet. Super easy to get started. DIMO also seamlessly supports Metamask and Rainbow, which give you more functionality.

Can I use the in-app wallet if I already linked a Metamask wallet?

No, unfortunately not. This may be a feature we build out in the future.

How do I see my tokens from in-app wallet?

You will be able to view your total $DIMO tokens by looking at your Rewards tab. Here's how to access your private key if you'd like to transfer your tokens to a 3rd party wallet.

Why does the DIMO in-app wallet have limited functionality?

We designed the DIMO in app wallet for users to have a seamless experience connecting their vehicles to DIMO. In doing so we have limited the functionality of this wallet to only signing transactions inside of our mobile app and receiving their rewards for participating in the network. 

If you would like to have the functionality of a “normal” wallet, you can export the Private Key for your in-app address into an external wallet. Once this has been completed, you are free to use this address in any way that you see fit.

In year one, DIMO has laid the foundation: rolling out a best in class mobile app, building a community of thousands of drivers and fleets. Now it’s time to start scaling up.

DIMO is designed to incorporate any product or service that brings value to users.

Today DIMO is taking a big step towards realizing that vision - announcing the roadmap for the open hardware ecosystem and developer tools that make connecting to DIMO easier than ever:

• View DIMO’s open hardware specifications - designed to allow any OEM to securely pair a device using the mobile app and start sending data to the DIMO network.

• Learn about the device integration process - a clear pathway for automakers, tier 1 suppliers, and other aftermarket device makers to integrate with DIMO, offering their customers more choice and functionality.

• Apply to become a licensed distributor - partner with DIMO to expand our distribution across the globe

• Discover resources for developers - build useful apps on the DIMO platform for every vehicle

• Coming soon - grants funded by the DIMO Foundation: supporting next-generation hardware options

What is a DIMO OEM License?

To receive a license, hardware original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) must stake 100,000 $DIMO, submit test devices, and verify their performance with a group of alpha users.

A license also allows (but does not require) OEMs to use distribution through shop.dimo.zone; DIMO branding and support channels, and resources from the DIMO hardware team to test.

The first license & device registrations are live

AutoPi.io, the producer of the original DIMO Data Miner, is the first OEM with a DIMO manufacturer license. The 12,800 devices produced to date have all been registered on-chain, with a 25 $DIMO deposit.

As each device stays connected to the network, up to 10 $DIMO goes to the DIMO Foundation and up to 15 $DIMO can flow back to AutoPi.eth as devices stay connected over time.

Here’s the process for how new new licenses will be granted:

1. OEMs apply to the foundation - providing background on their product and plans to build DIMO-compatible devices.

2. OEMs can review the DIMO open hardware spec - providing prototypes and designs to the DIMO foundation hardware team.

3. After necessary integration work, prototype units are produced and can be tested with the DIMO platform and apps. Generally this is limited to <500 units.

4. On-chain licenses can be purchased from the DIMO foundation when provisioning devices. This step can also be done in pre-production.

5. OEMs can use DIMO distributors to pre-sell and deliver units globally when their production devices are ready.

Introducing: JDI - DIMO's Second Hardware OEM

JDI (via their subsidiary Hashdog) is the second OEM to acquire a DIMO OEM license, and there are 2 more planned for this year with new regional & use-case support.

There will be additional announcements about this partnership as information about the first DIMO x JDI devices as they become available throughout the testing and integration process. 

If you’d like to become a DIMO distributor, fill out this form.

The “Why” Behind It All

There are three big reasons for opening the ecosystem to new hardware manufacturers:

1. Customer Choice

2. Manufacturing Capacity

3. Decentralization and Resilience

Customer Choice: Providing users with more options that offer varying price points and features.

There is no “right way” for a driver to use DIMO. Some users are gear-heads, looking to hack their own cars and develop applications that they can share with the world. Others are drivers looking to store their data for the practical applications where it will come in handy like maintenance, insurance, vehicle commerce, and more. Different applications will need different data, so the choice of DIMO hardware might vary.

To that end, the new design specs that are going to be released cover a wide range of user applications from everyday drivers getting around to professionals and fleet owners.

There will be lightweight designs that tether to a phone for cell connectivity and use low-power networks like Helium for small data transfer use cases, hardened versions for industrial applications, and more compute-heavy versions for video and OpenPilot support.

Manufacturing Capacity: More manufacturers means the total amount of hardware available to DIMO users is going to increase over time.

Along with the new hardware options will come more manufacturers. The DIMO Foundation hardware team is working to onboard several manufacturers with experience building connected vehicle hardware at a huge scale.

Decentralization and Resilience: To make sure DIMO is built to last for decades. 

This is the key to having partners that can serve markets big and small, local and global, and adapt to market forces.

You may have heard the buzzword “decentralization,” but what matters to DIMO users is increased choice and resiliency. More manufacturers means greater consumer choice and scaling potential, and it ensures that the success of the project will not rely on a single entity.

The Road Ahead

DIMO has begun working with OEMs, and have made reference designs available already to two separate partners.

Our expectation is that the official announcement for the next devices will come in April of 2023, at which point Alpha Units can be distributed to early testers.

The DIMO core team will spend a few months onboarding these manufacturers with the goal of seeing next-generation hardware arriving with DIMO customers in 4Q 2023. Updates on the progress will come at least monthly with each OEM to keep the community updated.

Get Involved - Bring DIMO to the World

If you work at an organization that has the manufacturing and software expertise to make DIMO hardware devices, DIMO wants to hear from you! Indicate your early interest here.

DIMO is also working with hardware distributors, fleet services providers, car dealers and marketplaces, and other groups that want to bring DIMO to their local market.

• Check out resources for distributors here

• Reach out here if you’d like to get involved as a DIMO distributor.

• Apply here to become an affiliate.

Our mission is to bring new applications, cost saving services, and the best connected vehicle experience to the world. Millions are getting a taste for what it means to have a “connected car” and so far, it isn’t great: clunky apps from automakers, software that won’t update on an incline, and user data sold off to dozens of companies. DIMO is here to fix this.

DIMO runs on open source blockchain technology, and part of connecting a car is to create a digital identity for the vehicle. We’re early to crypto, so for early adopters, those steps have been clunky. Crypto is generally more of a hinderance than an aid to user adoption.

But it doesn’t have to be. We’ve been hard at work for the month of January on two big features that will help DIMO take a massive step in the natural progression of mass adoption. The universally loved DIMO UI is about to get easier to use, share, and build with.

Introducing the DIMO In-App Wallet (BETA)

For the ~6,000 cars connected to the platform, each user had to go through a complex pairing process using a non-custodial wallet like Rainbow or Metamask and mediated by Wallet Connect. It’s been clunky, unintuitive, and prone to breaking down.

Today, we’re introducing an in-app wallet that simplifies the onboarding process immensely, taking out several steps in the onboarding process all together. A user will now be able to go through the entire process without leaving the app.

In other words, we’ve shortened up a lengthy process into 4 quick steps:

     1. Download DIMO Mobile

     2. Connect your DIMO Hardware

     3. Create your in-app wallet

     4. Connect your car

A simple change that will cut down onboarding times drastically, and result in thousands of first time crypto users eager to get started. Users will still have the option to pair with Rainbow or Metamask if they’d like.

With this step, you can now easily onboard your non-crypto friends and family. It's never been easier to get them started in crypto, and in fact, they don't even have to think about crypto at all. We're using the same blockchain (Polygon) as Starbucks' rewards program - DIMO rewards are an airline reward point for your car.

More users transacting on the platform = stronger DIMO Network.

Introducing Vehicle Sharing (BETA)

Users will soon be able to share their car on DIMO Mobile to any other DIMO Mobile user. This is perfect for family members to share a view of their car or cars, small fleets looking to share vehicle data internally, and even some businesses getting started on DIMO.

We’re looking forward to getting DIMO in the hands of more users eager to save money on the platform.

By simply selecting the appropriate level of data access and pulling up an in-app QR code, any DIMO user will be able to share their car with a quick QR code scan.

As we’re working through the beta, there will be a couple limitations to achieving a completely seamless process. Currently, a wallet (in-app or 3rd party) with $MATIC is required to accept the share.

So what are the use cases for this?

Sharing Fleets with Business Partners

Having multiple eyes on your connected fleet should essentially be a requirement.

Whether you’re managing a Turo fleet out of your driveway, dozens of vans making trips back and forth to multiple warehouses, or even an organized race across the country, sharing your vehicle data and location across multiple contacts can completely change how you run your business.

Let’s say you own a delivery company with 20+ vehicles making dozens of stops a day, all with jam packed schedules. Having a vehicle in the shop during a peak delivery period could cost you revenue and potentially result in a loss of a customer.

Know when your vehicle will break down before it happens, where your vehicles are at all times, and learn how you could save thousands when you’re ready to sell.

To learn more about fleets, and access a bulk discount on DIMO Hardware for your fleet, read our most recent fleets write up or contact us at [email protected].

Sharing with Family and Friends

We’ve already seen a massive amount of DIMO users report how having access to DIMO data has saved their family hundreds, if not thousands at the mechanic. Granting your family access to your vehicle's data makes saving that much easier.

One of the main ways users are saving at the mechanic is on their car battery. Mechanics use time as an indicator to recommend maintenance; batteries are the most popular upsell.

Anyone who lives in a city, whether they park on public street parking or in a large garage, will benefit from using DIMO to share their car’s location with their close relatives.

Sure, you could use an Apple Airtag for location tracking (and 10 separate apps and plugins for other features). Or you could use DIMO, which acts as a one stop shop, combining everything you’d ever need for your car all in one place.

Error codes are under development too. Soon, you’ll be able to share these with your mechanic, and counter any repair requests before you waste thousands on unnecessary servicing.

Sharing with New Owners

If you’re looking to privately sell your car, using DIMO as a way to confidently talk through your car’s health and history turns you into a confident and educated seller. By allowing the prospective owner to see any error codes, maintenance issues, and car history, you're able to give yourself a great pitch with the confidence of a part-time mechanic.

Once you’re ready to sell, transfer ownership to the new owner and complete the sale.

With the advent of Helium and the decentralized IoT network created through that project, it became clear that the principles embedded in the crypto world - decentralization, privacy, user-ownership - can apply to many other types of infrastructure, even that of our built environment.

What started in telecom is now touching other massive industries. Token Incentivized Physical Infrastructure Networks (TIPIN) are expanding to mapping, weather, energy, mobility, and more.

These projects are the key to bringing crypto and web3 tech to mainstream consumers. The internet did not change the world because it created new ways for users to bank and pay — it changed the way people (and actually machines) do everything. The story will replay in web3: most people will actually experience web3 tech in crypto use cases that did not exist in the last decade.

This vision is why we’re partnering with Layer3 and alongside one of the most exciting projects in the space, React. Layer3 works to educate users about novel technology and onboard them into the web3 world. With DIMO and React, those users can get their first experiment in web3 technology that can help them save money and time or explore novel uses for their mobility and energy data.

Things kickoff next week. DIMO cofounder Alex Rawitz joins Jason Badeaux (Co-Founder of React), and Mike Zajko (Co-Founder of Lattice) on Twitter Spaces to share more about this project: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1...

Over the last year we've primarily focused on bringing DIMO to consumers. Most households in the US have at least two cars, and from the get-go we built the app to support multiple vehicles.

A few months ago we started quietly bringing fleets on to DIMO to start learning about their needs and guiding the roadmap towards features those fleet owners and operators would want.

Today, we're opening up the gates to more fleets. We have some exciting sharing and permissions features on the horizon. We have team ready to support fleet deployments all across our supported markets. We have new pricing and payment options for bulk orders.

Read more about connecting your family, commercial business*, or rental fleet.

Fleet Pricing

If you have a fleet with vehicles that aren’t currently supported by DIMO, please reach out to [email protected] to work with us on connecting your entire fleet.

Commercial Fleets on DIMO

Commercial fleets, big or small, practically require a health/location monitoring device like DIMO. Every commercial fleet owner will tell you about the struggles of keeping up with maintenance, and the location of their vehicles. Without technology, it’s almost impossible to avoid overspending (or underspending) at the mechanic.

This makes tracking a fleet of the utmost importance. Other fleet management systems require an expensive monthly subscription, and of course, no other product on the market allows you to earn crypto rewards. This is what sets DIMO apart from the competition.

It’s also important to note, that with some help getting set up, any commercial fleet can have DIMO installed along with any other fleet management OBD2 plugin. Reach out to [email protected] if you have a specific inquiry.

These subscription savings coupled with the $DIMO rewards commercial fleets earn once they connect their vehicles makes DIMO a no brainer for any commercial fleet.

Turo Rental Fleets

Connecting a Turo rental fleet to DIMO allows Turo hosts the ability to track all their vehicles’ location, driving telematics, and more in one easy to use app.

Turo rental vehicles often require more maintenance than the average vehicle due to the nature of their usage. With DIMO, you’re able to see what maintenance is required for every car you own in real-time, regardless if they’re not currently running. The DIMO Ecosystem provides powerful cost saving resources, like Vehicle Genius which connects you with an expert in fleet management.

Of course, on top of all that, it’s time to get your fleet to earn $DIMO passively, throughout the year.

Connecting Family and Friends

Having multiple cars or a commercial fleet is not a requirement to take advantage of DIMO benefits. In fact, the most cost-effective way to maximize the value of DIMO may be helping friends and family connect and encouraging them to use DIMO's cost-saving ecosystem partners for their vehicle spend.

By doing this, a person who manages their friends/family’s DIMO connection not only earns rewards for connecting their vehicles, but also for their ecosystem spend. This is a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Coming (very) Soon: Connect and Share

What’s more important than connecting a vehicle? Making sure that the right people have access to the data from it. Over the next few months we’ll be heavily investing in the roles and permissions that users can create and manage on DIMO, meaning you can set up roles like driver, manager, maintenance, owner, and more, which will make managing your fleet easier than ever.

New features are coming this week that will make it even easier for anyone to create a DIMO account and initiate data-sharing between car managers and others. This makes DIMO the perfect solution for fleet owners looking to maximize their earnings. It’s the first step on the road to open fleet management tools.

^{*DIMO currently only supports vehicles 2012 or newer, however in the next couple months, we’re expanding to older vehicles, and testing compatibility with a multitude of large commercial vehicles.}

View the $DIMO Token Github

View the DIMO Identity Github

View DIMO’s Shared Github

Open sourcing this code is a big step towards achieving this goal. It allows anyone to review, contribute to, and build on top of our codebase. This helps to ensure the security and stability of the network while also fostering a sense of community ownership.

Interested in building on DIMO? Click here to fill out a quick form

One of the biggest challenges facing decentralized projects is the potential for scams and fraudulent activities. To mitigate this risk, we have chosen to use the Business Source License (BSL) for some of our code. This license allows for the use, modification, and distribution of the licensed software, but it also includes a restriction that prohibits using the software for commercial purposes without a separate commercial license. This license only applies to a few repositories and most will be Apache 2 from the start.

Additionally, all intellectual property associated with the network is assigned to the DIMO Foundation, which represents the token holders. This allows the community to have a say in the direction and governance of the project.

We believe that this approach helps to balance the need for security and decentralization. After 3 years, the code will be transitioned to the Apache License, further promoting open-source development and community engagement.

We understand that open sourcing our code is just the first step in building a truly decentralized network. We look forward to working with the community to continue improving and evolving the DIMO Network and more importantly, building applications on DIMO. If you’re interested in building an application on DIMO, please fill out this interest form for our soon to be launched Developer Program.

As always, we welcome and appreciate feedback from our community. So please feel free to reach out to us with any comments or suggestions. You can do so by joining our Discord server here.

Together, we can build a better decentralized ecosystem for hardware manufacturers, users and applications.

Tyler has been a lifelong tech entrepreneur and investor who has been involved in several exits and IPOs including the recent acquisition of the company he founded in 2018 and served as the CEO, Drivably.

Since exiting to ACV Auctions (Nasdaq: ACVA), Tyler now focuses on helping high-growth technology companies by advising and coaching executive teams, and investing in startups.

“As an avid driver, it’s discouraging how slowly OEMs are innovating on the connected vehicle experience. In a little over a year, the teams working on DIMO have created a much healthier relationship between the car, driver, and 3rd party developers”

“DIMO enables other automotive technology players to build right on top of their robust foundation, data, and vehicle identity layer. I’m excited to help a whole new generation of companies and service providers bring new products to market and improve end consumer and fleet owners lives”

DIMO has existing integrations with Tenet, Caribou, LeaseEnd, and the team behind the project has also launched services like in-app car valuation and Vehicle Genius.

To reach out to the DIMO team and learn more about integrating your existing dealership, app, or service in the platform, email [email protected].

• CalChip, our fulfillment partner for the US and Canada has completed shipping all preorders (devices ordered before November 14th) and is on to shipping new orders.

• Linxdot, our fulfillment partner for the UK has completed shipping all preorders (devices ordered before November 14th) and is on to shipping new orders!

• LoRin Network, our fulfillment partner for the rest of Europe is continuing to ship preorders and is currently on order #4043. There are 126 number of orders remaining

• NOTE: Since there are now 3 fulfillment centers, orders are not necessarily shipped in sequential order. For example, if orders 4001-4100 are in the UK but orders 3999 and 4101 are in the US, you can expect 4101 to ship before 4100. Why? In this hypothetical example, the US warehouse only has two orders to ship, while the UK warehouse has 100 to ship.

Fulfillment History

We’re sharing below the complete fulfillment history. We’ve always aimed to push out as many shipments per month as possible while balancing inventory constraints and any quality control. Those very factors: inventory and quality control, are the reason the last second half of 2022 ranges from 6 devices shipped per month to over 1,200. 

As you can see, European fulfillment started in December after some earlier tests and is now ramping up in January.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing is completely on track and stable. We’re aware of some complaints around the ink on the AutoPi barcodes and are looking to remedy this ASAP.

New Orders

Now that 2 out of 3 warehouses are done with preorders and moving on to new orders, what are lead times? We are still seeing orders take about 6 weeks to fulfill. We’re watching inventory carefully and looking for ways to speed things up. We’re taking the old approach “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” to ramp things up properly after a year of ups and downs.

What does this all mean for network growth?

What does this all mean for connections? Growth is continuing to explode across all connection types. All time vehicles connected is over 5k. About 80% of those connect every single week.

On Device connections alone, there is going to be a huge growth explosion. 1,530 of the 4,124 devices shipped are fully (including the onchain pieces) connected. 441 users who received their devices before Mainnet launch still have to go back and re-pair their devices (if this is you and you need help, please contact [email protected] or book an installation support call here.

Many users are still receiving, unboxing, and installing devices. The Network is poised to rip as more users take the steps to get connected.

Shop Updates

We’re excited to announce the launch of Buy Now Pay Later options on the DIMO Shop. This means you can buy a 1-2 DIMO Devices with a 4-installment payment plan over two months. For one device, that’s less than $100 per payment.

If you’re buying 3 or more devices, you might qualify for longer-term payment plans (3, 6, or 12 months). With the discount code MAINNET, you can save $40/device and with a 12-mo payment plan, you might pay around $100/mo for 3 devices. Note: these plans are up to the full discretion of Shop Pay Installments and their partner Affirm, so neither Digital Infrastructure Inc. nor the DIMO Foundation can guarantee what offers are provided to you with the Installments option.

Buy Now: Shop.DIMO.zone

For more, check out the following links:

Download the app

Buy the device

Discord (our online community)

Leasing a vehicle can be a great option for many people, as it allows them to drive a newer car for a lower monthly payment than if they were to purchase it outright. However, despite the many benefits of leasing, getting a good deal on a leased vehicle can be difficult and often confusing for consumers.

One of the main reasons that it can be difficult to get a good deal on a leased vehicle is the many hidden fees and charges that are often associated with leasing. These can include things like acquisition fees, disposition fees, and even charges for exceeding the mileage limits on the lease. These fees can add hundreds or even thousands of dollars to the overall cost of the lease, making it much more expensive than it appeared at first glance.

Another reason that it can be difficult to get a good deal on a leased vehicle is the lack of transparency in the leasing process. Many consumers find that the advertised monthly payment for a leased vehicle is not what they end up paying in the end, as there are often additional charges and fees that are not included in the advertised price. This can make it difficult for consumers to compare different leases and know if they are getting a good deal or not.

Finally, many consumers find that they are in a difficult position when their lease is up, and they are faced with the decision of whether to purchase the vehicle or turn it in. Even if they have taken great care of the vehicle, they may be charged with extra fees or penalties when they turn it in.

Enter Lease End, DIMO’s Newest Partner

Lease End focuses on helping consumers save money on their leased vehicles by providing expert guidance on how to navigate the often-complicated process of ending a lease. The service helps users navigate the many options at the end of a lease, and can even help facilitate the buyout process and secure financing for the continued ownership of a leased vehicle. By providing this service, Lease End helps consumers to save thousands of dollars on their leased vehicles. Even better? All of this can be done without ever stepping foot into the dealership - and in most cases, even the DMV, saving users several hours. Lease End handles the entire end of lease transaction from beginning to end - including registration and titling.

$DIMO Tokens Earned

The best part? DIMO users will earn $DIMO tokens for successfully transacting on a lease through with Lease End, allowing users to truly maximize the value of their vehicle. In time, DIMO will be further integrating DIMO data into Lease End, allowing their lending partners more insight into DIMO-connected vehicles’ health, and ensuring DIMO users receive the lowest interest rates possible when refinancing a leased vehicle.

Learn more about this partnership at a free virtual community event hosted by DIMO, where you’ll have a chance to talk to the Lease End team about their offerings! Sign up for the event here: https://lu.ma/xhnqgacy

DIMO is designed to be a global, reliable, secure, and open base layer for connected devices. The only way to achieve these goals is to build DIMO as a platform where control is vested in a diverse collection of users and stakeholders who all have skin in the game.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and connected vehicle platforms like Wejo are "walled garden" platforms. Developers have seen how they will extort you if you become successful on their platform to the extent they even allow you to build on it in the first place. There are no clear rules on access and censorship, and ownership of user data rests with a company that only cares about extracting maximum profits from users.

These companies aren’t necessarily evil, it’s just that traditional business models systematically create these incentives. 

Part of the vision for DIMO is to make user-owned digital ecosystems the norm. This is a better model.

So how does this work in practice?

Today, holders of the $DIMO token can create and vote on proposals that control how the network operates and invests its resources. These DIMO Improvement Proposals ("DIPs" for short) can upgrade the way the DIMO smart contracts and token work, can grant privileges (e.g., a vote to issue a license to make DIMO Miners to a hardware manufacturer), set tokens aside for grants, and more.

The DIMO Foundation has written the first six proposals, which are going up for a vote tomorrow, January 10th. These help to illustrate the types of things that can be voted on. They are:

DIP-1: Governance Guidelines — how proposals are introduced, voted on, and enacted

DIP-2: Baseline Issuance — how users earn $DIMO each week

DIP-3: Marketplace Issuance & Token Burn — how users earn more $DIMO when they use apps

DIP-4: Device Integrations — requirements to produce DIMO compatible hardware and software connection methods

DIP-5: App Ecosystem — requirements to build DIMO applications

DIP-6: The DIMO Foundation — establishing the role of the DIMO legal entity and its directors

To read the proposals in detail, click here. They can be discussed in the #🗳️governance forum in the Discord.

Awesome! How do I participate?

All $DIMO token holders are able to vote themselves or can delegate their vote to other people. Since reading proposals and engaging in debate can be time consuming, we actually recommend that most users choose to delegate to someone else.

To have your tokens counted you must "delegate" your voting power to yourself or someone else prior to time that the voting goes live for a given proposal. Think of it like registering to vote.

In order to participate in this upcoming vote, you must delegate by 12pm EST on January 10th. At that time, voting will begin and you or your delegate will have seven days to vote.

When you delegate, your tokens stay securely in your wallet. You always retain full control and can still transfer them. You can change who you've delegated to at any time. Once you delegate, the person you delegate to will be able to vote with your tokens in all future votes until you redelegate to someone else.

We recommend using this website to easily delegate to yourself or others. On this page click "Connect Wallet" and sign in with a wallet that contains $DIMO. We recommend using a mobile wallet (Metamask desktop is not supported). Then:

• To be able to vote on a proposal yourself using the wallet you just connected, click "Delegate to myself" in the top right and execute the transaction in your wallet

• To delegate your voting power to someone we recommend, click the "Delegate" button under that person name on their card, click "Confirm", then execute the transaction in your wallet

• To delegate your voting power to anyone else, enter their wallet address in the large input field at the top, click the "Delegate" button right next to it, then execute the transaction in your wallet

• With tax credits about to ramp up for both new and used EVs in the US, many drivers are considering a switch from gas or diesel (ICE) vehicles.

• DIMO can use your gas driving data to score your compatibility with an EV, showing how often you’d need to charge if you went electric.

• 63% of gas powered drivers could go over a month at a time without ever having to rely on a public charger

• 25% of gas powered vehicles on DIMO (176 out of 715) scored an A+ for EV compatibility. With a $1K level 2 charger and a 250 mile (400km) range EV, they would never need to charge away from home.

• Even with just one charger at home, most drivers would need to stop for away-from-home fueling far less often than they currently do with their gas or diesel vehicles.

Introduction

Let’s face it, EV chargers today kind of suck. They’re slow, not reliable in the cold, and an overall inconvenience compared to filling up at the pump. Yes, an EV can save you hundreds on gas, but at what cost?

What gas powered car drivers don’t understand is that you could go weeks if not months without using a public charger, getting by on cheap, convenient home charging alone.

Range anxiety is the gas car driver’s fear that owning an EV would ruin their driving experience. This fear is cited over and over again in surveys, preventing many people from converting to electric vehicles. But the data we have shows the concern is way overblown.

With DIMO data, we’re able to prove that nearly two thirds of gas car drivers could benefit massively from owning an EV by avoiding visits to the pump and chargers alike - without significantly changing their driving patterns.

In DIMO Insights #1, we used DIMO data to show that EV owners rarely get below 25% charge.

Today we’re exploring two things:

1. What does the average car usage look like, and how would that affect your fueling habits with an EV?

2. How often would gas car drivers expect to truly have to charge away from home if they switched to EV and kept their same driving patterns?

We have found that drivers are typically home long enough to charge their EV’s battery sufficiently for the next trip. To put this another way, your car is usually parked long enough between trips to charge up enough for the next one, not too different from keeping your cell phone charged between leaving the house.

A Day in the Life of An Example Driver

Below is an actual gas powered vehicle's DIMO data, which shows its usage throughout a 4 day weekend. For the sake of the experiment, we're going to pretend this is an EV to help visualize this driver's hypothetical charging habits. Over the course of the 4 days, the driver takes 3 trips, all from home (marked in red).

Before these trips, let's assume this "EV" is fully charged to start with only a 250 mile (400 km) range.

For the first trip, the driver drives for about 210 miles (337 km) round trip over the course of a day. The driver made numerous stops along the way, probably visiting friends/family or perhaps a work site. After driving 210 miles, the remaining range is now down to 40 miles, but the vehicle is plugged in when it arrives back home.

Within 4-10 hours of charging at home on a level 2 charger, the battery would fully recharge back to a 250 mile range. The car was plugged in for just over 15 hours, so plenty of time to spare.

Second trip, the driver goes only 8 miles round trip. Most likely to run a quick errand. The car is plugged in again at home, making up those 8 miles in no time.

For the third trip, the driver drives 40 miles round trip in a 12 hour period. A quick commute. Arriving back home, the car is plugged in, the car is back to a full charge in 1-2 hours.

So, even though at home charging is slow, the driver benefits from being able to "refuel" every day at home. For drivers that have similar habits, it's easy to say this is a much more convenient, and affordable, alternative than a once a week visit to the pump.

If we're creating an EV Compatibility Score, this driver would score an A+. But what if your driving habits are different than pictured above?

Creating an EV Compatibility Score

100% EV Compatible Drivers (A+)

176 out of 715 ICE vehicle drivers (about 25%) would never need to charge away from home if they had an electric vehicle with a 400 kilometer (250 mile) range and a level 2 charger (about $1000) at home! Just imagine never going to the gas station again — that’s what an EV and an inexpensive L2 charger could provide.

Highly EV Compatible (B+ → A)

What if you’re not in the lucky 25% who don’t take long roadtrips? On average, about 58% of people would only charge as frequently as 1x per two weeks, and most, way less frequently.

This leaves only about another quarter of drivers (26%) fueling roughly as frequently as typical gas drivers (from a couple of times per week to once every two weeks). This is incredible. For more than 75% of drivers, an EV would be significantly more convenient and require little to no behavior change once an at-home charger is installed.

We should note, we’re generalizing drivers here. We intend to do further analysis utilizing driver personas. EVs Make a ton of sense for commuters, and the data would probably show even better results if we just focused on those drivers.

Less EV Compatible (C → B)

By contrast, people working in their cars or who take long weekend road trips (or have other types of driving patterns) would probably see a different outcome, and we’d recommend a different EV with a larger battery and more robust L3 charging network (like a Tesla).

Chris: Hi! Can you tell us more about yourself and the role you're playing in that blooming project?

Alex: I am Alex Rawitz, one of the Cofounders of DIMO and the COO of Digital Infrastructure Inc. one of the companies building the DIMO Network. I’ve spent ten years in and around startups, building startup ecosystems, working in IoT and crypto, and now combining all of that experience here. It’s an honor and a pleasure to chat about DIMO.

Chris: Thanks for accepting my invitation to the interview. So talking of the DIMO.zone - how do you help drivers to get the most out of their car?

Alex: Cars produce an unbelievable amount of data. Many people are familiar with the way some data is limitedly used for automotive apps and services: insurance cos that give you discounts for your driving habits, a CarFax report that lets you prove the health of your car before you sell it, or a vehicle GPS that can help locate you if you need roadside assistance.

The problem is 1) drivers don’t control the data (it lives on the servers of each company that collects it) and 2) developers that could offer you better automotive services can’t access the siloed data either. People should think of cars as a connected device, just like their phone. Imagine if your phone only came with the apps that the phone maker gave you?

The whole magic of your phone is the app store and the freedom it provides. So whether you have an Android or Apple and prefer TikTok or the NYTimes Crossword puzzle, you have access to apps from third party developers that make your phone amazing. Back to the auto industry: you have dozens of hardware makers who are trying to control their own app ecosystems. The vehicle experience for all will get better with an open platfrom — DIMO.

Chris: Interesting. How old is the company? How was the idea formed?

Click here to read more on Bitcourier

Buying and selling a car is confusing, and the used car market is set up to benefit dealerships over consumers. A community of builders is working to change that, using DIMO data to provide the most accurate valuation for your car.

We routinely see thousands of dollars difference in pricing depending on geography, market conditions, and market inefficiencies.

DIMO is putting some power back in drivers’ hands with our vehicle valuation service, and you can earn more $DIMO by using the marketplace to buy or sell a car.

Here’s the breakdown of what you’ll see in the DIMO mobile app:

• Retail — What a dealership expects to sell your vehicle for
• Trade-In — What you can expect to receive from a dealership after an appraisal
• Instant Offer(s) — What a vehicle-purchasing site is willing to offer you for your vehicle site unseen with limited information

NOTE: Not all connected vehicles will receive valuations in the DIMO mobile app. We are working hard to increase the coverage of vehicles that receive valuations, and should have an update soon to address this.

If you DON’T see vehicle valuations for your connected vehicle, reach out to Vehicle Genius ([email protected]) to receive valuation estimates in your inbox.

Introduction

Dealer trade-in and instant offer sites (like Carvana or Vroom) aren’t the only ways to sell your car. Many people choose to sell peer-to-peer (Craigslist, eBay, etc.) or utilize other types of services that aim to reduce friction (Gauge, Revv Up, Driveway, etc.).

As a car owner, you should know that the “levers” you can use when selling your car are:

• Time: if you’re willing to be patient, chances are you’ll make more money. This certainly means not taking the instant offers but could mean shopping around or waiting months for the right offer.

• Convenience: An instant offer shop might come pick up your car, that’s awesome!

If you want more information, or are interested in subscribing to a service that will help you maximize your mobility-spend, visit Vehicle Genius. We help subscribers save on key vehicle related expenses each month, and can help save thousands of dollars on sale and lease transactions.

But the biggest problem for users is that with all these options, it’s just not convenient or easy to get the numbers! How much is your car worth, and what might you get from all these potential sales channels? DIMO is stepping in.

Vehicle Valuations

We recently introduced a HUGE new update to our mobile app and one of the most exciting additions is the introduction of real-time vehicle valuations. While this isn’t available on every single vehicle, if you head into the DIMO Mobile app, you may see a price labeled “Marketplace Valuations” on the home screen.

Clicking this value will bring you to a new page with a ton of vehicle valuation information!

You might be asking yourself “what the heck do values mean and what is the difference between them???” Well you’re in luck, as We’re about to make you much smarter on the auto industry. Let’s dive in!

Retail Value

Where you will see this value

On the valuations page at the top and in the section underneath

The retail value of a vehicle is what a dealership can expect to sell your vehicle for to a new owner. This is typically the highest value your vehicle will receive due to the fact that dealerships can offer financing and other products that make your vehicle easier to sell. If you wanted to sell your vehicle yourself via private-party sale, you can expect to receive ~5%-15% less than the Retail value. The amount you receive can vary greatly depending on:

• Quality of vehicle advertisement

• Timing of sale

• Demand for vehicle

• Responsiveness of seller

If you’re interested in selling your vehicle privately, consider subscribing to one of DIMO’s newest ecosystem partners, Vehicle Genius. Vehicle Genius will guide you through any private vehicle sale, and help you maximize the value you receive from any sale.

Trade-in Value

When you take your car to a dealership for an appraisal, the value they provide to you will be the trade-in value. You’ll notice that this value is less than the retail value; this is for a few reasons:

Unknown condition

Even after appraising a vehicle, dealerships don’t have an exact idea of what a vehicle will need in order for it to be ready for sale. Only after they take possession and start the reconditioning process can they get an exact estimate of the cost. To reduce their risk, they reduce the value they’re willing to pay. We’re hoping to help fix this! In the future, DIMO will be a service record for your car that can prove its health.

Profit

This will come as a surprise to no one, but dealerships are in the game to make money! Therefore, they have to sell your vehicle for enough profit so that it covers their expenses, which include reconditioning, advertising, and the salesperson’s cut!

Salesperson’s Cut

The vast majority of sales departments at dealerships are paid based on commission. This means the dealership needs to make enough profit on each vehicle to cover their expenses which includes the salesperson’s commission.

As a result of these expenses, the trade-in value will likely be anywhere from 5-20% less than the retail value.

Instant Offers

An instant offer is an offer that a vehicle-purchasing site is willing to pay for your vehicle site unseen. While this value is subject to change once they see the car in person, these vehicle-purchasing sites (Carvana, Vroom, Revv, etc) are incentivized to close the deal anyway, and will oftentimes be willing to overlook small undisclosed cosmetics issues for the sake of making a deal.

There are very clear pros and cons to these instant offers:

Pros

• Easily accessible offers — Made easier by the fact that some are even included in the DIMO Mobile app itself!
• Extremely simple vehicle sale process — Some vehicle-purchasing sites are even willing to pick up your vehicle at home.
• No negotiation — This makes for a simple and stress-free sale.

Cons

• Lower valuations — Due to the limited information they have on your vehicle before presenting a valuation, these instant offers are likely the lowest valuations you’ll see in the DIMO app.
• No negotiation — While this is a pro for simplicity, it limits your ability to fight for a higher valuation.

Overall, the instant offers are a great tool to see how much you can receive for your vehicle if you don’t want to put in any additional work. These are included in the DIMO Mobile app for your awareness. We’ve had users be surprised and take an offer that is better than they expected to ever see.

Straight Dope

Vehicles are likely going to be your 2nd most expensive asset (other than houses) in your life. We think that it is extremely important to provide as much data as possible on this asset throughout your ownership so you are well equipped to make informed decisions. This was a key reason why we decided to add vehicle valuations into the DIMO Mobile app.

If you are still a bit confused, or want even more data about your overall vehicle spend, here’s what you can do:

• Buy DIMO Hardware! With $20 off using code TwentyBucks you’ll be well on your way to saving hundreds if not thousands over your vehicle's lifespan, and the $DIMO rewards don’t hurt either!

• Reach out to Vehicle Genius to get a comprehensive, up-to-date report on your overall vehicle spend, as well as access to a genius via call or text whenever an unexpected question arises throughout your ownership experience.

This creates an open, verifiable trail of control that is not present in IoT systems today. By leveraging an array of open pieces of infrastructure like Polygon, Streamr, plus wallets like MetaMask & Rainbow, and physical security provided by NXP, we can build a better, more open system - a solid foundation to build apps and services on in the future. 

The end state we’re aiming for is the network of relationships pictured below, completely controlled by DIMO users.

Why

The IoT device market is expected to reach 29 billion devices by 2030. You probably already own a variety of these devices and currently login through your email, or a device specific account to manage them. During this time you have probably also noticed that devices from one manufacturer do not usually work very well with devices from other manufacturers.

You’ve also noticed that whenever the manufacturer has a cloud outage, your devices do not work, and they also charge you for access to your own data. And worst of all, the devices that manufacturers decide to deprecate become paperweights.

The DIMO team has spent a significant amount of time building connected vehicle products and services, and believes that sufficient decentralization and user control can create a much better relationship between people and their connected devices — particularly when those devices are making increasingly important decisions about how people consume energy, and drive around at high speeds on public roads.

We want to live in a world where people can trust machines, with the ability to own device identity and access to their data is the first step.

Linked Wallet

Today, all users need a web3 wallet like Metamask or Rainbow for the actions required to pair their device <> vehicle <> wallet. Future updates will provide more options like a native wallet in the DIMO mobile app, and pre-configured devices controlled by a fleet manager account.

This wallet is how you establish ownership of and control the vehicle, device, and any rewards you might earn. In the future, it will allow you to seamlessly move between different apps that might want to use your data or vehicle ID - just log in and your data will populate.

Connecting a wallet can be done by creating your account with the wallet (via WalletConnect) or linking a wallet to your account after creating an account with email.

Wallet <> Device

DIMO Devices come with a secure element, basically a fancy chip that stores a crypto wallet. This means your device has its own wallet already installed!

In the pairing process in DIMO Mobile, what you are actually doing is claiming the digital twin of the physical device. You do this by proving you have physical possession of the device, which you do by connecting to it over bluetooth and asking the device’s wallet to sign a message.

When the DIMO smart contract sees this message, the device’s signature, and your signature, it will transfer the digital twin of the device (which represents ownership) to YOUR wallet. The effect is like a marriage license, with both parties signing the message together. Here’s an example transaction on Polygon.

Now that your wallet “owns” the device, you’ll show that your wallet and your vehicle are connected.

Wallet <> Vehicle

When you connect your phone to the device over bluetooth, in addition to the steps above, you’re also prompting the device to generate this fingerprint from the car and sign it to verify authenticity. The fingerprint is checked against our database to validate the vehicle.

After the fingerprint is generated and checked, a user uses their wallet to sign a minting tx that creates the vehicle ID on-chain owned by the user’s wallet.

By now a user has linked:

• User wallet <> Device

• User wallet <> Vehicle

The last step is to finalize the link between Device <> Vehicle.

Here’s an example of this type of transaction.

Device <> Vehicle

To be more clear about the links above, the user’s wallet now owns both unique digital twins: the device’s and the car’s. Cars are nice because they already have identities provided to them by the manufacturer — represented by a VIN or Vehicle Identification Number.

DIMO has built a “Digital DMV” that keeps track of every car that we can find in the world, and makes sure that users are able to pair with and own each vehicle only once. As more cars are produced, they’re checked for compatibility and added to the list — we’re doing that constantly.

Next, a user signs a transaction that links these together, and the process is complete. It’s also reversible, so if you sign another message, you can unlink this device and vehicle and move your device to another car. Just know that you can’t send data from more than one vehicle at a time, so you can’t earn rewards or use the data from multiple cars. One device can only be linked with one car, always.

See for yourself how easy it is to get started today

Want to Get Started?

Check out the shop, and use the discount code TwentyBucks to get $20 OFF DIMO Hardware.

When drivers connect their cars and stream data, they earn $DIMO. Everyone earns a portion of the weekly drop (baseline issuance), and they earn more when app developers and data consumers pay for their data or vehicle access (marketplace issuance).

Great so far… but why would anyone want this token, and how does it enhance the DIMO experience for users?

1) It’s required for transacting on top of the platform.

Buying Data. Any transaction involving the sale of user data requires $DIMO. Any portion owed to the user is always in $DIMO and some $DIMO is also burned (taken out of circulation).

Hardware. If a hardware manufacturer wants to create new DIMO-compatible devices, they’re required to back individual device IDs with $DIMO. This has already happened with the DIMO Data Miners produced by AutoPi. Other fees, such as a token burn for each new vehicle minted, can be added at any time using the governance functionality described below.

Products and Services. In the future, all transactions on top of the DIMO platform that involve payment for goods and services could also generate rewards and token burn — like the 30% Apple App store fees… but surely a more reasonable percentage. Car payments, insurance payments, car rentals, car sales, and more should all result in $DIMO tokens being burned. Such a mechanism should be implemented at a time in the future when DIMO adoption and regulatory clarity are suitably far along.

Simply put: increased transaction volume on the network = increased $DIMO token burn + users earning increased rewards.

Similar utility to: ETH, MATIC (and most other L1s/L2s), HNT (+DC)

2) It gives holders the right to make decisions about how the network works.

$DIMO token holders are able to vote on how the protocol works. They control decisions like: upgrades to software code; protocols and standards; who can license the IP; how fees are generated; and how rewards are issued. Holders are even able to update the properties of the token itself and what it can be used for.

Modern tech giants have shown time and time again how quickly they’ll take advantage of their users for the benefit of their shareholders. For that reason, it’s important that those who control DIMO are the ones who use it.

Similar utility to: UNI, GTC, and other governance tokens

3) It aligns the incentives of the other participants in the ecosystem.

It is important that the businesses that produce DIMO compatible hardware, transmit user data, and build apps have skin in the game and a reason to care about the long-term success of DIMO. Therefore, they must stake and/or spend $DIMO tokens in order to maintain a license and deploy products to the network.

Staking in this context is comparable to a security deposit, like one you might put down when you move into a new apartment. If the staker misbehaves, they may have some or all of their tokens taken away. While this doesn’t generate yield for the staker, it does force them to be long-term holders of the token.

Similar utility to: ETH, MATIC (and all other proof of stake chains), GRT, LPT

Additionally, all DIMO data miners deployed on the network require a payment of $DIMO tokens.

Similar utility to: HNT

4) It shows who’s a part of the community.

As a token on a public blockchain, it couldn’t be easier to prove who is part of the DIMO community. $DIMO holders may receive special access to various app features, events, and more. Owning the $DIMO token should amplify a user’s experience in this ecosystem. This is ultimately up to the app ecosystem and community to implement and offer.

Similar utility to: BANK, FWB

Can I sell the $DIMO token?

We decline to comment on the topic of listing or trading the token. We maintain the highest standards of regulatory compliance and development best practices. $DIMO is issued by the DIMO Foundation and its subsidiaries. Discussions on price and trading are not permitted in the Discord.

Why not just pay drivers in cash?

The traditional model entails selling half the company to venture capital firms to raise money, to advertise to users and get their attention and slowly build a network. At the end, the project is controlled by professional investors and the early users who are responsible for its growth have nothing.

Communities built on top of blockchain technology, whereby control is given to those users, are stronger, better, and more equitable. The technology is also more transparent, practical, and programmable. We believe this new paradigm is here to stay and will become increasingly common.

Why is my vehicle data valuable?

The data you generate within DIMO is valuable for several reasons.

First, businesses want to buy it. We need to improve electric vehicle batteries, self-driving systems, traffic mapping, road quality, recalls, infrastructure planning, cell coverage, and more. McKinsey estimates that data from advanced vehicles could be worth $600/year by 2030.

Second, a verified connection with your car enables you to get more favorable loans, cheaper insurance, better trade in value, more effective maintenance, and more, which could save you thousands of dollars.

Third, it can allow you to participate in more efficient versions of existing applications. Uber verifies identity, confirms insurance, routes requests, tracks trips, displays ratings, and facilitates payments. For that, they take about 25% of every ride you take! DIMO is a general purpose mobility platform that can do those things far cheaper. Some day, a team of five people will build a competitor to Uber on DIMO that takes 1%.

What if I don’t want to give my data to my insurance company?

Who you share your data with is entirely up to you. You don’t have to.

Why should I want to connect my car to DIMO, other than to earn tokens?

To access useful app and services that can:

• Save you money with data-driven financing, insurance, car sales;

• Improve your driving experience by helping you buy a better car with verified data, diagnostics that help with maintenance;

• Give you new functionality for your car, such as locking and unlocking the car from your phone;

• Let you do more in the world, like rent your car out to a friend or stranger, drive for hire; or

• Connect you to others with social experiences and online communities.

Why do I want my vehicle to be on the blockchain?

The blockchain means a lot of things to a lot of people. The reason we are using the blockchain is because no company should ever have a monopoly on your data and force you to stay inside their bubble for life. When your digital identity is stored by a company, they dictate the terms by which you can use your data in other places. By utilizing the blockchain, you are in full control. This is also important for car manufacturers, insurance companies, banks, government agencies, and more who wouldn’t consider using a restricted tool that could lock them out or disappear.

For more, check out the following links:

Download the app

Buy the device

Discord (our online community)

Project overview

Governance & tokenomics

Support

Technical docs

(Limited to 50 Subscribers)

Owning a vehicle can be complicated, time consuming, and expensive. Interest, depreciation, routine maintenance, unexpected repairs, and staying on top of constantly changing market conditions can take the fun out of owning a car ….unless you have a Vehicle Genius on your side.

Vehicle Genius is an exclusive membership service for DIMO users that provides access to auto industry experts, discounts, and solutions when you need it most. Powered by DIMO data, Vehicle Genius puts your vehicle’s data to work saving you money.

Have you ever worried you were paying too much for a vehicle repair? Or left a dealership knowing you spent too much? Had a check engine light you were afraid to get fixed?

You need a Vehicle Genius subscription.

Some use cases we’re already helping users with:

• Locating reputable mechanics and verifying that you are receiving fair quotes for repairs

• Monitoring the market and making ongoing recommendations on your biggest vehicle-related costs: insurance, loan/lease, and fuel usage

• Tracking routine maintenance and keeping your digital glovebox updated so you can save big $$ when you need to sell your car.

• Guiding you through any vehicle transaction, including purchases, leases, and refinances

• Identifying the right fixes for check engine lights without expensive diagnostic fees from the dealership

• Checking for tax credits and savings that can save you thousands if you are thinking of upgrading to a new EV or hybrid

All of this is just a text message (or email) away. For $20/month, you will be assigned a personal Vehicle Genius that will be available to answer any and all of your vehicle-related questions, helping you maximize your time and vehicle spend.

That’s not all….

As one of the first DIMO ecosystem partners, Vehicle Genius is working on an improvement proposal that will allow Vehicle Genius subscribers to be eligible for up to a 2X DIMO token boost of their marketplace connection tokens every month they subscribe!

How it will work

Step 1: You subscribe to Vehicle Genius

Step 2: Vehicle Genius confirms your DIMO connection and informs DIMO of your boost eligibility

Step 3: Receive up to a 2X boost of your DIMO marketplace rewards every month you are subscribed to Vehicle Genius

For more information, and to subscribe visit the Vehicle Genius Store. If you have any questions, visit the #vehicle-genius channel in the DIMO discord (https://chat.dimo.zone)

About Vehicle Genius

Vehicle Genius is a project born out of a DIMO user’s desire to make owning a vehicle easier and less expensive by utilizing DIMO-data. Founder Colin Knudsen has spent the last 10 years buying and selling cars, operating fleets, giving advice to friends and family, and comes from a family of car people.

After hearing about DIMO & joining the discord, he got the idea to build a better vehicle ownership experience on the platform — one where buying, selling, and maintaining your vehicle was automated.

While helping DIMO community members with vehicle transactions, Vehicle Genius was able to save users an average of $3,000 by guiding them through vehicle transactions recommended through DIMO-data analysis. They’ve shipped cars, recommended maintenance, price-checked insurance, and made recommendations on dozens of vehicle transactions.

Digital Infrastructure Inc, wants to support more businesses on the DIMO platform - specifically we’re interested in

• Designing Open-Source Insurance products using past and real-time telematics data

• Data-Driven Vehicle Maintenance

• Uniswap for Cars — building the most efficient used car marketplace

• Peer-to-peer car sharing built on DIMO

• More efficient vehicle and fleet loans

For more information about building on DIMO, visit https://dimo.zone/developers

^{NOTE: The DIMO token boost will be introduced as a formal DIMO Improvement Proposal and must be voted into effect. Users who subscribe to Vehicle Genius PRIOR to the proposal vote will retroactively have their tokens boosted.}

There are important actions that you as a user need to take to make sure you are eligible to receive $DIMO! Notably, you’ll need to make sure you have the most up to date version of the DIMO Mobile app or download it for the first time if you aren't connected yet.

What can you do with $DIMO?

$DIMO functions like an airline reward point for your car, but has additional superpowers. It can provide holders with access to special feature upgrades, deals, future hardware and merch drops, events, and more - including the ability to vote on how DIMO works.

Importantly, the token is also used within the ecosystem to create trust and incentive alignment between users, hardware manufacturers, and app developers. Building new devices and services on the network requires staking and spending $DIMO. The intent of $DIMO is to enable a credibly neutral and user-aligned ecosystem, so we're making sure it ends up in the hands of our early and future users.

There are a ton of details on how the airdrop works, eligibility, and more that you can find here. You’ll also find more detail on the utility of the token. We expect that the community will iterate on the functionality and uses of $DIMO as we improve the network over time.

We’re excited to welcome you to the next & most exciting chapter of DIMO yet.

We're using DIMO data to explore how EV driver behavior compares to ICE (gas/diesel). There are some surprising results. 

As more EVs come to market, “range anxiety” remains a focal point in industry and consumer conversations. The idea that drivers shun EVs for fear of their shorter range vs ICE cars is well documented in surveys, but there is not much data available about the real world behavior of EV drivers.

We're using aggregated DIMO data to see how far drivers typically venture from their anchor (read: home or office) locations. Does range anxiety show up in the driving behavior of EV owners?

What we find is that EV drivers on DIMO stick to an anchor location less than ICE drivers — taking longer trips and rarely experiencing low charge.

Read to the end for some bonus content on how gas prices impact ICE driver behavior too!

Today, our data is limited to a subset of EV owners (Tesla drivers make up 95%+ of the EVs on DIMO), but we will continue to build out this analysis further as more cars are added.

Why does this matter for DIMO Users?

DIMO users with ICE vehicles will also be able to benefit from this research by accessing an “EV suitability score” that shows them how easily they could swap into an EV from their gas car without changing their behavior.

We will share some data here and dive deeper into this score in our next blog post.... Ok Let's Get Started:

Driving sessions in EVs vs. ICE vehicles

For the purposes of this post, we're looking at what we’ve decided to call a 'driving session.' This could be someone going to and from work (two trips) or someone driving all over town for errands (a series of trips), but what makes it different from a one way trip is the vehicle returning to its “anchor location” for at least four hours.

This provides us an "anchor" location we can use when considering a driver's range anxiety, as most EV owners have access to a home or office charger.

When a vehicle ends a trip at the anchor location and the next trip starts at least four hours later, that time will be considered plausible for charging (around 200 kilometers for a Level 2 charger). Every time the vehicle is stopped at the anchor location for at least four hours, a new “session” will begin upon the next movement.

Driving session data from a DIMO test vehicle shown for illustrative purposes - color coded to show state of charge (left) and distance from anchor location (right)

Analysis is conducted on aggregated & anonymized data.

If range anxiety were real, we would expect drivers with EVs to take shorter sessions, being mindful to return to a charger before they run too low. Similarly, we would expect ICE drivers to have longer driving sessions, since the ubiquity of gas stations and longer vehicle ranges would allay any concerns about ending up stranded.

Below we look at about 100,000 sessions across 1,200 EVs and 30,000 sessions across 750 ICE vehicles.

In the graph above, we show the percentage of total driving sessions of different lengths. For example, the orange bar on the far left shows how just over 25% of all ICE vehicle driving sessions are just 10 km or less.

What is interesting is ICE vehicles are more commonly used for the sessions on the shortest end of the axis (30 km or less) while EVs are more commonly racking up longer driving sessions. If we look out to 100 km, we see we’re covering the vast majority of sessions for both ICE and EVs, but on the whole it’s significantly more common for an ICE vehicle driving session to be under this threshold: 85% of all ICE vehicle sessions are under 100 km compared to 77% of EV sessions.

This goes against expectations where we are conditioned to think about EVs as the ideal format for quick, short trips specifically due to range concerns.

But that’s not the whole story. The graph above only goes out to about 250 km of session lengths. What if we look at even longer lengths?

One important milestone is a 200 km driving session - this distance at which an EV driver would likely run out of fuel after a 4 hour period charging at an anchor location. Because of the importance of this distance, behavior at or beyond this point could be telling.

One thing we find is that about 25% of ICE vehicle drivers never have a session more than 200 kilometers. These drivers would never run out of charge with a home Level 2 charger (because they would be fully charged after 4 hours at home). Interestingly, the number is lower for EV drivers: about 16% never drive this distance in a session. The milestone that we would expect to be a barrier for EV drivers seems to be nothing of the sort — more EV drivers seem to cross this threshold than ICE drivers. So much for the ease and convenience of gas stations vs chargers.

What about even longer road trips? If we double it to 400 km, about 46% of all ICE vehicles and 36% of EVs never have a session of this length. The pattern holds: despite expecting EV drivers to shy away from these distances, they embrace them even more than ICE drivers in our dataset.

This demonstrates that these Tesla drivers are not driving as if they are more constrained by EV disbelievers’ fears about range anxiety. Actually, they are generally driving further from anchor than these ICE drivers! In the future we’ll be able to layer in more data from non-Tesla EVs as well as fast-charging networks in order to determine the impact of charging infrastructure on driver behavior.

Further, let’s look at how frequently drivers have sessions over 200 kilometers per month: about half of all drivers have one or fewer sessions over 200 kilometers per month. And 82% of drivers have 1 or fewer sessions over 400 kilometers per month.

We also wanted to look at the longer end of sessions per vehicle and by vehicle type, and to avoid looking at extremes, we decided to examine the second longest session. In the graph below, we can clearly see the behavior of EV drivers tending to have longer sessions than ICE drivers.

Now let’s explore this data from one other angle: how much fuel/charge do drivers typically have in their vehicle. 

The graph below can tell us what percentage of miles are driven below a given state of charge - key for determining both battery health scores and range anxiety.

Aggregated battery data from every EV on DIMO 

For example, in 10 million miles driven by DIMO EV drivers only about 3% take place in the “Range Anxiety Zone” when the vehicle is under 20% state of charge! EV drivers are so good at avoiding driving on low percentages of charge that they actually drive under 50% charge for less than a third of the time (31%). 

Many EV owners never experience range anxiety-  

Here's one user from the test fleet who charges to 100% each day, and has never experienced under 50% charge over thousands of miles of driving. 

ICE Vehicles Experience a Different Kind of Anxiety:

When you overlay gas prices from the same time period, it’s clear that ICE drivers (the blue area above) experience a different kind of “Fuel Anxiety” - when gas prices go up they keep up to 20% less fuel in their tank - going from a high of 65% to a low of 44% when gas prices peaked in the US in June/July of 2022!

In DIMO data the results are pretty clear: EV drivers don’t seem to experience range anxiety very frequently, and their aggregate behavior is less impacted by external factors than ICE drivers, who significantly alter behavior due to gas prices.

Why does this matter for DIMO users?

In the DIMO app, users will be able to analyze their driving with an ICE vehicle automatically and see how easy it would be to switch to electric! In our next post, we’ll dive into the creation of this EV-conversion score, as well as other metrics like battery and charging health.

For an individual with a high EV-conversion score, they’ll confidently be able to make the switch! We can even show them how much they’ll save over a typical year based on their existing driving patterns and local electricity rates.

When the time to make a change comes, there are other DIMO partners ready to help them with everything from vehicle purchase, tax credits and incentives, financing, and of course keeping their new EV investment properly maintained over time.

What is DIMO Insights?

The DIMO Insights team is made up of experts in data engineering, data science, and mobility. They have access to telematics data from vehicles on the network, and are tasked with turning it into useful and valuable information that can directly benefit DIMO users, the traveling public, and the environment. 

Analysis in this report was conducted by Jeremy Lerner - a Senior Data Scientist contributing to DIMO. Jeremy helped design Ford's BlueCruise and has published several papers on how to utilize connected vehicle data to understand drivers. Data-driven simulations are Jeremy's natural playground.

Do you have feedback or an idea for a future Insights post?

We want to hear from you!

Email [email protected] or tweet @dimo_network to let us know what you think.

If you’re a company looking for connected vehicle insights you can buy a license to access aggregated data from DIMO users or hire the Insights Team directly to crunch numbers for you!

Starting with…

• Vehicle Intel & Valuation

• Eligibility Checklist

• DIMO Explorer

• The DIMO Ecosystem & New Integrations

Vehicle Intelligence & Valuation Data

The DIMO Mobile app is your always-on, all-knowing expert on your car - now connected with more resources than ever. With this update, the mobile app now sources data from the top “instant offer” providers, tracks those values for you, and can put you directly in touch with other resources that help you source the best price for your vehicle.

We’re bringing together an ecosystem of partners to help you navigate the industry with this new information. There are now a handful of partners that can help you sell your car, refinance, buy out your lease, and take just about any action you need in order to save money. Once the token has launched, any time you interact with one of these services, you’ll earn more $DIMO for transacting with the partners.

Beyond valuation, we’re making the health data on your car more accessible. For hardware users primarily, we’re devoting a lot of energy to bringing you more data. In the coming weeks you’ll start to see those fields you’ve been missing appear and populate. Tips are being released to the DIMO Mobile App, giving you personalized suggestions on how to improve your car’s performance and save money.

One of our first improvements to health data is the addition of Maintenance Error Codes, which will allow users to self-diagnose their car’s issues providing users with the same amount of data every mechanic has access to when servicing your car. In other words, with this new feature, DIMO is about to answer the age old question: “Is my mechanic taking advantage of me?” Right now this is in alpha, and you can use this link to get early access to Error Codes functionality on your device.

Vehicle valuation and Vehicle commerce partners only exist for the United States. If you’re a partner interested in offering valuation services or sourcing buyers and sellers anywhere DIMO operates, you can reach out to [email protected].

Eligibility Checklist

DIMO mainnet launch is coming soon. There will be quite a bit more information released in depth shortly, but for now, know that a simple checklist is coming to the app to make sure you’re ready for the $DIMO launch.

All users will be required to create (or re-create if you already have one) your vehicle ID. Some underlying changes to the infrastructure (if you’re technically inclined, here’s the new Vehicle ID contract) have been made to prepare for the mainnet launch.

If you use hardware for your vehicle connection, the checklist will show you how to repair the device to make it more secure. This won’t involve a full install — it should only take a few minutes to connect to the device via bluetooth, verify your VIN, and sign a message with your web3 wallet.

If you just use our Tesla or Smartcar connections, you can simply login and sign a message with your wallet and you’re all set.

The Eligibility Checklist marks a final item on the road to mainnet launch and everyone in the DIMOverse should be excited about what’s coming in just a few weeks.

DIMO Explorer

Released on 11/23 - Read more here

For drivers, Explorer confirms if your car is supported on the DIMO Network, and what you’ll be able to do with it when you connect. Soon, it will allow you to participate directly, from adding reviews to contributing compatibility data and device install photos.

For enterprises, information about the network and the type of data users are collecting and sharing can be found across the product. Deeper sample data is available by request by reaching out to the DIMO Insights team

For developers looking to build on DIMO, you can see which vehicles have what data available as you set out to design your application.

The DIMO Ecosystem

DIMO is more than just a way to collect your vehicle data. It’s a way to access the apps and services of other businesses that help save you time and money over the lifecycle of your car.

We’re launching an ecosystem of integrations providing easily accessible, personalized benefits for each and every driver on the road. Put simply, the DIMO Ecosystem will be a curated app store meticulously personalized for your vehicle’s make, model, and year.

With this ecosystem we’re aiming to solve several massive problems within the automotive industry: data availability, accessibility to cost savings, and difficulty surrounding restructuring contracts. We want to lessen the divide between dealerships and private owners, giving owners more power to make educated decisions surrounding their vehicles, while providing some pretty cool features to take advantage of.

Here are a few of the apps we’re launching with:

Vehicle Genius

Vehicle Genius can save you thousands of dollars and hours of frustration with a simple monthly subscription. Vehicle Genius has already helped DIMO users save thousands on vehicle sales, purchases, maintenance, vehicle spend checkups, and more through simple on-demand text support and transaction management.

Vehicle Genius will also interpret your vehicle’s error codes, which you can read from your DIMO device. Learn more or get started.

Tenet

Lower your monthly payments on your EV by $150+/month compared to traditional vehicle financing. How? Tenet’s EV-specific financing takes advantage of your car’s superior value retention and tax credits to offer a deferred down payment.Learn more or get started.

Caribou

With Caribou you get offers to lower your monthly payments, saving you up to $100/month on your car payments. Unlike most financing platforms, Caribou touts an easy application process that doesn’t affect your credit score. Learn more or get started.

Lease End

Lease End allows you to buy out your lease by offering tailored, personalized solutions with a simple 15 minute process, further leveling the playing field between dealerships and private car owners. Learn more or get started.

DIMO Connect

DIMO Connect transforms your DIMO x AutoPi device into a WiFi hotspot, allowing you to access the web on the go for a low monthly cost. Contact [email protected] for access to the Alpha.

New to DIMO? Download the DIMO Mobile App to get started.

     1. What kind of activity is happening on the network?

     2. How can I get my car connected?

     3. What will I be able to do with it once it’s online?

To answer these questions, we've built the DIMO Explorer.

For drivers, Explorer confirms if your car is supported on the DIMO Network, and allows you to participate directly in the ecosystem, from adding car reviews to contributing compatibility data.

For enterprises, information about the network and the type of data users are collecting and sharing can be found across the product. Deeper sample data is available by request by reaching out to the DIMO Insights team.

For developers looking to build on DIMO, you can view which vehicles have what data available as you set out to design your application.

What Data is Available in Explorer?

The goal for every vehicle is to represent several categories of information:

     1. DIMO Telematics Data

     2. Market Data

     3. User generated content

DIMO Telematics Data

We’ll surface what DIMO data, like tire pressure or battery health, is collectable from any particular vehicle as well as the real, DIMO Network data that has been collected in the field. For instance, you’ll be able to track trends in charging and battery health across connected Tesla Model 3s across the public number of DIMO users with that vehicle.

Our goal is to provide drivers a much more data-driven window into what to expect from their vehicle. If you think about it, it’s amazing that there isn’t more widely available open source data on how specific vehicles perform over time. There are no shortage of review sites, but few places that are looking at the data to help inform drivers.

Market Data

Market data is critical too. DIMO has started pulling valuations from multiple sources to surface how different marketplaces value the same vehicle differently. We know that opaque pricing is often used by vehicle marketplaces to take advantage of consumers, and we believe in making this more accessible to drivers in the DIMO Mobile app. As a vehicle owner, you should have a lot more visibility into your car’s value and the market as a whole.

User Generated Content

Of course, outside of all this hard data is a human element. People love cars and they love talking about and reviewing cars. We’re setting up Explorer to accept user generated content like photos, videos and reviews of vehicles to enrich the way a user can truly explore a vehicle. In the near future, users will be able to submit content; the best content we receive will be posted publicly.

Look Up Your Make & Model's Capabilities on DIMO

Different cars have different data available. Some cars allow you to connect via software (like Tesla), and others require the DIMO Device.

Explorer gives you visibility into all of that, providing specific instructions for your make and model and a heads up on what data you will find in the app. We’ve built out thousands of pages, so practically every make, model, and year is represented all in one database. We want there to be no surprises when you get connected, and a clean interface to communicate everything you need to know.

We’ve built out thousands of pages–one for every make, model, and year is represented. Our goal is to make Explorer a valuable resource for anyone researching vehicles to buy or lease in the future.

In order to put this database together, our engineers worked for over a year collating makes, models, and years of vehicles across tools and databases, incorporating feedback from tens of thousands of vehicles all over the world. Today it is quite complete for the US and Canada, with much more work to be done for European vehicles, not to mention the rest of the world.

If you can’t find your vehicle, you can reach out to [email protected], and we’ll help get you connected.

What will we learn from thousands of connected cars?

DIMO is not a science experiment — real drivers have connected their vehicles, they’re driving millions of miles every month, and developers are building apps that help users make better decisions with the data from their vehicles.

As the network grows, the total pool of data becomes more valuable, and we’re seeing more and more developers interested in building on this growing platform.

To make things clear and showcase what we’re capable of producing at this moment, here’s a quick summary of some reports that have been generated today, and are beginning to make their way into DIMO apps:

• Real-Time Vehicle Valuation: Over $150,000,000+ worth of cars connected to DIMO today. $1.5B if you count cars added, but not connected to the network. As the used car market continues its volatility into 2023, we’re giving drivers the ability to maximize their vehicle’s value and make better decisions by plugging in real time valuation tools. Drivers in the DIMO beta tester group now have the ability to find out what their car is worth on several resale markets (Vroom, Carvana, Carmax etc.) simply by opening the DIMO Mobile App.

• EV vs. Gas Vehicle Usage Trends: Americans tend to think buying electric means being tied down to low range trips, slow charging times, and limits on where you can drive. A recent report on DIMO claims the exact opposite. On the DIMO Network, the average trip from home in a gas powered car is 55.5 km, where for Tesla it’s 72.5 km. You can check out some of the other early insights here.

• OTA Software Update Performance: Car manufacturers (OEMs) are moving fast to standardize over-the-air software updates. Soon, the car you have a year later will be a different car than the one you bought. Companies like Tesla have mastered these kinds of updates, but other major car companies are still catching up. Users deserve visibility into the quality of connectivity vehicles provide.

Check out Explorer and Connect your Car

Now it’s time to go checkout Explorer and if you haven’t already, add your car to DIMO.

First, let’s address the current state of preorders. We’ve delivered +2,200 preordered devices, approximately 50% of the total. We have supply now arriving consistently and have been ramping up fulfillment. With all the hardwork from the last few months, we’ll be able to fulfill all preorders by mid December. Just in case anyone is worried, everyone who has already ordered a device will receive theirs before any new orders are fulfilled.

Of the devices that are already out there, we have seen phenomenal adoption. Over 1,300 devices are already connected to DIMO, we’ve logged +20,000,000 miles, and we have connected cars from Hawaii to Finland. All of this is to say after almost a year since our initial pre-orders went live, the network we envisioned is starting to come to fruition. It’s time to keep growing.

The opening of the DIMO Shop will go through phases:

• Waitlist Drop — Nov 15: The store opens with the first drop for all waitlisted users (added a car to the DIMO App before 11/11). Max 2 devices per order.

• Public Drop #1 — November 21: The store opens publicly to all with another drop. Max 2 devices per order. Drops will continue as more inventory becomes available to manage lead times

• Additional Drops + Fleet Launch — Coming later this year: The shop will reopen to fleets in the next few months. Over the course of the year we have had over 1,000 fleets reach out to DIMO and we are beginning some select testing with those fleets. Fleets will be required to take some additional verification steps before ordering.

Keep in mind, we still only support vehicles that are 2012 or newer.

What’s different about the Shop?

Before detailing the phases of reopening, let’s take a moment to digest some updates to the Shop. First off, you’ll probably notice an updated Frontend that takes us off the native Shopify themes and on to our own custom development. We took time to develop this Frontend to deliver a premium experience to customers befitting the craft we put into all the things we build.

Second, you’ll notice that we’re launching some accessories in the store. This is just a starting point, and eventually the store will become a hub for all kinds of devices and accessories tested with DIMO devices. We’re building a one-stop-shop for all DIMO-integrated products.. The store will eventually expand to include subscriptions and services that will further enrich the user experience of DIMO.

Our goal in these steps is to build the IoT3 and automotive store of the future. The automotive world is at a major inflection point; EVs, connected vehicles, and autonomous driving systems will change the way we relate to vehicles forever. We intend to support the aftermarket technology that will help people get the most out of their cars.

Now on to reopening…

Reopening Phases

Waitlist — November 15

The waitlist for DIMO devices is officially closed as of November 11, 2022. Prior to this date we counted someone as on the waitlist when they had added a car in the DIMO App. If you take this step before November 11th, you’re on the list and you’ll be able to shop when the store opens on November 15th. If you did not, don’t worry, you will be able to order a device during the Public Launch.

On 12pm ET on the 15th you’ll receive a one time code that allows you to pass through the checkout process where anyone without a code would be stopped, and you’ll be on your way to joining the DIMO network. We will continue to enforce a cap of two orders per customer. While some slipped through the cracks in the past, we have put stronger controls in place to ensure equal distribution of devices.

Anyone who already ordered a device will not be included in this sale. We are committed to providing first-time customers the opportunity to order so more people get a chance to join. If you would like to order more devices, you’ll have to wait for the Public Launch.

Public Drop #1 — November 21

While the number of people on the waitlist does exceed the available inventory right now, we'll make more devices available to newcomers when we open the store for the public. On November 21st, anyone will be able to show up to DIMO and purchase a Data Miner. We will continue to enforce a limit of two devices per checkout.

More Public Drops and Fleets

We are managing manufacturing lead times by utilizing drops. No one likes waiting for their purchases, especially around the holidays, so we’ll be monitoring our manufacturing as closely as we can to make sure that DIMO users never wait too long for their devices. With Fleets, we’re putting some new energy into the Fleets program, so keep an eye out for more information on that.

Where is the store going?

The DIMO Shop will be an essential part of the future of the DIMO ecosystem. In the next 1-2 months we’ll share more about how the hardware ecosystem will evolve from just the DIMO x AutoPi devices to DIMO-compatible devices from other manufacturers, hardware that overlaps with other projects building physical networks, and even auto accessories that make for a better ownership experience.

There are some big announcements coming soon in this category.

We’re excited to bring more people into the DIMO ecosystem, and the reopening of the store today marks a great milestone in laying the foundation for getting more devices into people’s hands faster to realize our vision. . Don’t forget, many modern cars can connect without hardware. If you download the DIMO Mobile app and add your car, the app will tell you what options you have for your car.

FAQs

I still haven’t received the device I already ordered, where is it?

We wanted to thank everyone for their patience with the store. We provided a bunch of information here: https://docs.dimo.zone/dimo/su...

When will the devices ship?

Devices ordered during this store roll out will start shipping in December. We’ll fulfill orders in chronological order from when the order came through. To check your position in the order waitlist, you can go to https://orderlookup.dimo.zone/ and input your email.

Will I earn rewards from the order date?

No. We chose to provide rewards from the order date to previous orders when our shipping timelines were delayed.

Will I get an NFT like the Alpha or Beta Fleet?

No. We only did these commemorative NFTs for the first waves of preorders. Don’t worry, there’s no value you’re missing out on, and there will be lots more fun badges and NFTs to come.

Why did the price go up?

Since our last production runs, we’ve seen the continued effect of inflation and supply chain friction. Components are more expensive, harder to source, and we’ve also made improvements to the device and software. These include switching to Telit modems and spending even more money on security.

• Lower Your Monthly Payments on your EV. Users see average payment reductions of $150+/month compared to traditional vehicle financing. How? Tenet’s EV-specific financing takes advantage of your car’s superior value retention and tax credits to offer a deferred down payment.

• Exclusive Early Access. As an early DIMO user, you have exclusive access to one of our ecosystem partners: Tenet.

• Earn More Testnet Points! Users who convert with Tenet will earn 50,000 testnet points - the equivalent of ~4-5 weeks of EV driving data.

• Learn More! DIMO is hosting a community call with Tenet for users to hear how they can reduce their EV monthly payment by hundreds. Register for the event here!

EVs are changing auto financing

A lot is changing in the auto industry. Electric vehicles are rapidly becoming the preferred choice of many new vehicle shoppers, and the various EVs on the market are growing exponentially year-over-year.

But even most casual observers have noticed something about EVs: they’re expensive! According to Electrek, the average price of a new EV is $66,000. So while switching to an EV is advantageous for many reasons, the accessibility of these vehicles is still limited. Why?

The high cost is not just because EVs are luxury vehicles — the total cost of ownership is amplified by traditional vehicle commerce products and practices. From archaic dealership models, to predatory lending products, the automotive industry is taking advantage of these highly desirable electric vehicles, at the consumer’s expense.

Tenet + DIMO: two forces for users

What’s needed are new platforms and services which take advantage of the technological changes at the vehicle level but are built to ensure that power remains in the hands of consumers. OEMs, financial institutions, and tech companies don’t have driver interests at their core, and that’s a problem in the second largest category of consumer spending: consumers lose out.

DIMO is building a platform that is engineered to be aligned with drivers. Key to the platform are separate applications that offer new products and services, and Tenet is one of the first such partners. Tenet is a financing platform whose mission is to make climate investment a no-brainer (read more here). By taking advantage of the strong resale value of EVs and their associated tax credits, Tenet will allow DIMO users the option to finance/refinance their EV with a drastically lower monthly payment compared to traditional automotive financing methods1.

For DIMO users, there are two pathways to using Tenet: 1) refinance your existing vehicle or 2) obtain an EV-tailored loan to switch from gas to electric. Between the upcoming EV tax credits (read more here) and Tenet’s unique financing structure, it could be cheaper than you think to go electric, making some of these amazing new vehicles more accessible to everyone.

This partnership is just the first of many in the DIMOverse. When you connect your car to DIMO, you not only start collecting that data, but you turn your vehicle data into a digital asset that can stored or shared, and there are many service providers eager to read your data and provide you a better service. Keep your eye out for ecosystem partners here.

The details on the deal

The Tenet product saves you money, is easy to get started with, and rewards you for being a member of DIMO.

• Lower Monthly Payments: Payment reductions of more than $150 / month. Tenet acknowledges the EV’s unique value retention and available tax credits by offering a deferred payment loan which reduces monthly payments. Drivers can lock in low monthly payments by selecting up to 25% of their principal as a deferred down payment until the very last month of their loan. They can later use Federal and State tax credits to pay down their deferred payment.

• Easy Application & Process: Applications take less than 5 minutes. Customers automatically see their loan offers after entering basic personal and vehicle information.

• DIMO Rewards: DIMO users who successfully finance with Tenet will earn 50,000 testnet points for themselves. As a part of the agreement with Tenet, $200 for each user who converts will be paid to the DIMO treasury and distributed to users wallets upon DIMO network launch.

How to get started

Head to Tenet's website and create an account to start the process of saving money on your EV. From there, you’ll be able to use their interactive calculator to see how much you can save, and start the approval process in as little as 5 minutes.

If you’re still interested in learning more before diving in, we’ll jointly host a community event on Wednesday, 11/9 to hear from Tenet representatives, Orion Despo and Anand Prabhu, on what sets Tenet apart from other financing companies. Register here.

Here’s an example of how you can get a new Tesla Model 3 for less each month. See Tenet for more examples.

About DIMO

DIMO is a connected vehicle platform that doesn't come from your car maker, meaning it's on your side, helping you get access to the products and services that can actually save you money and improve your vehicle ownership experience. Connect your car today with the DIMO Mobile App or learn more at http://dimo.zone/.

About Tenet

Tenet is the leading climate financing platform, starting with electric vehicles. Tenet’s electric vehicle financing provides substantial savings by lowering monthly payments that lead to sustainable home electrification. Founded in 2021, Tenet is backed by Human Capital, Giant Ventures, Breyer Capital, Global Founders Capital, Firstminute Capital and additional angel investors. The company’s headquarters are in New York. For more information, visit www.tenet.com.

____________

FAQ - Full FAQ available here

1. Final pricing and credit approval may be subject to additional terms, conditions and limitations. APR is the Annual Percentage Rate. Any rates and/or terms that are stated or quoted are dependent upon the applicant(s) excellent credit history and requested loan characteristics, including but not limited to Loan Amount, Term, collateral characteristics, and state of residence. Your final credit decision, interest rate and term will be based upon your credit profile, term of loan, your verified income and debt ratios, and the valuation of the vehicle being financed. Your final payment will be based on the amount you borrow, interest rate and term of the loan. Advertised and/or posted rates and credit decision criteria are subject to change without notice.

2. Applicants who voluntarily choose the deferred payment option may defer up to 25% of the Loan Amount to the final payment period of the loan. The deferred amount will accrue interest according to a simple interest method at the stated APR. The total lifetime interest of a loan with a deferred option will be greater than the lifetime interest without the deferred option. A representative example and comparison between a 4.49% APR standard loan and deferred loan of $45,000 with an $11,250 (25%) deferred option and 60-month term are as follows: standard loan will have 60 payments of $838.73 with lifetime interest of $5,323.88. A deferred loan will have 60 payments of $671.14 with an additional $11,250 due at the time of the final payment, with lifetime interest of $6,518.53.

3. Actual rates and terms will depend on the applicant’s credit quality, verified income, and the collateral being financed. For those with excellent credit, a Loan Amount of $55,000.00 with an Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of 4.50% with a 84-month Term will have a Monthly Payment of $764.51 with Total Finance Charges of $9,218.84 and Total Payments of $64,218.84 over the life of the loan. If the Deferred Payment Option is chosen, and the Deferred Amount is $13,750.00, there would be 84 Monthly Payments of $624.94 with a Final Payment of $13,750.00 at the end of the Term, with Total Finance Charges of $11,244.96 and Total Payments of $66,244.96 over the life of the loan.

Welcome to the 527 new drivers who added their cars to DIMO in the last month! Looking forward to helping you get connected and saving.

• 🌎 Expanding Ecosystem. New partners are joining the DIMO Ecosystem, increasing the ways that you can save money when you take ownership of your data.
• 🤑 Total Vehicle Value = $145M. We're starting to track the value of all vehicles connected to DIMO. As big as this number seems, it's just a small measure of the value the network can unlock.
• 📦 Shipping rolls on. We continue to ramp up, delivering devices and getting users connected.

— The DIMO Core Team

🛠 Built on DIMO

DIMO is a place for you to discover new apps and services that can save you money

Introducing Built on DIMO — the place you can find new projects building on the DIMO Network.

⚡️ New this Month

Tenet (https://www.tenet.com/) If you finance your Tesla, you could save hundreds of dollars per month. Tenet is a financing platform designed around electric vehicles. By taking advantage of the strong resale value of EVs, Tenet allows DIMO users the option to finance/refinance their EV with a drastically lower monthly payment compared to traditional automotive financing methods. Learn more and get started here.

🛠 Most Used Apps

Carousell (https://www.carousell.autos/) Carousell has already saved DIMO users thousands on transactions and hundreds per month in payments using their data. Start with a Vehicle Genius Report on your car to find out if holding, refinancing, or selling would be most economical. If you're planning to sell your car or buy a new one, a Carousell expert can help.

📊 Telematics

$145,000,000 👀

That's the approximate resale value of all the vehicles that have been connected to DIMO, either via hardware or software connections. As of this newsletter, there are 3,645 connected cars at an estimated value of $40,000 (almost half are Teslas).

What's more is that the average driver has to spend about 2-3x the value of their vehicle in fuel, maintenance, insurance and other expenses, meaning that the economic activity all these vehicles represent is even bigger than that number alone.

With so little transparency into the true cost of vehicle ownership, DIMO is committed to helping drivers take control of their data and use that data to save money. More cars = more economic activity in DIMO.

📦 Shipping DIMO Hardware

Shipping updates

Another "best month ever" is in the books, and we crossed two milestones: +1,000 devices shipped in a single month and +2,000 shipped total. We still expect all pre-orders to be fulfilled by end of November. You can read the complete hardware update here.

>>> Additional information about Hardware & Shipping is always here.

📱 Product News

Product announcements and news with a focus on shipping

Improved Vehicle Intelligence widgets are going through checks and QA over the next two weeks. These improved widgets will make getting value from your DIMO data much easier and more meaningful. Alongside the data will be tips and tricks for extending the health and longevity of your car.

We're working on one really important Vehicle Intelligence widget that we'll keep secret...for now.

🚙 Last Ride

Some final thoughts, asks, and musings

You're hopefully going to see more of DIMO around the media, and this past month DIMO was featured in a few great publications:

• OurNetwork Issue #144 from Spencer Noon and Mason Nystrom cover DIMO along with other physical infrastructure crypto projects.
• The Public Key #28 from Chainalysis features DIMO Cofounder Alex Rawitz.
• DIMO + Tenet Community Event Wednesday November 9th, 5pm EST.

Keep in touch

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIMO_Network

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/dimonetwork

Check out our Blog: https://blog.dimo.zone/

In October we cleared 1,000 units shipped in a month for the first time, a 266% increase since inventory first started landing at the warehouse in August. This brings us to a grand total of 2,082 devices shipped out of approximately 4,300 preordered.

One background project that is nearly complete is the onboarding of a new manufacturing partner in Poland, which will be making the AutoPi devices going forward. We’re running final tests on the devices from this new facility, and assuming all the devices pass, we’ll have expanded capacity to fulfill both existing orders and soon, new ones.

Below is an updated version of the shipping chart that we have published regularly with some tracking for our community to see how we’re doing against the goals we set in August.

We expect to open the store again in November, so if you have not yet ordered hardware or would like to buy more keep your eye out for updates. To get on the waitlist and sign up for notifications, add your car in the DIMO Mobile App.

All other Hardware and Shipping questions can be answered here:https://docs.dimo.zone/dimo/su...

The DIMO landscape changes fast. Check out some new sections and data that show you where we are heading together.

• 💰 Save money with Carousell. One of the first apps building on DIMO, Carousell offers users an incredibly easy way to save money with DIMO data. In some cases, thousands of dollars.
• 🔌 Data insights. We're starting to find some information within DIMO vehicle data, and we're just at the tip of the iceberg.
• 📦 Shipping is a bit behind. While shipping continues to increase, there have been a few bugs that led to delays. We still expect to fulfill all preorders by the end of November.

— The DIMO Core Team

🛠 Built on DIMO

DIMO is a place for you to discover new apps and services that can save you money

Introducing Built on DIMO — the place you can find new projects building on DIMO data.

• Carousell (https://www.carousell.autos/) Carousell is a vehicle concierge that uses your DIMO data to help you save. Start with a Vehicle Genius Report on your car to find out if holding, refinancing, or selling would be most economical. If you're planning to sell your car or buy a new one, a Carousell expert can help. Some DIMO users have saved more than +$7,000 each by using Carousell to find the best price for their car or a path to refinancing. Book a free consultation for a limited time.

📊 Telematics

Monthly recap of DIMO Network growth with a focus on stats and data from the project

We like milestones, and we reached another one! 3,000 cars have officially connected to DIMO.

So what are we seeing across those vehicles? We're beginning to explore. One interesting chart shows how much more volatile fuel is for gas cars vs. EVs. With EV drivers often charging at home, their average fuel level is much higher. They also don't have to hedge their behavior as much with the rise and fall of commodities.

📦 Shipping DIMO Hardware

Shipping updates

This September we will more than double the shipping output from the month before. This puts us a little behind our goal, but still leaves us in good position to ramp up since inventory is not the limiting factor. We had a software bug to fix this month which caused minor delays, but with the patch out, we can keep speeding up. We expect all pre-orders to be fulfilled by end of November.

>>> Additional information about Hardware & Shipping is always here.

📱 Product News

Product announcements and news with a focus on shipping

We've focused mainly on quality of life improvements in the app this month. This means bug fixes, feature enhancements, and reducing friction. Keep a look out for the next update when you'll see some the car keys — a gateway to some more features in DIMO.

🚙 Last Ride

Some final thoughts, asks, and musings

Shop Reopening — Part 1

After a summer of navigating supply chains and building great features into the DIMO Mobile app, we’re excited to share the re-opening plan for the DIMO Shop.

We're not yet selling more DIMO devices, but we are selling accessories like extension cables and antennas. Devices will go on sale late October. Full details.

Keep in touch

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIMO_Network

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/dimonetwork

Check out our Blog: https://blog.dimo.zone/

For consumers: Never before has there been a mobile app that allows you to access and control multiple vehicles from different OEMs in the same app, log performance data, and store all of your vehicle documents in one place. In other words, if you’re ever switching between your Ford and Toyota, or Tesla and Chevy apps, those days are over.

For fleets: We’re re-imagining from the ground up your relationship with fleet telematics and building a better platform to access services that help your business needs.

What’s new:

• See all of your DIMO connected vehicles in one view

• Monitor, maintain, and compare usage across your vehicles

• See all your vehicles on one handy map

Built for:

• Managing vehicles for friends and family

• Comparing performance between your vehicles

• Running your business

DIMO is onboarding users to the best connected vehicle experience. For the roughly 60% of American households that own more than one vehicle or the 200,000 private companies that operate fleets, that experience just got better. This is the starting point for a lot more native features and applications to come that will continue to enhance the multi-vehicle experience. And of course we don’t just mean the U.S. — DIMO is available in Canada and much of Europe today.

But let’s dive into this brand new interface and unpack some of what’s inside.

All Your Vehicles In One App

Today DIMO offers three ways to connect vehicles to the platform:

• Smartcar Integration — with a compatible car you can add and connect your car in minutes, storing data like location, tire pressure, fuel level, and more.

• Tesla Integration — We’ve built a direct connection to the Tesla API that allows you to pull even more of your own Tesla data into the DIMO app.

• DIMO x AutoPi — The first DIMO compatible hardware device allows anyone with a car made in the last 10 years (expanding soon) to collect and store their vehicle data.

By combining these integration methods, users can add virtually any combination of vehicles to DIMO today. This provides unprecedented flexibility to consumers and as far as we know, it’s an industry first.

Monitor, Maintain, Compare

If you have multiple vehicles at home or at your business, the health and usage of your vehicles are sure to cross your mind. DIMO helps track mileage across your fleet and will make comparing vehicle states – like fuel level or maintenance requirements – simple.

Know that some of your vehicles are used more than others, but not sure how much? DIMO can read patterns across your vehicles and tell you which ones are seeing a greater load than others and how that compares to past weeks.

As with any data stored in DIMO, this data will become more valuable over time as DIMO democratizes access to features traditionally used by fleets in old, ugly, enterprise software

Fleet Map

Maybe your family borrowed the cars or your employees are all out on job sites, but no matter what, if you have more than one vehicle, you have to have thought about tracking them all at the same time. GPS is enabled through any of the integration methods outlined above, so if your cars or trucks are connected, you’ll be able to see where they are in DIMO.

Your Multi-Vehicle Future

Add and manage vehicles for family and friends

Not all of us are vehicle experts, so the reality of vehicle ownership is that we all often rely on a friend or family member with a bit more knowledge than us. If you’re that expert, you may already be helping friends and family get connected to DIMO.

In the future you may choose to delegate some data access to another DIMO user who can help you monitor or maintain aspects about your vehicle. A great connected vehicle experience will never be just about a great app: any app must enable users to better interact with services in the real world.

Run your business with telematics you control

For the hundreds of thousands of companies that manage fleets today, telematics software is old news. Why DIMO?

Vehicles are changing and the internet is more open. DIMO is built by connected vehicle experts committed to reimagining what connected vehicle architecture can and should be. There are new software building blocks that allow us to build solutions that are more user-friendly and more open to software developers. When you have more software developers competing for your business, that’s a win.

Connect your vehicles today and use some of the standard DIMO features. In the next few months, you may have an opportunity to beta test some of the apps coming soon to DIMO that help you with maintenance, vehicle sales and purchases, and more.

Get started by adding your vehicles in the DIMO App today!

On the topic of our relationship with data, he states:

“You need to have a trust layer…where data from these connected vehicles can by syndicated out to insurance companies, operators, the government,... and regulations can be a lot more effectively put into software rather than arbitrarily the result of an investigation or a situation. We look at what we’re building long-term as a way to enable those interactions to happen in a much more sane and rational way with the user at the center of everything rather than just being a consideration after the fact.”

For more information about what our past, and the future we’re striving to achieve, listen to the podcast below!

Apple       Spotify       Google       Youtube

At the beginning of August we received some new inventory at our 3PL (Calchip) and members of the Digital Infrastructure team were on site to inspect the devices, set up processes, and ensure that we are ready to ship.

We aimed to ship 500 devices in August. Some of the inventory required to hit that number was slightly delayed, so we missed the mark, shipping only 320 in August. The good news is that the remainder of the August inventory and the September inventory is all either on site or scheduled to arrive next week, so it’s smooth sailing for September. On the first day of September alone we shipped 124 devices.

Meanwhile, DIMO Network’s first hardware manufacturer, AutoPi, is keeping production moving on the remainder of the preordered devices and for devices that have yet to be sold.

Below is an updated chart based not only on our new distribution capabilities, but on the latest forecasts of devices from our manufacturer. The summary is this: we have a path to fill all devices already ordered and open the store for new orders within the next 10 weeks.

By and large our community has been patient and supportive despite the delays. 97% of people who ordered devices have stuck with us, and we couldn’t be more excited to get them in your hands . For those who have been using the mobile app you have no doubt seen a continuous and impressive rate of shipment of new features.

Over the next few months the DIMO roadmap will also include a variety of awesome new updates for DIMO Data Miner specific users.The data we’re gathering from them is improving and the user experience will as well.

Last but certainly not least, we know there is a ton of interest in purchasing DIMO devices. At the last mark, we had 3:1 cars added to hardware available. We’re doing some final checks on the supply chain, but we hope to open the store in September. To get on the waitlist and sign up for notifications, add your car in the DIMO Mobile App.

All other Hardware and Shipping questions can be answered here: https://docs.dimo.zone/dimo/su...

August has flown by and there are big accomplishments to recap as well as some exciting developments to look forward to.

• 📦 Shipping Picks Up: We're back to shipping DIMO devices! Inventory is now coming in steadily and DIMO devices are shipping out to users.
• 🚗🚙🚘 Fleet Tab: We shipped a new feature in the mobile app that provides a comprehensive view across vehicles, whether you have 2 cars or 20.
• 🛣 Roadmap & Future Milestones: We've overhauled the public roadmap and will continue to keep this regularly updated. Check out the Roadmap AMA happening later today.

— The DIMO Core Team

📊 Telematics

Monthly recap of DIMO Network growth with a focus on stats and data from the project

At DIMO, we take pride in building a connectivity platform that works for (almost) any car today, and we will relentlessly pursue that ambitious goal. In the meantime, we just crossed over 400 unique models connected to DIMO across 27 unique manufacturers.

If we want to maximize the use of vehicle data in ways that serve all drivers, we have our work cut out for us to standardize it across all these makes and models

In addition to the growing list of Makes and Models, we're seeing the growth of connected users, particularly amongst AutoPi users. In the last two months, the number of individual users who have paired an AutoPi has grown by over 120%. 

📱Product News

Product announcements and news with a focus on shipping

August has seen a slew of bug fixes and improvements and at lease one major feature release: the Fleet Tab.

Never before has there been a mobile app that allows you to store telematics data, log important documents, use vehicle controls, and access vehicle applications for multiple cars from different vehicle manufacturers. Welcome to the future.

Vehicle Data

Many people connecting their DIMO device have been surprised — and admittedly disappointed — to see they don't get much data on about their car. What the heck?

This is a car-by-car issue. Each car has its own data codes, meaning you need a different dictionary for each car. We're working around the clock to improve this by getting more codes, and we know everyone's experience is going to improve. More details can be found in this blog post.

📦 Shipping DIMO Hardware!

Shipping updates

Just watching discord, the enthusiasm this month has been incredible. As of this newsletter, 244 units have shipped this month. Our plan is to ship 500, and with shipments now leaving twice per week, we think we'll hit that mark, or we'll make up for it in the first few days of September.

All the information you could ask for on Hardware & Shipping is available at that link.

We also have as special section in our Discord Server, #✅get-verified, where you can visit if you'd like to show off your install. Click the picture below to visit.

🚙 Last Ride

Some final thoughts, asks, and musings

Roadmap

Requests

Keep in touch

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIMO_Network
Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/dimonetwork
Check out our Blog: https://blog.dimo.zone/

This past month was all about releasing incredible new features.

• 🛣 10 million Connected Miles: DIMO drivers have logged this massive number since we launched.
• 📱 Major App Updates: Open Vehicle ID, Glovebox, a new UI, and vehicle controls were added.
• 🖼 Vehicle IDs on Polygon: Hundreds of vehicle IDs were claimed by users in the first week of the Beta.
• 🇪🇺 More European Car Support: Peugeot/Opel (Vauxhall for UK)/DS/Citroen will show up in the Connect flow for Europe. Connect those cars!

— The DIMO Core Team

📊 Telematics

Monthly recap of DIMO Network growth with a focus on stats and data from the project

There are two metrics we're featuring this month: Connected Miles and the Odometer Leaderboard.

Since launching vehicle connectivity a few months ago, drivers have logged over 10 million Connected Miles with DIMO. It's a testament to our growing community and one passionate about their cars.

Amongst the thousands of vehicles connected, we've started tracking the first of many leaderboards (to be public soon). The Odometer Leaderboard below shows the car with the most miles from each OEM. Out in front is a BMW with 271,675 miles.

📱Product News

Product announcements and news with a focus on shipping

Along with a brand new UI we've introduced some important new features that lay the foundation for the next generation of apps and services built on DIMO:

• Vehicle Tab + Controls Beta: Lock and unlock your vehicle(s) from the DIMO Mobile App.
• Glovebox: Store your critical vehicle documents — Title, Registration, Insurance, Service Records, etc. — in one place.
• Open Vehicle ID Beta: Create the digital ID for your vehicle.

>>> Read the full details about Season 1 Release 1

Open Vehicle ID Beta

While still in Beta, the Open Vehicle ID is a huge step forward for DIMO and it will eventually become one of the critical building blocks for the entire DIMO ecosystem. For the more technically inclined, you can check out the contract, or visit OpenSea to see the collection of user vehicles.

📦 Shipping DIMO Hardware!

Shipping updates

Fresh inventory arrives next week! We'll be checking the devices and testing before starting to pack them up and send them off. We've also launched a new page with all the information you could ask for on Hardware & Shipping.

🚙 Last Ride

Some final thoughts, asks, and musings

There are some major updates to EV tax credits in the latest senate bill. Click the image of the tweet below to read a great summary. For anyone out there who drives or perhaps more importantly, owns or manages a fleet, this signals a sea change in how  consumers and businesses will approach their next car purchase.

Keep in touch

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIMO_Network
Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/dimonetwork
Check out our Blog: https://blog.dimo.zone/

Controls, Glovebox, & Vehicle ID (NFT)

These new features that lay the foundation for the next generation of apps and services built on DIMO:

1. Vehicle Tab - Controls Beta
2. Glovebox - Store your documents
3. Open Vehicle ID Beta - Creating an on-chain home for your car

Vehicle Tab - Now With Controls

Your car’s new one stop shop — data, status, and controls. The new Vehicle Tab puts your car data front-and-center, allowing you to understand the health of your vehicle at a glance and take real-world action on your car. As we add more functionality and partnerships, they’ll show up here.

Controls Beta  – Compatible vehicles can now be securely locked and unlocked from the app – making it possible for users to access vehicle controls and data from Tesla, Ford, GM, BMW, Toyota, Hyundai, VW, Volvo, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, LandRover (and more!): in the same app.

In order to use this feature, you’ll need to enable vehicle commands. You will be prompted to grant permissions. Once your vehicle is added, you’ll be able to lock and unlock it from the Vehicle Tab.

( ! ) We’ve built in a short time delay to make sure you don’t accidentally pop your trunk.

What will Vehicle Controls unlock for DIMO? This building block is critical for any app that might delegate access to a vehicle such as a distributed ride or car share app or on-demand maintenance.

Glovebox

Glovebox is exactly what it sounds like — a digital Glovebox to store your most important vehicle documents like title, registration, insurance, service records, and more. For now, you can upload images of your documents to the app, but in the future DIMO will pull specific metadata like expiration dates and levels of coverage that will allow developers to build services on top of DIMO.

In order to use the Glovebox, first select the vehicle for which you’d like to upload documents, then head over to the Glovebox in the top right corner of the Vehicle Tab by tapping the three dots. Select the type of document you’d like to upload and either take a photo of it or choose it from your camera roll.

In the future, you’ll be able to opt into sharing metadata from these documents, allowing new types of applications to be built on DIMO.

Open Vehicle ID - Beta

An Open Vehicle ID is a digital asset that represents the ownership of the data you collect with DIMO — you can think of it like a digital twin of your real-world vehicle (and yes, it’s stored on a blockchain as an NFT). When combined with Glovebox, Open Vehicle IDs make it easier than ever for you to monetize your data, and even transact with service providers like mechanics, insurance companies, or car marketplaces.

Once you connect a web3 wallet, the Open Vehicle ID will become the simplest way to bring your car data with you to apps built with DIMO. You can easily connect a wallet by opening the settings in the profile tab of the app and following the setup instructions.

To mint your Open Vehicle ID, tap the Glovebox menu and go to the bottom of the tray where it says “Open Vehicle ID”. Follow the steps to mint a digital version of your car with the car image customizer.

There are over 10,000 possible combinations you can use to express yourself through your Open Vehicle ID.

Make it look exactly like your vehicle, or dive-in and customize the body, to the wheels, to the accessories and more. If you need inspiration, you can use the randomizer button.

For crypto native users, this Open Vehicle ID is an NFT. This means you can add it to your web3 wallet of choice, and you’ll always have the record that you were one of the first people to mint your car.

During the early days of the DIMO app ecosystem vehicle IDs will have limited functionality: sales and transfers are restricted, and it’s free to mint!

Where is this headed?

The Big Idea is that having an asset that represents the data, connectivity, and identity of your vehicle will make the vehicle itself more useful and valuable.

To complete the cycle, making all of this available to developers on an open platform (like a smart-contract enabled blockchain) will unlock apps that plug vehicles into more services and turn them into more liquid assets.

Transferring Your DIMO Vehicle When You Sell Your Car

The earlier you get started collecting the data, the better - so make sure you add your car and claim your Open Vehicle ID today by downloading the app.

We will update the contract for Open Vehicle IDs in the future to add the ability to further customize the look and feel, sell the asset when you sell your vehicle, pay for apps and services, and store data in a more decentralized fashion.

If you’re excited about building the future of connected devices, we’re hiring designers, engineers, growth hackers, and more. You can also apply for alpha access for the DIMO developer toolkit so you can get started building your own app here.

The first chapter of DIMO has been all about pouring the foundation: a world-class connected vehicle app, our first hardware product, and community of thousands collecting data and earning testnet rewards.

In the next phase, we’re opening up the DIMO platform to developers to build their own apps. We’re already working with teams across key categories - vehicle finance, insurance, and data monetization, and more. If you're interested in getting into the DIMO developer platform beta program, you can learn more and fill out an interest form here.

Our goals for DIMO apps are simple: we want to make mobility…

• Cheaper & more efficient
• More user-friendly & flexible
• More fun and social

To make it easy for developers to build, and to create a consistent experience as users navigate the DIMO-verse, we’re launching Pods: The DIMO Design System.

What’s a design system?

A design system is a set of reusable patterns and components that can be used to quickly design applications. By using Pods, anyone can dramatically increase product iteration speed by focusing on combining components that fit their needs instead of building them from the ground up.

Design systems also help engineering teams move quickly and stay in sync with one another through a consistent shared language. By reusing components and following common standards like spacing, typography, and responsiveness, engineering implementation can focus on building more rather than resolving front-end design problems. Standardization across a design system also means engineers don’t have to have a design background to build really amazing products – just drag, drop, and arrange components that already look great.

In short, a design system…

1. Helps designers move faster with a highly customizable and scalable system.
2. Helps developers build quicker with standardized components that are easy to implement
3. Minimizes the gap between conceptualization and implementation by having a source of truth for designers and developers.

Who is a design system for?

A design system can be used by designers and engineers of any skill level. Whether creating a quick proof-of-concept mockup or designing an entire application from scratch, Pods can help anyone hit the ground running with any idea for a mobile app or website.

How do I use the Pods Design System?

Head over to the Figma file here, make a copy, and start using the components right away. If you’d like, you can swap out the DIMO colors or typography to add your own brand to the components and make them yours. The spacing is standardized, so the most meaningful change you can make would be to choose your own colors.

Pods: DIMO Design System | Figma Community

Figma Community file - Introducing Pods: the DIMO Design System

Figma

Keep in mind that the colors are based on a naming convention that helps determine whether light text or dark text should be used on top of the color. Anything 500 or higher should have light text and anything 400 or lower should have dark text for the best legibility. Pods is default dark mode, but inverting the colors is easy to do with Figma’s selection color picker.

How do I contribute to the DIMO design system?

• Join us on our Discord server and contribute to the DIMO ecosystem alongside designers and developers who are excited about building the future of connected devices.
• Tune in every Friday from 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM EST to watch us work! Get involved in the chat as we design and build the DIMO Mobile App live.
• We’re hiring a Digital Designer! If you want to be a part of building Pods, apply here.

As the DIMO Design team continues to iterate on the system we’ll publish more up-to-date versions of Pods with improvements to individual components and updates that will make the system even easier to use.

If you’d like to see Pods applied in the real world, download the DIMO Mobile App and add your car.

What's next?

This is the first of many milestones on our roadmap that involve creating open-source tools for DIMO developers, and in the coming months we’ll have more to share on other digital public goods in development: Smart Contracts, Open-Source Apps & Hardware, Device Decoding, and more.

Shoutout to Dora Tang and Daniel Farrell for a rapid-fire cadence of weekly syncs and for getting this first version of Pods up and running!

Check out a recap of all that's happened at DIMO in June:

• 📈 We crossed 2,000 connected cars and 25,000 vehicles added to the app.
• 📱  Several major app upgrades and new features are on the horizon and close to launch. Improved UX, data portability, and more.
• 🧑‍💻 We're working with the first app developers to bring new apps and services to DIMO that will add ways for your to save money or will improve your vehicle ownership experience.

— The DIMO Core Team

📊 Telematics

Monthly recap of DIMO Network growth with a focus on stats and data from the project

Not only did we cross a fun milestone (2,000 cars connected), but we're seeing the amount of data collected add up. We're actively collecting more by deploying hardware and increasing the polling rate as we dial in connectivity across integration methods.

The value of this data - both in its aggregate form and to you as an individual driver - grows over time. More data makes for more usecases on the DIMO developer platform.

📱Product News

Product announcements and news with a focus on shipping

Big changes are on their way to the mobile app. We've improving the UX, and we have some exciting new features coming like:

• All your vehicles on the same map (great for fleets!)
• Lock and unlock your car (for select vehicles)
• Document upload so that you can store critical data like maintenance records and more.

📦 Shipping DIMO Hardware!

Shipping updates

Over 250 DIMO x AutoPi devices have been shipped or delivered to users and most of those are already online. Installs are now going very smoothly.

We have one more batch of devices going out this week before we take a small hiatus while we wait for new inventory. With several thousand devices arriving in July and August, we'll increase the shipping speed.

Estimated Shipping Dates: https://orderlookup.dimo.zone/

Want to join the Waitlist? Add your car in the DIMO Mobile App.

🚙 Last Ride

Some final thoughts, asks, and musings

📣 June AMA 📣 We hosted a discussion about how we're building DIMO as a developer platform and app ecosystem. You can watch the recording here:

Keep in touch

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIMO_Network
Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/dimonetwork
Check out our Blog: https://blog.dimo.zone/

DIMO is excited to announce that we’re building these features on Polygon, and we're glad to have their support as we grow.

What is DIMO?

Ethereum demonstrated how closed and siloed financial infrastructure can be made more efficient with open and composable systems. The same opportunity exists in the physical world when moving goods and people - we just need some better digital primitives.

Automakers, dealerships, insurance companies, mobility ride hailing companies, and other players are fragmented in the same way as the financial world. To drive towards a safer, more equitable, and zero-emission future in the mobility industry, we need to change. That’s DIMO’s mission.

Building DIMO on Polygon gives both projects the ability to drive ahead in key areas. Over this partnership, we’ll build a new on-ramp that can help onboard millions of people to web3, advance the use cases for Polygon’s tech by widening the scope of what can be accomplished with NFTs, and develop new incentives for sustainable development in both the crypto and mobility world.

Bringing web3 to the masses

DIMO is built to support a new wave of auto and mobility applications. We’re working with startups and established companies to develop insurance, peer-to-peer car sharing, car marketplaces, data businesses, and more, built on top of data and connected vehicle assets owned by users. If developers can provide amazing apps and services on DIMO, it will make DIMO the best connected vehicle ecosystem for any driver, anywhere.  

To bring the users of those applications, we’ve launched an open-source connected vehicle app and are growing a hardware ecosystem that makes any vehicle from any OEM compatible. We’re also incentivizing connected cars with the soon-to-be-launched $DIMO token. In the DIMO app users link a crypto wallet to create an account and connect a vehicle via software or hardware giving them access to insights about their car and access to the DIMO app ecosystem.

$DIMO will exist on Polygon and will initially be used for governance, staking, and unlocking enhanced access to pro features. Naturally, the community can guide the development of the token over time, and developers will be able to build any application on the platform.

Our goal is to build a connected vehicle app so useful that non-crypto native users will be excited about the product. A key driver of mainstream adoption will be products built on crypto protocols that don’t feel like crypto products. Polygon fits with this alignment, and DIMO will be the first such product for millions of people who own a car.

Beyond PFP NFTs

NFTs have become wildly popular for their role in the art, fashion, and music industries, but a token linked to an art file is just the beginning. In DIMO, NFTs are building blocks for much more complex applications.

To build the DIMO developer platform, we’re establishing key primitives that will also demonstrate the extensibility of web3 technology in some never before seen ways. We’ll be launching a Vehicle NFT and Trip NFT, and empowering developers to use them to build new mobility experiences into their apps. .

Vehicle NFTs

DIMO unlocks the digital story of a vehicle’s life by allowing users to mint the digital identity of their most valuable IoT device. This digital identity (NFT) is the anchor for all driving data, insurance information and mobility use-cases.

As the vehicle is shared, driven, staked, the vehicle data is signed by a secure element on the vehicle, and automatically attached to the NFT as vehicle lifecycle history, stored off-chain. The NFT itself becomes a digital bearer asset, instead of just a JPEG.

At any point in time, the owner of the NFT can access this data or can grant access to a 3rd party (insurance, accident reconstruction, car-sharing, pre-sale inspection, etc).

Trip NFTs & Proof of Movement

DIMO allows a user to take a subset of the data streaming from their vehicle and wrap it up into an NFT. This NFT serves as the basis for a core concept in DIMO: Proof of Movement.

To use an analogy closer to the common crypto world, trips are transactions. As a driver, you should be able to store, privately, the history of your trips whether you drove to work, drove for Uber, lent your car out, etc. You should be able to take your safe driving history from one account to another.

As a global community, we should be able to agree that something like a car going from point A to point B really happened in the same way we can agree 1 MATIC went from one wallet to another when we look at the blockchain. DIMO is built to support Proof of Movement.

So Why Polygon?

The Polygon project is imbued with a few key properties that we support at DIMO.

First, they’re a team of builders who care about shipping products and who are investing a tremendous amount of resources in developing long-term Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. DIMO is a long-term oriented project, and our roadmap aligns.

Second, DIMO is committed to accelerating the transition to a zero-emission future and Polygon is a carbon negative proof-of-stake chain. We’ve deliberately designed DIMO’s tokenomics so that we don’t incentivize unnecessary driving or contribute to emissions with on-chain transactions.

Third, Polygon’s low gas fees make it possible for us to affordably deploy sophisticated smart contracts, provide a low-friction user experience with meta transactions, and settle transactions in seconds.

Fourth, Polygon is EVM based and is compatible with a wide range of useful and composable dapps. Apps like Tally, Snapshot, Gnosis-Safe, Collab.Land, Opensea, Metamask, and more are ready to go.

What’s up next?

• Vehicle NFT. Within the next couple of months, users will be able to mint their car as an NFT. In doing so, they’ll  create the digital identity of their car and be able to share their car socially.
• Token Launch. We’re busy designing and preparing the $DIMO token. You can read more about the tokenomics and distribution here.
• Trip NFT. Later in 2022, trip’s will go from being a web2 construct in the app, to an NFT that attaches to your Vehicle NFT.

What can I do now?

Download the DIMO Mobile app and connect your car. Don’t have a car? You can still create an account and generate your referral code to earn $DIMO when people who sign up with your URL connect their cars. You can also just Join the Movement by joining the DIMO Discord.

To get right to the point, we’ve had a few setbacks that have pushed back our shipping timelines. This won’t impact earnings, if anything it might cause you to earn more. Regardless, we want to get these devices in your hands just as bad you do and there’s a clear path to making that happen. Your support keeps us fired up and we thank you for your patience.

In this update we’ll explain what happened, provide new expected timelines, when we plan to open back up the store for more orders, and how we’re opening up hardware production to more providers. We’re also hosting a Hardware AMA on Twitter on Tuesday May 24th at 12pm EDT where AutoPi, the company who produces the DIMO Data Miner, will present and take questions with us.

Our new expected shipping table is below, but as you’ll read further down, delays are still possible (albeit increasingly less likely).

Additionally, we put up a temporary website for those who have already ordered where you can enter your order number to check your shipping estimate and the points you’ve earned (data coming soon). Don’t worry, even though they aren’t showing up in the DIMO mobile app just, yet we’re tracking them. More on rewards in a later section.

So what happened?

Covid lockdowns in China pushed us back a few weeks, but we thought we might still get a good chunk of devices out in May. However, earlier this week one of the components on the circuit board failed testing. That means that instead of giving the green light to produce and receive 2,500 units in two weeks, we now have to swap out the component, produce another small batch, and test those units for a few weeks.

It should be an easy fix. Alternatives to that component are easy to get and we don’t expect other setbacks. However, hardware projects are a bit less predictable and harder to control so we want to start being more humble and realistic —additional delays are still possible. While with most projects we’d make no excuses and work around the clock to get it done, hardware projects simply have more variables that are out of your control. No amount of pushing on our end can make the next revision come faster.

What does this mean for users?

Despite how it may seem, the effects are largely positive for customers. On the one hand, more time will pass before you get to hold that sleek device in your hand and take control of your car data. On the other, you’re already part of the movement and you’re already earning.

We are calculating points as if you received and connected your DIMO Miner the day you placed your order.

In the future, customers will only start earning when they actually connect their car. But, since the delays are on us, not you, we’ll count your devices as connected. That means you’ll already have a good streak bonus going and, so long as you don’t cancel your order, you’ll receive these backdated earnings when your device ships even if you don’t have a car to connect it to right away. We want to err on the side of being generous as we appreciate you all putting your faith in our team.

While we’re limited in what we’re allowed to say about the $DIMO token, this delay will not have any negative impacts on the amount you’d receive.

What’s the long-term plan to scale hardware?

It has never been our intention to stay this involved in the hardware game in the long-term. We want DIMO to be like Linux, capable of operating with any compatible device, produced by many different manufacturers.

While we work to get these generation one devices shipped out, we’re already far along in conversations with other capable hardware manufacturers who are eager to produce the next set of DIMO devices. In 2023, we expect there will be other variations similar to our current miner, cheaper micro dongles that piggyback off of your phone's cell connection, dash cameras, and more.

We’re drafting up a nifty proposal that specifies how manufacturers can receive a device license, stake the $DIMO token, and use NFTs to “mint” a new device. You can read about it here and let us know what you think in our Discord’s #🔩hardware channel.

Finally, this wouldn’t be a DIMO post if we didn’t remind that you to create an account and add your cars in our web app, iOS app, or Android app. If you have a compatible software subscription, you can connect your car today even without the hardware (in fact, you’ll just be earning twice).

Here’s the tldr:

• Most data in a car (like what the tire pressure is or whether there is a check engine light) is communicated in a language called the CAN protocol: your car’s native language.
• Since the data is in a specific language, to understand the data you need a “dictionary” — this dictionary is called a DBC file. You use this to decode data.
• Each car speaks its own dialect, meaning you need a different dictionary for each car. Building these dictionaries takes time.
• With your DIMO Miner connected, you may see a little bit or a lot of data depending on how many of the data points we can decode. Every user will have a slightly different experience.
• We are working to support open efforts to decode more data points and improve the DIMO experience for each driver as part of our long term vision of building the best connected vehicle platform.

Your car’s OBD2 port

Nearly every car made in the last 30 years has an Onboard Diagnostics Port of the 2nd generation (OBD2). The purpose of the port is to interface with the Electronic Control Units (ECUs) of the car. Almost every part of the car has an ECU, basically the sensors and computers that do things like read tire pressure, inject fuel in the engine at the right times, or control gear shifting in the transmission. An ECU is like a little conductor who makes that specific part of the car work.

ECUs need to share data in order to make sure everything is working in sync. You can also get data from the sensors and ECUs to perform diagnosis, data analysis, and reporting on possible problems with the vehicle. Turns out, this is an insane amount of data.

Data from car sensors or ECUs is encoded by the CAN protocol — think of this as the native language of your car. The data is coordinated by the CAN bus, which is like the central post office in the car where data signals are exchanged. When you plug into an OBD2 port, the device you’re using is talking with the CAN bus to get the relevant data. Newer vehicles might have multiple CAN buses for different use cases.

For example, there is a sensor on the tires that reads tire pressure. That sensor might produce a message like “pressure of right front tire = 50 psi.” That data is passed to the CAN bus in a signal. Remember that the signal is in the car’s language (CAN protocol) so if you want to read that signal, you need a dictionary. That dictionary is in a format called DBC file.  

Quick Review:

Here’s the DIMO version of the graphic above:

This may seem simple, but it’s actually where things get just a little tricky…

Different Car, Different DBCs

While all cars use the CAN protocol as their native language, each car has its own dialect. These dialects are different enough that they need their own dictionary, or their own DBC file.

The DBC file (think dictionary) for a Toyota RAV4 is different from the DBC file from a Ford Mustang. There is some overlap between the cars made by each automaker, but there can even be slight differences in a car year to year or trim to trim due to changes in parts and components.

For example the 2022 RAV4 Hybrid has a different set of radar sensors (made by a different manufacturer) than the 2021 RAV4 Hybrid, meaning a different set of CAN signals are produced. If you want to read the data from these vehicles, you need to have the ability to have different DBC files for each.

This leads to a lot of complexity. DIMO has over 10,000 types of cars in our database (accounting for different years and trims). Most cars have 70+ ECUs and sensors, meaning there is a huge number of DBC files to figure out how to read if we want to maximize the data we get from each car. So how do we tackle this huge problem?

Open-Source DBC Decoding

Luckily, people have been hard at work decoding DBC files around the world. Some of those folks are already a part of the DIMO community. Generally, these are car hackers who want to understand their own vehicle and believe that information should be free and open: they’re helping push back against the monopoly of car data between dealerships and car makers.

The most prominent project is OpenDBC, started by comma.ai to facilitate DBC decoding for their after-market self-driving system (which is super cool). They have helped decode 100s of cars and made that DBC files available to others. Other companies and projects have made it their business to decode vehicles.

DIMO is already supporting DBC decoding efforts and will begin supporting others in a more prominent way via bounties and more. If you’re interested in helping to decode DBC files, please contact [email protected] and we can help integrate you with the existing community.

What does this all mean for DIMO?

Decoding DBCs is a task that requires the person or team to go one signal at a time. Each task requires physically being in the car, executing actions and analyzing data. All told it can take a long time to unlock all of the data from a car.

As a DIMO driver with your AutoPi connected, you may get a lot of decoded data or only a little, depending on the state of your vehicle decoding. Today the data fields in the DIMO Mobile app are standardized across vehicles, but in the future there will be a lot of variation in what users see in the app.

At the very least, with your DIMO Device installed you will see the: Location (GPS), Speed, Fuel Level, RPM, Fuel Type, etc. This data is standardized globally based on emissions laws. If you have ever been to a car emissions test, this is the data they use!  Beyond this, we can’t make promises as to what data you will or see in the app, but know that we’re working really hard to make more data available. If you have experience with decoding vehicles or access to knowledge about which car decoder rings, please let us know!

Luckily, the state of decoding for your vehicle will not affect some other really exciting DIMO features coming in the future. You will still be able to:

• Track and share trips, including minting your road trip or performance drive as an NFT
• Mint your vehicle as an NFT
• Access apps and services building applications for DIMO.

And of course you will earn rewards regardless. In the future, we may explore higher rewards for vehicles with more data available.

Learning more

We hope this serves as a good introduction to your AutoPi. For a much more detailed overview of the OBD2 port and how it works, check out this blog post from our partner AutoPi. If you would like to discuss, our Discord Server has a channel dedicated to hardware creatively called #🏠hardware which you can access via this link.

Gas prices have never been higher in the US, and there have never been more options for Electric Vehicles on the market.

With DIMO, not only can you earn ownership in the network by connecting your vehicle, but you'll also collect data that can save you money & help you make better decisions.

You can find weekly reports showing your driving patterns on the DIMO web app and the mobile app.

Your data, combined with the DIMO app, makes it easy to calculate what it'd look like to go Electric, and many of our users have reached a simple conclusion -  

The best solution is to get off gas entirely. ️⚡️

Overall, consumer sentiment seems to be trending in this direction:

For many consumers, the biggest remaining fears holding them back from considering EV's are (1) cost, (2) range anxiety, and (3) battery health & degradation.

Building a "total cost" picture

The F-150 Lightning, priced at roughly $40,000, is equal to a comparable gas model, which happens to be the most popular vehicle in the US.

According to fleet financing company Merchants Fleet:

"Not all EVs have reached this level of price parity, with most still being sold at a premium over their ICE counterpart. As an example, the Ford E-Transit 350 carries a premium of approximately $11,000 over the Transit 350 gasoline model with the same options. After factoring in a $7,500 federal tax credit, this cost premium is reduced to $3,500."

Even on vehicles with this upfront price gap, the math looks pretty good over a long time-horizon: owners can end up making up the price premium on an EV with 3-4 years of normal driving.

This analysis also brings up another important point:

"because many EVs do not have historical data, some factors of the TCO require educated assumptions." - Merchants Fleet

DIMO helps solve this: by capturing verified vehicle data we can increase consumer confidence in both the real-world performance of EVs and their ability to meet your personal mobility needs.

Range

For both Gas and EVs connected to DIMO, you can immediately view your driving pattern data after you connect. Most users realize that they drive well within the range of an EV each day, especially when you realize that home charging allows you to start each day with a "Full Tank".

Battery health & residual value

Once you make the upgrade to an EV - DIMO can help you monitor your battery health and performance by tracking charging cycles.

Over time, teams working on integrating DIMO with used vehicle markets will put this data to work so you can sell your vehicle for more money, too.

Our guiding light is simple: it should be a no-brainer to connect your vehicle to DIMO. Although we're just getting started, every day there are more reasons to join.

Make sure you add your vehicle today.

Click here to sign up

Even if you can't connect immediately using our SmartCar or Tesla software integrations, adding a car to DIMO means you'll be first on the list to learn about new hardware options as they become available.

We also have a community of auto, data, and web3 enthusiasts making DIMO better every day in Discord. Stop by and say hi.

What a month it's been since our last newsletter. We're excited to bring you highlight-laden recap of what's been happening in the DIMO-verse. In case you want the short version, here it is:

• 📲 We shipped BOTH the iOS and Android DIMO Mobile Apps plus a bunch of new features with each. Most notably...
• 🎁  Rewards are live in the app! When you connect a car to DIMO you'll start earning rewards points! You're earning a chance to govern the future of key digital infrastructure for the mobility world.
• 📦 We delivered the first AutoPis to community members at a stellar event in NYC and we're all set to start shipping devices across the US. The next batch of devices goes out next week!

—DIMO Core Team

📊 Telematics

Monthly recap of DIMO Network growth with a focus on stats and data from the project.

The big news of the month: the first cars in Europe have been coming online! From the Canary Islands to Bergen, Norway, and from Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, we're seeing DIMO drivers take control of their own data.

What's the most popular car on DIMO? Glad you asked! Tesla is out in front, followed by Ford and Chevy:

📱 Product News

Product announcements and news with a focus on shipping

🎉 The DIMO Mobile app is here, and it's out on Android and Apple! 🎉

When you download and connect your car you get access to a bunch of great features, even without the hardware:

• Privacy protected location
• Add multiple vehicles from different OEMs
• Collect and store your vehicle data for diagnostics and monetization
• Earn rewards for connecting early!

And there's even more great stuff coming soon:

• Trip logging
• Keyless entry & remote unlock
• Access delegation
• Maintenance tracking
• Digital Glovebox
• Mint your car as an NFT

🎁 Rewards!

Everyone's favorite subject, explained.

Everyone is excited about earning rewards with DIMO, but that comes with a lot of questions too. We've provided some more information about DIMO rewards in the following blog posts:

Launching DIMO Rewards
Why does DIMO Reward Connected Cars?

📦 Shipping DIMO Hardware!

Launching AutoPis into space! Just kidding. Launching them to your doorstep.

We're doing the final checks and going to ship the next batch of devices this week! This puts us a little bit behind our planned schedule, but we should receive enough devices in May to make up for lost time.

As we have noted before, delays will not impact your rewards.

🚙 Last Ride

Some final thoughts, asks, and musings.

The release of the DIMO Mobile App is huge, and we need your help spreading the word. Please click the button below to initiate a tweet. You can press send right away or make it your own:

Keep in touch:

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DIMO_Network

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/dimonetwork

Check out our Blog: https://blog.dimo.zone/

To create this decentralized infrastructure DIMO needs to connect as many vehicles as possible while providing a great experience for early users and developers. Rewards are a useful method for solving the chicken and egg problem inherent in large networks, but that’s hardly the whole story.

Baseline vs Market Demand Signal

DIMO starts with a “Baseline Demand Signal,” which refers to the concept of rewarding drivers based on how long they've been connected, what type of car they drive, and what types of data they provide, even if there is no end customer using that data. As DIMO is getting started, this will be the sole driver of the rewards earned by users.

This baseline primes the network by incentivizing drivers to connect the types of cars and stream the types of data that we expect will be valuable to data consumers and app developers in the future.

Over time, DIMO, and the partners who participate in the ecosystem will add to the baseline with “Market Demand Signal,” which refers to what third parties are paying for their data.  If Alice opts into data monetization and Acme Corp pays to subscribe to a data set containing her information, Alice will earn a proportionate reward for her participation.

At DIMO, we hope to enable a wide range of mobility applications that make use of aggregate or individual vehicle data to create better applications and services:

In the early stages of DIMO's development, the vast majority of rewards for users will come from Baseline Demand Signal. As the network grows, this balance will likely shift the other way. This is comparable to other web3 networks like Helium, where their rewards from proof of coverage will shrink in comparison to rewards from data transfer over time.

Use of Rewards

The DIMO token is not yet live. Currently, the mobile shows "test points" which allows us to test and fine tune our rewards engine. It's very useful to the engineers to have this testing in production.

As a user, there won't be any value to these points right now. We cannot get specific today on exactly if and how these experimental points will entitle users to rewards.

In the future, rewards will be issued in the DIMO token, which will have some uses outlined below:

Initial Uses:

• Governance (controlling the DIMO Foundation / Treasury)
• Staking to access data and build apps
• Rewarding Testnet Contributors and Marketplace Participants

Potential uses pending regulatory analysis and community governance:

• Enhanced Access (Pro Features, NFT drops, API privileges)
• $DIMO as the native currency,
• Helium style burn-mint-equilibrium (Creating vehicle IDs, storing data on DIMO infrastructure)

Validity and Accuracy

In order to create the best infrastructure for the mobility world, DIMO needs to ensure the right kinds of connections and the security and validity of the data being created. Starting even in the early days of the DIMO network, DIMO validators layer data from centralized & decentralized sources to provide application-layer guarantees on accuracy and make sure spoofing is costly.

Get Started

Want to earn rewards and participate in the DIMO Ecosystem? If you have a connected vehicle app today like the Tesla app, FordPass, Toyota app, or something else, you can download the DIMO Mobile App on iOS or Android

If you don’t have an existing app, add your car to DIMO with the apps above to get on the list for the next time we drop hardware on shop.dimo.zone.

‎DIMO Mobile

‎DIMO Mobile is your gateway to the DIMO Network, a user-owned connected vehicle platform. By standardizing connectivity options across tens of millions of vehicle across the world (an more coming), DIMO allows drivers to connect their car, collect & store their vehicle data, and then use that data…

App StoreDimo

Users with a connected vehicle will start to see a “test points” balance in the their account. This post explains what the test points are and why we're launching this early version of rewards.

If your car is connected via Smartcar or Tesla, you'll see your points today.

Over 1,000 cars connected to DIMO are now qualifying for rewards every week, including one user who topped out the leaderboard with 10,000 points by connecting 4 cars and having  a 4+ week connectivity streak on all of them! (DIMO 🥰 early adopters)

Here's how rewards look today in our test account:

Here's the detail on how miners are rewarded

Stay tuned in discord, and make sure to add your vehicle to app.dimo.zone or on the DIMO mobile apps even if you can't connect today. We'll be blasting emails out as more connectivity options become available.

Q: How do drivers earn these test points exactly?

A: First you have to sign up for DIMO here. Then you either need to purchase a DIMO Data Miner or you can connect without a device using your supported connected car subscription if you have one. You must stay connected each week to keep earning. The following table shows how points will be calculated to start.

Q: Do these points include referrals?

Not yet! We're tracking referrals on the backend and we'll start to layer those in to the point total soon.

Q: I thought we'd also earn more for having an electric vehicle or plug-in-hybrid?

A: That is still the plan and we plan to retroactively reward test points for this. We're choosing to move fast here, so we're shipping points without this "green bonus", which will be added in the coming months.

Q: What are these test points good for?

A: We're using these test points as a means to test our rewards engine in advance issuing real tokens on the blockchain. It's really useful to the engineers to have this testing in production.

As a user, there won't be any value to these points right now. We cannot get specific today on exactly if and how these experimental points will entitle users to rewards.

Q: When will I see the rewards in the app?

Users who have connected their car via software will start seeing points this month. If you have purchased a DIMO Data Miner, you will see points once you have paired it using the app. At first we'll just show you the points from pairing on ward, but we'll eventually add the points in you would have earned from order date to pairing. Test points are issued weekly - so you won't see them updating every day (for now).

Q: Are test points crypto tokens? Are they transferable?

A: No. These are not. And in no circumstance will points convert to $DIMO tokens 1:1. To read more about how a future version of points relates to tokens, check out our documents.

Q: Will there be other ways to earn points?

A: We may sprinkle test points on users for things like completing surveys, decoding dbc codes, creating high-quality device installation guides, posting fire memes in discord or reddit, etc.

Q: When will you start calculating them?

A: We already are! We’ll look backwards and calculate test points retroactively based on when you connected your car or when you ordered a DIMO Data Miner.

Q: What if I purchased a DIMO Data Miner but it hasn’t arrived yet? I would have connected already if it shipped by now.

A: Good news! You will earn test points as if you installed your device on the day you ordered it. For example, if you ordered your device on March 1st, we’ll count your car as connected on March 1st.

Thanks for reading! Sign up today so you can start earning test points! Also, join our Discord or follow us on Twitter to stay plugged in.

I was two weeks deep in an advisory stint with DIMO when I had my first 1:1 chat with Founder and CTO Yevgeny Khessin. The allure of a user-owned network, enabling people to take their data back from companies profiting off it, had drawn me in. And I stuck around when I realized what an impressive team they’d gathered and how rapidly they were progressing.

I knew Yev’s co-founders, Andy Chatham and Rob Solomon, from our days in Downtown Vegas, working on self-organization projects with my dear friend Tony Hsieh (many years before things went very tragically and publicly south for him). Rob and Andy were Venture for America fellows (as is DIMO co-founder Alex Rawitz), in Vegas to support a burgeoning tech community in a place few would consider a top entrepreneurial talent hub. Even fresh out of college they were impressive - smart guys who seemed to really care about building businesses that generated positive impact as well as profit. So it made sense that a decade later, DIMO’s Vision and Mission reflected a savvy “do well by doing good” model.

My first two weeks were a crash course in translating Web 3 jargon and awkwardly lurking in the chaotic corners of Discord. Given that DIMO’s model integrates cutting edge approaches on multiple fronts, it was unsurprising that I had as many questions as answers. The foremost of which was, what the hell are you guys building (and why)? His answers blew me away.

The DIMO Future

DIMO — Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects —sounds like tech bro bingo. IOT, decentralized, autonomous, tokens, DAO’s. And Yev is the requisite self-effacing Eastern European techie leading the Engineering team. I may as well have been speaking a different language when I came in asking about Values and People and Culture. Yet when he did (rarely) speak up, it was about his team. And how to best support them.

Unlike what you might expect from someone in his role, Yev is warm. He laughs easily. And doesn’t mince words. He wore a puffy coat with a fur collar and had a little orange cat in the background of his otherwise blurred Zoom screen, at his Ann Arbor home in the “meat space” (physical world), where some of the distributed team is based. Rumor was that he is the rare Engineer who is also adept at swimming in the Business lane. I was curious about his vision for the company and he quickly told me it was an operating system for the real world. It wasn’t until we logged off that I fully grasped the implications of just how transformative a vision that was — and how foundational to almost all of our other visions of the future.I asked Yev to explain - how would this change my life? What would the future they are building look like? He explained that right now, people can “talk” to some objects, a little bit (e.g. think of turning up your sonos with your phone).

But DIMO aims to get all kinds of objects speaking up - with people and each other - starting with vehicles and eventually expanding to other IOT objects. In DIMO’s future, you may one day come home to find your appliances, home entertainment, security, and wearables deep in conversation. And in that future, those objects can be optimized for convenience, health, creativity, safety, productivity, romance, rest, relaxation - the possibilities are endless. I can set my preferences for vibe, temperature, lighting, security, volume —  even the wallpaper — and when I arrive at home, work, or an airbnb, the things would oblige me. An operating system for the real world.

Starting with Cars

Yev’s background is in automotive — he connected millions of consumer vehicles to the internet at GM, Ford, VW, and built dispatch systems for Autonomous Vehicles at Ford aAnd Argo.AI. He linked up with Andy, who was responsible for operating fleets of AVs with companies like Waymo, and building consumer mobility products for Transdev. They connected over the issues caused by centralized control of robots driving on public roads - lack of transparency into faults, limited public and regulatory trust, and inability to scale past pilot projects.

So it makes sense that if DIMO is making objects talk, the first objects are cars (and trucks). And given that cars produce far more data than anything else, enabling them to speak to one another would make our every day lives much better (faster, safer, cheaper transportation, anyone?). It also means a lot less misery when buying used vehicles and bringing your car to the mechanic, because the owner is equipped with accurate information about the condition and performance of the vehicle.

Data on performance, safety risks, and accidents shouldn’t be secrets shared only with manufacturers - it should be available to consumers as well. You need only look at the Boeing 737 Max to see how profit motive and lack of transparency result in fatal tragedies. Opening data on fires, crashes, and technology flaws will save lives and rapidly improve vehicle technologies, enabling science fiction to become part of our daily lives. This kind of transparency is necessary for things like autonomous vehicles to safely exit the restricted areas (i.e. test labs) where they now operate.

Not to mention that transportation is responsible for 29% of global greenhouse gasses. DIMO aims to tackle that number by first making users aware of how their choices impact this number, and aligning financial incentives around helping them reduce it. Simple changes like when you charge your EV can make a big difference.

Giving Your Stuff a Wallet

In order for this to work, objects need their own wallets and unique identities, which enable the objects’ owners to benefit from their data — turning the information these objects collect into tokens, insurance discounts, increased resale values, and a whole litany of other ways you can take back the data so many big companies are currently profiting from.

Because DIMO-enabled devices have wallets, they can be paid for remaining connected. Users can opt in to sharing at the level they feel comfortable. And because DIMO is launching a governance token, which controls the treasury of the project, its resources are cleanly under “user control.” $DIMO, (the token they are launching) is designed around a powerful observation: useful token distribution models are able to convert speculative capital into production capital more efficiently than traditional companies. In other words, money can more rapidly go to making the product(s) better for users.

This means new features, better apps, services, and faster hardware product development. And because they’re built on shared infrastructure and open identities, developers can combine them in new ways and trust that they’ll be able to make money and acquire users into the future. What’s good for the network, is good for the users.

The DIMO Roadmap

With 2 million in sales from their two month beta and $9M in investment from some seriously impressive backers, Yev and the rest of the DIMO team are well equipped to start moving the physical world into the digital one. Unlike goofy looking NFT’s and the trendy metaverse, this is a version of Web 3 that doesn’t require hype to drive impact. The team already has 25,000 vehicles added to the platform, 3,500 devices sold in a preorder, and 1,200 vehicles streaming data every day.

I asked Yev about his personal goals — who did he want to be when he grew up? He laughed as if no one had ever asked him such a silly question. This is an Engineer’s dream project - unlike the boring SaaS platforms out there, DIMO offers the tech team horizontal mobility. It combines hardware, software, frontend, backend, blockchain, cars, cloud systems, and mobile apps. And unlike many Web 3 projects, it impacts the average person, who may not yet invest in crypto, but almost certainly uses vehicles.

Their mission is a paradigm changing one that could genuinely improve peoples’ lives. But as a Ukrainian, Yev prefers to celebrate achievements after the fact, rather than talk about a big game in advance. I wondered aloud how he was able to focus, given the horror in Ukraine right now. He said that by continuing to show up in this way — building something meaningful and opening a DIMO office after the war — he would play his role.

With an open, user centric, crowdsourced ethos, he needs to build a community of believers and builders. They’re committed to “building in the open” - a unique part of the project is the 6100 users on their Discord helping make the project better.

Who else could help him make this powerful vision a reality? “Developers (especially those working on car related applications). Early tech adopters. Car rental/car sharing folks.” Talented people interested in dipping a toe in Web 3, without sacrificing real world impact. Techies who understand the transformative value of objects talking to each other. Visionaries who want to build an operating system for the real world.

If you are one of those people, check out DIMO’s jobs page here. If you know one of those people and make an introduction that turns into a (Developer / Engineering) hire, we are offering a $2k referral fee paid in the referrer’s choice of cash or crypto. You can reach out directly at [email protected].

At DIMO, we've cataloged over 10,000 "Device Definitions"—a standard record of an individual make, model, year of car plus all the styles and trims—and we're still adding to these regularly.  

Each of these cars has different technology and software which make gathering the data from it unique. The variation can also impact the user experience of connecting that vehicle to DIMO, either by hardware or software. It's our goal to make it simple and reliable for any vehicle to connect as we build the largest and most useful user-owned IoT network in the world.

Enter Ride Guides, a community program that will leverage knowledge across the DIMO network to help the project scale.

What are Ride Guides?

Ride Guides are DIMO community members who have deep knowledge about a particular car brand and offer that support to other DIMO users. This could mean helping users understand their vehicle's compatibility (hardware, software, etc.), how to connect their vehicle to DIMO, or how to troubleshoot errors and questions.  

With each car manufacturer there are going to be best practices for installing hardware devices based on the shared learnings across community, and there are also important quirks with the connected vehicle subscriptions that users need to know when using the software-only connectivity features on DIMO apps.

Cars are not static objects either.

• Some older cars that could once connect are now having their connectivity disabled because it relied on 3G.
• Newer cars can get over-the-air (OTA) software updates which improve their performance, adding additional complexity and nuance to integrating them with DIMO.
• Ride Guides can help facilitate DBC decoding which will allow all DIMO users to get more data from their vehicles.

Anything that involves connecting more users and putting more data to work is going to help DIMO grow.

Where can I find the experts?

The DIMO discord server is the home for this program, and today there are a few Ride Guide channels already up and running. More will come as we identify new community members to lead each brand.  

Join up to help us grow

This role will evolve as DIMO continues to grow and decentralize. There will also be ways to earn and early Ride Guides are already answering questions regarding specific vehicles and supporting the DIMO mission. Anything that helps connect more vehicles and maximize those connections will be of value.

This program is the ultimate flywheel: contributors step up to help others in the community get connected, improve the onboarding experience, and all of this reinforces DIMO growth.

DIMO Ride Guide Form

Become a DIMO Ride Guide and help scale DIMO to millions of connected vehicles.

If you're interested and want to flex your vehicle knowledge you can fill out this form or join us in the DIMO Discord today to learn more from the community.

@wiley_19#7828 (DIMO dMedia Contributor)

In the last post, we discussed how automakers benefit from our connected vehicle data. Now, we’ll take a look at a couple ongoing innovations that will create new lines of communication between the vehicle and the world and how these innovations will change driving and vehicle ownership experiences.

Our Chatty Vehicles

The first of these innovations is V2x technology. V2x technology encompasses vehicle communication with various entities outside just the OEM (communication with OEM is typically called Vehicle to Cloud or V2C).

Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) allows vehicles to pass information regarding hazardous obstacles, hard braking events, and poor road conditions to improve the safety of the user. Think about the crowdsourced power of Waze. With V2V communication, that crowd sourced power is amplified by automating and expediting the spread of higher quality information directly from the vehicle sensors and GPS system.

Credit: What is Vehicle to Everything? by Corporate Finance Institute

Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) passes data directly to municipalities to enable real-time monitoring of traffic, hazardous conditions, and parking locations. You can imagine a future where payments for tolls or parking occur directly through the vehicle. In fact, JP Morgan has recently purchased 75% of a Volkswagen payments unit to develop a vehicle payment standard. As V2I expands beyond municipalities, users may be able to use this technology to pay for gas, car washes, and drive-thrus.

While V2x technology has been on certain models since 2017, widespread adoption has been slow due to unclear communication standards and lack of capable infrastructure.

A Two-Way Street

The second innovation, now standard in consumer electronics and becoming more common in the automotive industry, is a big one: Over the Air (OTA) updates. Just as your phone is able to download and install new software updates, OTA capable vehicles can receive and install new software packages from the automaker. These software updates can address quality issues like Nissan’s backup camera recall, deploy new features, or unlock existing hardware such as sensors or additional battery capacity.

Tesla first introduced OTA updates to the auto industry and continues to lead the industry in ability to update the vehicles’ software and firmware. Through OTA updates, Tesla has addressed many recall and warranty issues while also unlocking new features for customers. For example, the “full self-driving” beta software discussed above was an OTA update that cost $12,000 - no hardware upgrades necessary. So, Tesla standardizes the hardware on their vehicles which reduces complexity in the manufacturing process while also allowing users to upgrade their vehicle while it sits in the driveway.

If I was buying a new battery electric or luxury vehicle in the next few years, a vehicle’s OTA capability and the automaker’s OTA strategy and track record would be high up on my list of decision making criteria. It’s the difference between a static purchase that depreciates rapidly and a dynamic and improving purchase that potentially maintains better resale value. So if you’d like to dive into the topic, I’d recommend starting with this article from Electrek.

Our Very Mobile Smartphones

With the added value of OTA updates for the OEM and customer, advanced vehicle architectures like those mentioned in The Anatomy of Connected Vehicles post are more important than ever.

Imagine going to a restaurant and having to tell them exactly what they need to do to make your order. "Please dice and sauté the onions, then sear the hamburger while smashing it into the flat top,” and so on. While that sounds — and is — ridiculous, that is how features are developed in many of today's vehicles.

Each ECU interface is programmed to deliver the desired functions needed for each feature. As a result, the current feature development process is inefficient and makes OTA updates tricky.

With these new vehicle architectures, developers will be able to house the feature logic in a centralized controller that then accesses the individual ECUs via APIs. So now you can go to the restaurant and simply tell the waiter, "I would like a smash burger, please."

For the more software literate reader, you’re probably thinking, “So OEMs are creating a vehicle operating system and an API for developers to build applications on?” And that would be correct—just like our smartphones.

Further, it’s not crazy to think that these vehicle APIs will also be available to third party developers. GM and Ford, for example, have already opened up access to certain vehicle data points and held hackathons for developers to create the next feature or vehicle app of the future. Once there is a developer ecosystem, an app store is sure to follow.

Then the network effects of developers flocking and users following seen in crypto today may emerge as the automotive aftermarket rises to new heights. This creates ample opportunities for the OEM. It’s now easier to implement new features and turn a one time customer into a recurring revenue stream. They’re not just profiting off the OTA updates the customer purchases from them, either—they could also take a cut from each third party app sale from their app store.

While OEMs will limit the amount of developer’s access for obvious safety reasons, it is sure to draw attention as the aftermarket industry has already grown to $325 billion.

The Commute of the (not-so-distant) Future

Let’s put all of this together and imagine a commute in a few years’ time.

You unplug your vehicle from the wall and authenticate yourself by grinning at the cameras in the door frame. The vehicle interior adjusts itself as you lower yourself into the seat since your partner was the last one to drive. As you pull into the street, you ask the in-vehicle voice assistant to order an Americano from the local coffee shop by your office which it takes care of through the in-vehicle marketplace. You cruise through the toll booth onto the freeway since your vehicle’s V2I technology takes care of that—no transponders or low account balances to worry about. Pulling onto the off ramp, you’re startled by a chime alerting you it’s almost time to retake the wheel since it knows you’re buried in your phone. You dash in to grab your coffee—meanwhile, your vehicle locates, reserves, and pays for the closest street parking to your office. Parallel parking was never your forte, so your vehicle drops you off at the front door and parks itself. But before leaving, the vehicle alerts you a new software package is available that will improve your vehicle’s battery range. You schedule it for that night and climb out the door.

This sounds wonderfully convenient. And most of these features already exist on vehicles today. While it’s difficult to find (or afford) a vehicle with all these features and the infrastructure side needs to catch up, this experience is closer than we think.

In order for this experience to happen, though, your vehicle needs to know your biometric information, your financial information, your spoken information, as well as substantial amounts of information about the surrounding environment and infrastructure. And on top of that, automakers’ could be selling this data.

In the next post, we will take a look at the legal landscape and how it affects the automaker's use of our vehicle data.

Next post coming soon...

This post is from a DIMO community member, and opinions are their own. Digital Infrastructure Inc. does not necessarily endorse any of the views herein.

• 😀 Good news: We have been braving the global supply chain bottlenecks, Covid shutdowns in Shenzen, and have come out with a plan that should see very little impact on delivery of units.
• 😕 Bad news: We’ve had to postpone the first non-tester deliveries to accommodate a hardware change that will take effect in May. This means that delivery dates for fully-ready production units will slide by about 1 month. However…
• 😀 Good news: Once we have the latest devices in May and the pairing software experience is really strong, we can catch up on shipments by July with the help of our first US and EU-based distributors (to be officially announced soon.)
• 🤩 Great news: The core team has voted to provide rewards from the date you ordered your AutoPi. If your order is delayed a bit, your earnings will not be impacted as long as you connect your device, and keep it connected for 3 months continuously to a compatible vehicle!

Everything above and below are still based on estimates, and estimates almost always change, sometimes more than once.

The Latest

200 devices are leaving AutoPi’s offices on Friday (4/1) and Monday (4/4) en route from Denmark to the US. This will bring our total number of Alpha devices in the states to 300, including ~75 deployed units.

We shipped the first 75 units to learn quickly about the installation process, but we’ve intentionally slowed down shipping units in the last few weeks to incorporate feedback from initial installs into the app and documentation.

We’re going to wait on further shipping until we have the software pairing ready for testing.

There’s also something different about the coming units and the ones that are already here: they are not coming with the secure element that we intend to use in the long run for the security of the DIMO Network.

This leads to some changes in the shipping timelines and order.

What is a secure element?

A secure element is a kind of chip that contains the private keys stored in a hardware element, similar to a crypto hardware wallet (e.g., Trezor). This is critical for any DIMO compatible device, since the data in the DIMO network needs to be trusted for it to be useful for any of the applications we have imagined. The secure element is used to sign the data, and allows the network to authenticate all the data sent from the car.

The 300 first devices have a ATECC108A chip, and future devices, including any manufactured by 3rd party manufacturers, will have a NXP SE050 chip.

The reason for the change is twofold. First, the ATECC108A does not support the SECP256K1 curve, and second, it has supply constraints. By switching to the SE050 chip, we are able to support ethereum cryptographic identity protocols natively and get more devices to you and the rest of the future DIMO Network!

Integrating the new chip is no easy engineering feat. We’ve worked really closely with our partners at AutoPi and suppliers around the globe to secure the right supply and test the integrations that will ensure we can scale DIMO efficiently and securely.

Without the secure element, it is easier for a bad actor to send fake data to DIMO, which we cannot allow in the long-run. No secure element on the device, no baseline rewards.

How does this impact orders and timelines?

The lack of the correct secure element and risk of receiving fake data means that the first 300 devices cannot go out in the regularly scheduled order. The devices already in hand or in the field plus the next 200 devices will only go out to trusted parties as further test devices.

We have a plan to convert these test devices into fully operational connected devices, but we have to mitigate the lack of security on them, hence the selectivity on where these devices go. None of these trusted parties will receive any advantage in rewards since we will look at your order date, not the date you connected.

The devices will go testers, particularly on the fleets side, so that we can continue to hone the product. We’ll also provide some to pro-installers (see below).

We’ve updated the timeline in the table below. There is no difference between Alpha devices and Beta devices, so we’ll roll right into shipping Beta when we have fulfilled all the Alphas.

Any devices arriving starting in May will have the correct secure element and we can move on to shipping in the correct order from Shopify order.

As a reminder, we voted several weeks ago to base rewards off when the device was ordered, not when it is received. You will still have to plug in your device, but the reordering of these shipments will not affect your rewards.

Pro Installer Program

We’ve also been developing a program where DIMO early adopters can earn cash and $DIMO rewards for helping other users install their devices! Initially this will target our largest markets like LA, SF, New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Miami, and others.

If you have experience installing aftermarket electronics in vehicles, have an existing detailing, auto repair, or dealership business and are interested in learning more about this program - hit this link!

We’re on the exciting cusp of launching into the next wave here at DIMO. We’re excited to have you with us!

@wiley_19#7828 (DIMO Media Contributor)

So far, we’ve learned what your vehicle knows (data about itself, the environment, and you) and how it got that knowledge (sensors and ECUs). It’s time to move on from the “what” and the “how” into the “why.”

As ECUs replaced mechanical control systems, vehicles collected data because their components needed to know information about each other in order for the vehicle to function. While that still remains the case, the “why” for data collection has rapidly expanded. With many new vehicle models equipped with embedded modems, the data once stored only on your vehicle can now be shared with the outside world.

In fact, an estimated 30 million of these connected vehicles were added to our roads in 2020. By 2030, Mckinsey estimates that 95% of vehicles sold will be connected, creating $250-400 billion in annual incremental value for vehicle data stakeholders. Market sizing projections for a relatively new industry should always be taken with a grain of salt, but you can start to see why the automakers’ “why” for data collection is rapidly expanding.

So who is receiving this data? And why is it so valuable?

The primary recipient of your vehicle’s data (if it is a connected vehicle) is the automaker. They likely have agreements to share certain data points with their suppliers (a brake supplier could receive data points on stopping distances, for example), but for now, let’s focus on the automakers.

Once the automaker receives your data (and the data from their other thousands of vehicles on the road), they can then:

Improve or develop services or features

Since 2017, Tesla has used data from its vehicles to improve their self-driving software, AutoPilot. With data from 8 cameras and numerous ultrasonic and radar sensors on each vehicle, Tesla has been able to advance their software to the point of releasing a beta version of their “full self-driving” software earlier this year. The issues with Tesla’s “full self-driving” software have been well documented, but there is no doubt that the years of on road data have aided their software development.

Prevent or reduce severity of quality issues

Automakers spent an estimated $49 billion on warranty issues in 2019 including a 1.2 million vehicle recall by Nissan and Infiniti. Software issues allowed the backup camera view to be unavailable while the vehicle was in reverse—which violates federal mandates. With a greater quantity and quality of vehicle data, the automaker could have identified this issue earlier, fixed it primarily in the plant instead of the field, and reduced the customer’s exposure to this potentially dangerous scenario.

Reduce variant complexity

Picture a new vehicle that offers seven different drive modes such as "Sporty," "Comfort," and "Eco." After launching the vehicle and gathering a significant data set, the automaker sees the "Comfort" mode is rarely used by customers. It can now make a data-driven decision to eliminate the "Comfort" mode and unnecessary software development, calibration, and hardware capacity on current and future models.

Optimize design requirements

When vehicle systems, features, and parts are designed, they have to meet a set of requirements. These requirements may tell the engineer how close it can be to other parts, how much wear and tear it must handle, what materials it can be made by, what environments it must function in, how quickly it must complete a task, or what the user experience should be. These requirements could be derived from previous testing data, simulations, customer clinics or just old rules of thumb. With large vehicle data sets, they can be optimized to reduce costs while maintaining performance.

Sell data to marketplaces such as Wejo or Otonomo
Data is cleaned, normalized, and sold by the marketplace to third parties such as municipalities, retailers, and insurers. How might these stakeholders use the data created by your vehicle?

Municipalities

Today, cities such as Detroit and Memphis are using sensor data from municipal vehicles to map road hazards such as potholes. In 2019, the city of Memphis fixed 63,000 potholes with only 20% of them having been reported by the public showing the benefit of utilizing vehicle data. In the future, vehicle data can be used to identify traffic patterns, redesign intersections to improve safety and efficiency, and identify optimal parking strategies.

Insurers

Currently, insurers such as Allstate and Progressive provide usage based insurance (UBI) via smartphone data or dongles. However, OEMs such as GM, Ford, Nissan, and Kia are now partnering with data exchanges such as LexisNexis to allow users to opt in to UBI by sharing their vehicle data directly with the insurers. This allows the insurer to more accurately price risk through increased access to data and improved understanding of the vehicle’s safety and ADAS features.

Retailers

A retailer’s location can make or break the business. With large vehicle data sets, the retailer can identify locations with sufficient traffic to increase their chances of success. They can also identify unmet needs by analyzing trip patterns to see if customers are traveling long distances to their store or a competitor’s. Once they have their location, they can use similar traffic data to develop their parking and entrance strategy. Finally, retailers and other advertisers will surely use this data for location based advertising both inside and outside the vehicles. Be ready for in-vehicle advertising to take off as autonomous vehicle technology matures.

Other potential data consumers include mobility services, fleet operators, electric vehicle infrastructure developers, and app developers.

It should be noted that there is some uncertainty in the exact data points being transmitted back to automaker and eventually sold. However, technological advances in vehicles and communications infrastructure (5G) as well as the margins of data products in an industry hovering around 10% profit margins will surely lead to increases in the quantity and variety of data sent back to the automaker.  Later in the series, we’ll take a look at how regulations or user agreements affect automakers' usage of our data.

In the next post, we’ll explore how connected vehicles are expanding beyond just sending data back to the automaker and how these changes will affect our driving and vehicle ownership experiences.

Drive on to the next post:

Opening New Lines of Communication

Connected Vehicle Data Series 4 of 7: Vehicles no longer just send data to the automaker. New lines of communication are opening that will change our ownership and driving experiences. @wiley_19#7828 (DIMO dMedia Contributor) In the last post, we discussed how automakers benefit from our connected v…

DIMOwiley_19

This post is from a DIMO community member, and opinions are their own. Digital Infrastructure Inc. does not necessarily endorse any of the views herein.

It’s not anywhere near complete (check out all the new features coming soon here), but we couldn’t wait to get it out because it unlocks one MASSIVE new feature for our single biggest group of users: Tesla owners!

Tesla owners can now connect directly to their vehicles using the mobile app (no hardware required!). This is an upgrade from the Smartcar facilitated connection on the webapp (app.dimo.zone) and Tesla owners can follow the upgrade path in the app to switch over their connection.

This step will allow us to build more advanced features into future versions of the app:

• Trip tracking - allowing you to remember the big road trip, or track vehicle usage for tax savings or expense reporting
• Software version history tracking
• Lock Unlock & Climate Control (if you want to enable it)
• Deep battery performance insights (more on that below)

This new feature means a 280x improvement in data collection and best-in-class security. Soon it will be able to help answer important questions:

• How much worse does your range get in colder weather?
• Worried about battery degradation with frequent supercharging?
• Want to make sure you’re charging during the most optimal time for the electric grid?

Want to learn how we’re building the best 3rd party app experience for Teslas? Read on about security, additional features, and all the awesome data you're going to be able to collect.

Not a Tesla driver? The app also supports the same list of Smartcar compatible cars - so you can have a dashboard with your whole garage!

Want to get Started?

iOS only today, Android in April

Connecting Your Tesla Via the DIMO Mobile App

Getting started with the upgraded Tesla connection is easy, whether you're already signed up or if you're adding your Tesla to DIMO for the first time.

We've Designed This Integration Around Security

Here's how it works -

• You enter your Tesla credentials into the Tesla website; DIMO never receives these
• DIMO stores a limited access token just as the official Tesla app does
• These tokens are encrypted at rest and in transit using AWS KMS, which performs all cryptographic operations in dedicated hardware modules

Best In-Class Performance & Battery Drain

• We issue a wake-up command to the car upon first connection, so that as long as the vehicle is connected via cell or wifi, you should see data right away; we will never wake up the vehicle remotely again
• When the car is online but idling (neither driving nor charging), DIMO switches to using Tesla's streaming data API to monitor the car for activity
• This API returns enough information to detect activity and will not keep the car awake

Tesla appears to wake up the car every hour or so, independent of DIMO, so you'll usually still get regular data.

Protect Your Privacy: DIMO knows users value their privacy, particularly for their location and driving habits. More info on privacy here, including instructions on how to set your privacy fence.

What kind of data is available?

When the car is driving around and charging, we get a data point every minute (240x the frequency of existing software-only DIMO connections)

Tesla provides many fields on your charging and battery performance - they show up like this:  

This is just the tip of the iceberg -  there are a ton of additional fields available!

Keep an eye out for some nice time-series charts in the mobile app - for now, you can see them on the web. Just add your vehicle via iOS app, then login to app.dimo.zone once you've driven around a bit.

Tesla is really leading the pack on open data available from their vehicles, with only one exception: tire pressure data. It's the only major way we've seen their API lagging behind Ford, GM, and other OEMs.

The DIMO-verse is just getting rolling. We hope you enjoy using the DIMO Mobile App. There are a few ways to help too:

Do You Know a bunch of other Tesla owners?

Help grow DIMO, and earn more by referring your friends! Go to app.dimo.zone, log in, and grab your referral link.

We’re growing our core team

With these new integrations, we’ll be collecting a mountain of valuable data and want to put it to work helping DIMO users save time and money.

If you are (or know) someone who would be a great fit for the role - reach out!

Jobs.DIMO.Zone

The bottom line is that the DIMO Mobile App will be the primary way to use DIMO for most users. Small fleets and prosumers will continue to find value in the web app (app.dimo.zone). Overtime, you’ll be crazy not to have your car, your family’s cars, or your fleet hooked up to DIMO.

The Mobile app at Launch

Get started, access your account on the go, and start earning:

• Add your car(s): Users in the US and Europe will be able to add their car to DIMO by searching for their vehicle during onboarding. Once added, the app will provide some guidance on the ways you can connect your car.
• Connect your Car: Many cars do not need a DIMO Data Miner to start collecting data in DIMO.
  • Teslas can connect through our direct integration with the Tesla API.
  • Smartcar compatible cars. You will need an active subscription to complete connection with Smartcar (More info on subscriptions here).
• Collect and See Your Vehicle Data: Once connected, you’ll start collecting your vehicle data.
  • Dashboard: See the latest data from your vehicle (historical data soon).
  • Activity Log: Track key events and updates to your vehicle in the Activity Log
• Protect Your Privacy: DIMO knows users value their privacy, particularly for their location and driving habits. More info on privacy here - and make sure to set your privacy fence!
• Grow DIMO, refer friends: You can still go to app.dimo.zone, log in, and grab your referral link. When your referrals connect, you’ll earn rewards!

What’s coming soon (1-2 mo)

We’re going to devote a significant amount of time to taking feedback, conducting user interviews, and improving features that already exist in the app, but you can also expect lots of new features:

• Android Release: In the coming weeks, we’ll work to release the Android version of the mobile app so that drivers can participate regardless of the type of phone they use.
• Points: Testnet points are already being calculated, just not displayed. By connecting your vehicle or ordering hardware, you’re starting to earn. We’ll display these in the app soon.
• Referral Program 2.0: The existing (link-driven) referral program is still running, but you have to grab your referral link out of webapp. We’ll build a mobile-first version quickly.
• New Charts and Data: We’re just displaying the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your vehicle data. We’re building more tools to analyze and draw insight from your data, and you’ll be able to see it soon!.
• AutoPi Pairing: One of the biggest milestones on the roadmap, we’ll enable bluetooth pairing so that users can securely install their DIMO Data Miner and take the next step on collecting their data. If you want to get your hands on some DIMO-enabled hardware we’re launching a new batch of preorder spots for the EU on 3/14!

The DIMO-verse is just getting rolling - all part of our biggest month yet for the project. We hope you enjoy using the DIMO Mobile App.

As with all large projects, there will be a phased approach that is meant to promote equity and security for users as well as sanity within engineering and product teams from AutoPi, Digital Infrastructure Inc, and other key contributors to DIMO.

In this post we've laid out a timeline with each step of the rollout - and we also tease some awesome new features that will be coming out for Tesla owners!

For users in still-unsupported countries - we hear you! This a big step towards our mission of allowing any vehicle in the world to connect to DIMO, but we're not done adding geographical coverage 🌍🌏.

Timeline - What's Shipping? ⛴

Here's our aggressive plan for shipping support and doubling the number of vehicles that can connect to DIMO in around 1 month:

First Half of March

• European Vehicle database update - adding makes & models of vehicles sold in the EU + UK
• Global iOS mobile app launch with Tesla connect soft launch, Smartcar connectivity launches for Europe
• March 14: shop.dimo.zone opens for Europeans with dedicated supply

Second Half of March

• Android app launches globally
• AutoPi Bluetooth pairing tests and first shipments

Early April

• Testnet Rewards will be added to the app (rewards are already being tracked now for users who have connected cars!)

As always, we're not going to sacrifice quality for speed, so please be patient if some of these dates aren't exactly right.

For more detail on what this all means - read on ⬇️

European Vehicle Database

When you create an account with DIMO, we recommend adding a car by typing in the model and year and adding it to your garage. European users have pointed out that we don't have their Skoda, Renault, or other country-specific Make or Model. In March we'll push an update that will allow them to find their vehicle, add it, and prepare to connect it soon.

This is a necessary first step so that users can proceed to the right connection option confidently. Users should be able to add their car and see right away what their connection options are. We don't expect to get every make, model, and year in one go, so this will naturally be improved over time.  

Global Mobile App & Tesla Launch + EU Support for Smartcar

In the next few weeks we'll also submit the DIMO app to the Apple App store.

Once it is live, DIMO will now offer 3 methods for users to connect cars:

1. Pull data from your vehicle's OEM via Smartcar
2. Direct Tesla Integration (New with the mobile app!)
3. Use the DIMO Data Miner to connect your car directly - pairing it directly with the app

You can read more about those methods here:

How A Car Connects To DIMO

DIMO is a user-owned IoT platform that allows users to maximize the value of their connected assets, starting with cars. Our first product allows drivers to stream vehicle data in exchange for tokens — practically employing Web3 technology to build an open mobility ecosystem. If you’re a driver wh…

DIMOAndy Chatham

Smartcar is currently live today for only US and Canadian users. We've already connected 1,000 cars traveling 1,500,000 km on SmartCar alone!

When the first version of the mobile app comes out, it will support both Smartcar and the Tesla integration. Both of these will go live for the UK and EU when the app is launched.

Not all cars can use Smartcar, and you can check the compatibility table to see if your car is eligible — or better yet, just add your car! We'll let you know in the app if your car can use DIMO software-only connection methods, and if it can't we'll prioritize support on our roadmap.

Due to the security model for the Tesla integration - where DIMO never holds your vehicle credentials - users will only be able to set up the native Tesla integration on the mobile app.

The hardware pairing process is still in development and will go live in the mobile App in Late March or April. At this point we will begin shipping out the vast majority of consumer hardware units based on the order they were received.

March 14: DIMO Store Opens for Europe

After allowing for about a week for European users to add their car using the newly updated vehicle database, we will open the DIMO Store.

DIMO has set aside supply of DIMO Data Miners from the “Beta Fleet” for Europe. Right now, we are only planning to sell 1,000 devices to European users, and will target delivery based on the schedule covered in our Hardware Ecosystem Docs.

DIMO Mobile on Android

The Android mobile app will be coming a few weeks after the iOS app launches on the app store.

Prior to this date, European android-users will still have some ways to use DIMO. First, they can add their vehicle on the webapp (March 7) and connect it their via Smartcar (March 10). They will also be able to purchase a DIMO Data Miner (March 12).

The only users who will experience a delay are Android-using Tesla owners. They will be able to add their Tesla on the web app, but they won’t be able to connect their Tesla using our Direct integration until March 22.

AutoPi Bluetooth Pairing and First Shipments

We are working on the final step to providing a complete hardware experience: the ability to pair your DIMO Data Miner with your DIMO account and your car via the DIMO Mobile app.

This functionality will be modeled on the Helium Hotspot setup process, and it should provide a seamless way for users to install their device and begin collecting their vehicle data.

As with all things, we'll test this slowly with a small initial base of users. We expect to send about 20 devices out in March and we'll work closely with those users to test the pairing process before slowly scaling the the shipments.

April: Rewards go live

One of the biggest DIMO milestones is on the horizon for early April: test earnings will go live in the DIMO apps. Here's what that means:

Earnings will be represented in points (not the DIMO token). This will help DIMO ensure that the calculation is working properly across all vehicles, and we expect to devote a lot of time to ensuring the services required to calculate rewards accurately are in order.

We are also announcing a change to the process by which rewards will be calculated, specifically the start date of rewards, for device users. We are going to treat the date a user ordered their DIMO Data Miner as the date their rewards begin. This will give hardware and distribution teams the ability deliver a quality product on time, and our earliest supporters won't miss out on rewards.

There is only one condition to qualify: you will need to connect the device when you receive it and maintain the connection for at least 2 months. After this has occurred, you will receive the test rewards from the original order date to the present day.

Anyone who connected via Smartcar or the Tesla integration will also be eligible for test points. Connect your car today!

For a complete breakdown of token earnings calculations, you can visit this page:

Demand Signal - DIMO Overview

How drivers and fleet operators can earn $DIMO

DIMO Overview

We're really excited to tackle these milestones and bring the DIMO vision closer to life. Thanks for riding along with us! 🚙

When I first joined the DIMO discord it had just under 200 members, we're about to hit 6000! The devices were not being sold and the anxiety of what to come was building. I think back on my first happy hour with the core team and getting to ask the preliminary questions as all new members would - What is the purpose of the project? How does it work with Helium? When could I expect to get my hands on one of these devices? Not only was the core team able to answer all of these questions but they provided clear and concise information on what the future of this project could be. I felt like achilles being dipped in a pool of knowledge

Then the day finally came, the devices went on sale! I ordered as fast as I could! It was pretty seamless to get these ordered and the promise of a short ship time was refreshing coming from several months of waiting for other projects. I was ecstatic to be one of the first to order a groundbreaking device. From here I got heavily involved in the DIMO discord and started conversing with the other community members who were also as excited as I was about this product. After a couple of weeks in, Rob Solomon, one of the co-founders, announced a new role deemed contributor, the purpose of this was to help shape the DIMO community. So many opportunities to throw my hat in and learn about everyone's strengths and weaknesses and how we can come together to develop something that is unique to us.

After helping out in the community for a while I was able to become a contributor, a happy day for me. From here I went on to help out the newest members to the server and answer any questions they had. I started contributing documentation to the gitbook on connecting cars. I found myself discussing ideas with other contributors during the weekly Happy Hour. Being able to be one of the alpha testers let me see exactly what everyone was in store for.

It seems one conversation led to another, before a life-changing one followed from the string. After being accepted as a device alpha tester, I was eligible to receive DIMO data miner early in exchange for helping the project. By pure coincidence, I was moving in a couple short days. I contacted Alex Rawitz, the COO of Digital Infrastructure inc (from here on I will refer to this as D.inc) to let him know that I needed to update the shipping address, and one thing led to another, and I ended up asking about employment at D.inc.

I was told to check out a couple roles and see what one caught my eye. Engineer, Fleet Manager, Data Analyst, but the one that spoke to me was Community Manager. This role was a lot like what I was currently doing, but gave me the opportunity to do much more. After interviewing with Alex and Rob, they suggested that I answer some questions and present my answers to the rest of the founders. I did just that and more.

As I type this I have a week left working as a System Administrator, the feeling of butterflies in my stomach and overflowing with excitement for what is to come on this new journey.

My plan as Community Manager is to help guide new members, experienced users and DIMO contributors towards making DIMO the best it can be. I plan on helping transition someone brand new to a full on DIMO enthusiast. To launch that enthusiast into a contributor. Then finally setting that contributor up to allow them to run wild with their ideas, converting their energy to production for DIMO. I promise all of you that I will do whatever it is my power to best guide you along your path into DIMO, and to help everyone in the community, contributor or not, to get the most out of DIMO.

DIMO can disrupt the automobile industry with what it sets out to accomplish. How do we accomplish this though? Connecting vehicles of course! Modern cars can produce an astounding amount of data: 2.5 GB an hour! That’s about 1500x more than browsing the web. Automation and electrification will only grow this number even more. DIMO’s goal is to get this data into the hands of the driver instead of into the pockets of OEMs. Each user of DIMO will have the ability to capture their own data and use it how they see fit.

But the vision is even bigger than that too. I believe that this project can change so much in the world we live in. We have gone from physical maps to GPS, taxi services to ride-hailing, stationary workstations to pocketable supercomputers. DIMO can be the next big thing that changes mobility and we all can benefit from it.

We just backed the car out of the driveway.

Time to see what this baby can do! - Shaolin

February 15, 2022 -- Digital Infrastructure Inc, a company focused on building the DIMO network, has raised a funding round led by CoinFund, Variant Fund, Slow Ventures, Table Management (Bill Ackman), Wonder Ventures, Streamr, Stratos Technologies, Lattice, and angels including Rick Wagoner (fmr. CEO of GM), Mark Joseph (CEO, Mobitas Advisors), Trevor McFederies (CEO, Brud), Amir Haleem (CEO, Helium), Kiran Bhatraju (CEO Arcadia), Ro Gupta (CEO, Carmera), Michael Sena (CEO, 3Box Labs), Jake Chervinsky (Head of Policy, Blockchain Association), Packy McCormack (Not Boring Capital), Mason Borda (CEO, Tokensoft).

The vision behind the DIMO network is simple: make it easy for consumers and fleets to take ownership of their mobility data, unlocking better apps and services in automotive finance, insurance, shared mobility, maintenance and more. To accomplish this, Digital Infrastructure Inc and a group of partners including AutoPi and Streamr are seeding a software and hardware ecosystem:

Since launching App.Dimo.Zone in December of 2021, Digital Infrastructure Inc. has seen tremendous traction: over 17,000 vehicles added, demand from over 700 fleets, and dozens of mobility services companies have begun to build on the platform.

2,500 DIMO-enabled Data Miners have been pre ordered through Shop.Dimo.Zone, and the first units have already been delivered and installed in consumer vehicles. This device enables any car to establish a private, secure hardware connection to the DIMO network, allowing users to add connected vehicle functionality to their vehicle, and opt-out of default options provided by OEMs.

The company plans to use the proceeds from it’s financing round to:

• Open-source its core software platform and release an SDK for developers to build applications using DIMO hardware.
• Add hardware supply and support the production of additional DIMO-compatible devices.
• Turn vehicles into distributed energy resources (DERs) helping them charge with clean power, and easing the transition to zero emission vehicles.
• Further decentralize the project to facilitate governance by: drivers, public and private fleets, and app developers

“We’re building DIMO for users and developers interested in a better, more open mobility future.” said Andy Chatham, co-founder of Digital Infrastructure Inc. “We’re solving a big problem: 9 in 10 people think they should control who has access to their vehicle’s data, and that isn’t the case today. We’ve resourced the project to take a long-term approach, and are excited to begin the next chapter supporting growing the DIMO project into a movement.”

Users earn rewards and access apps by connecting their cars to DIMO and streaming data into Mobility Data Unions. This allows users to negotiate for better goods and services while maintaining privacy, and it allows enterprises and developers to access customers more efficiently.

“We believe cars are going to be the biggest developer platform yet — and the most impactful place to build a user-owned IoT network,” said Yevgeny Khessin, co-founder at Digital Infrastructure Inc. “The technical building blocks and vehicle supply we’re bringing online will unlock new applications in insurance, vehicle sales and financing, energy grid optimization, and more.”

“DIMO Proof-of Movement has the ability to better coordinate connected vehicles with the world around them,” said Alex Felix, CIO of CoinFund. “Empowering users to own their data is a powerful use for web3 technologies, and the network is designed around a positive feedback loop that redraws stakeholder lines and rewards users in more productive ways.”

About DIMO

DIMO is a user-owned IoT platform that allows users to maximize the value of their connected devices, starting with cars. Inspired by Helium, Streamr, IPFS, Ethereum, it allows users to create verified data streams from devices they own and share them with applications privately and without exploitative middlemen.    

About Digital Infrastructure Inc. (DINC)

Digital Infrastructure Inc. was founded in 2021 to design, build, and scale the DIMO network. The founding team and it’s ecosystem of partners have spent years connecting cars to the internet, operating and building mobility services, building hardware, and working with leaders in the autonomous vehicle industry.

You can use DINC products to add a car to the DIMO Alpha Fleet today at App.Dimo.Zone, inquire as a fleet or distribution partner, or read more about the project here.

• Digital Infrastructure Inc, one of the companies building DIMO has raised $9mm from a group of over 50 individuals, funds, and core team members, with another $1mm coming via a presale in which...
• Over 2,000 DIMO-Enabled Devices were ordered — blowing away our expectations and allowing us to invest more in building the platform. We delivered the first batch last week and will be opening a massive new wave of hardware options over the course of the next 2 years.
• We’re building a huge and engaged community around the project: over 6,000 people have joined the DIMO community on discord, incorporating more viewpoints and skillsets.
• In December we launched app.dimo.zone to allow users to connect new-model vehicles without hardware. Over 20,000 people have added cars, and many of them are already collecting and storing verified data each day.
• To create a long-term home for the project, Digital Infrastructure Inc. is transitioning control of the core IP, brand, and treasury into a nonprofit controlled by the users of the platform (also called a DAO, or simply DIMO).

web3 + IoT + Mobility = Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects

Our founding team has spent decades working on some of the most advanced mobility and automotive systems.

We were frustrated with the status quo (more on that below), and saw a better way.

After participating in the growth of the Helium network in 2020 we realized that important technical and consumer adoption problems had been solved. Not only was the tech nearly ready for primetime, but hundreds of thousands of people were jumping in and standing up their own networks.

Three characteristics stood out:

• Users were able to earn meaningful ownership stake in the network by contributing useful work and capital by ordering devices.
• The innovation and transparency of open-source software had extended into the physical realm — companies were building products and services on the platform without asking anyone for permission.
• 30%+ Take-rates of web2 platforms like Uber & Lyft look like extortion compared to the razor-thin margins required to run a software protocol. When everyone is an owner, the business model changes.

Enter DIMO

We think cars are going to be The Biggest Developer Platform yet — and therefore the most leveraged and productive place to build the user-owned IoT network of the future. It’s also highly aligned with what consumers want:

Vehicle Data is Only Getting More Important

Automakers (OEMs) are building their own “Walled Garden” platforms, where they’re gatekeepers and the sole source of truth. This isn’t a world we want to live in, so we’re building a better alternative.

Now that cars are making safety-critical decisions on public roads, and an important battleground :

• Who should have access to the data and controls of a vehicle?
• How can you be sure that information is valid?
• Under what circumstances should data should be shared?

The steps visible today on app.dimo.zone and in our hardware represent a small but significant step towards asserting user control over a mobility future that is still up for grabs.

Who is behind all this?

Some web3 projects have recently launched with fully anonymous core teams. This is a great feature of the internet: that nobody knows if you’re a dog (or cat).

We’ve personally opted not to go that route for a couple of important reasons:

• We’re building technology that interacts with the real world, and there’s an additional layer of trust required to get people to want to use DIMO
• There are real-world reputation and skills that we’re bringing to DIMO from other large companies and projects we’ve worked on in the past. You can’t bring that along without using a real name.

We’re proud to have our names associated with DIMO, but we also recognize the value of pseudo-anonymous contributors and want to remove barriers to participate in the project. In our mission to incorporate the broadest possible group of people, we’re ok with however someone wants to present themselves to the community — whether they use their real name or a pseudonym.

How did we get here?

Until September 2021 we prototyped and built on nights & weekends with a group of software engineers, designers, and operators from the automotive, mobility, and IoT industries.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that we needed to focus full-time on DIMO. Our napkin math said it would take $3mm to build the core platform and launch the $DIMO governance token in a fair, compliant way.

Along the way we’ve had help from dozens of experts in communications, robotics, public finance, contracts, and organizational design.

[Community Contributors]

dTeams — The Path to Progressive Decentralization

Digital Infrastructure Inc. (the company that the core team works for) has laid out a plan with our team and investors to progressively decentralize the project over the coming years.

DIMO (the nonprofit foundation, also called a DAO) is designed on a model that has been demonstrated by successful public goods projects like ENS and Gitcoin.

There will be dozens of spinoff teams, projects, and companies that come out of the early participants in the ecosystem.

Today work is happening in hybrid teams made up of full-time employees from multiple companies, contractors, and community contributors. We’ve organized into teams and provided these teams with resources and a mandate to build specific areas of the project:

Hardware: Designing and manufacturing DIMO Miners which drivers will use to connect their vehicles

Apps: Building and Maintaining App.Dimo.Zone and the DIMO Move app, the first web and mobile clients for the network.

Ecosystem: Building integrations and seeding 3rd party apps. If you are a device OEM, or if you build a mobility app/service that could use some web3 superpowers, reach out! You can read more about apps we're supporting on DIMO here.

Core: The governance of the project as a whole, responsible for:

• Launching the DIMO token, and overseeing the treasury. The initial $DIMO token design is available here, and will continue to evolve as we begin to issue rewards for Proof of Movement, for developer grants, and other community contributions.
• Protecting the brand and core IP —filing trademarks and provisional patents for core IP so we can ensure DIMO stays open and protected from spam (more on this later).

Media: Everything from minting NFTs of your car and road trips, to data-driven car reviews, and scavenger hunt games that leverage Proof Of Movement. We’re funding this team to push the boundaries of what is possible with verified mobility data, and aim to broaden the reach and appeal of the DIMO project in the process.

Capital D: With a larger than expected raise, we’ve pulled some future plans into the present and set aside capital to fund applications and public goods that will enrich the experience DIMO for users.

Our existing capital partners (below) and a number of other funds are excited to fund the next layer of apps, hardware, and services on the platform, and we're excited to share the work of some of the early teams building on DIMO later this year.

Ride with us

If you’re interested in DIMO you should add your car to DIMO today!

We’ll have a slow roll of adding users before we open the floodgates, so if you want to be a hands on tester, dive in now.

• Join Discord and start building with us.
• Connect your car or fleet to DIMO and start contributing to the network today.
• We’re adding core contributors — check out our jobs page.

You can follow along in our discord, and using tools like Sobol where you can view an interactive version of the organization map below.

Learn more

If you do want to learn more, come check out our deep-dive.

As a user-owned IoT platform, DIMO is designed to align developers with users.

Over a series of posts here in the next couple of months, we’ll show how that is reflected in our approach to personal data privacy, and what users can expect from us as we begin to connect large IoT devices (cars) to DIMO applications.

Today (and throughout the entire test-net phase) we’re focused on building supply of connected vehicles, and any data sharing will be controlled by users and opt-in only.

This means that no data is accessed or viewed by 3rd parties, except in limited, opt-in beta testing groups that are helping us test applications on the platform; your data is fully encrypted in transit and at rest!

Privacy Zones & Geofencing

Arguably the most sensitive topic to consider when dealing with real-world assets is location data.

Today, anyone who creates an account on App.DIMO.zone is given the option to create a “Privacy Fence” for their vehicle data, which abstracts their location information to a general area within the specified zones. When data is transmitted from within a user’s privacy radius, DIMO will remove the last digits of the latitude and longitude to make reading exact locations impossible.

We recommend users create a privacy fence around their neighborhood, office, or other sensitive locations they do not wish to disclose. You will still earn when you drive in these areas, and you can update them at any time.

Once applications and Mobility Data Unions are live on the DIMO platform, you'll be able to dynamically adjust your privacy zone on the fly so you can share data with apps and services that need it (but only when they need it).

For more information you can read our Privacy FAQs, where we'll post updates as we add more features and uses for data over time.

If you’re working on a data privacy project, certification, or technology we want to hear from you! You can also view our Privacy Policy here.

@wiley_19#7828 (DIMO Media Contributor)

Successful operation requires the vehicle to know how its components are behaving. All drivers are familiar with a few of these data points such as vehicle speed, engine RPM, and fuel level (which are displayed on the instrument cluster). Each of these data points was collected by a sensor such as those seen in the graphic below, transmitted by an ECU over the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus, and then read and displayed by the Instrument Cluster ECU. Other data points collected include hard braking or acceleration events, crash events, remote service usage (such as remote start/stop or remote unlock/lock), charging history, battery usage, emissions and more.

Growing Autonomy

As advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) features (lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, automated parking) become ubiquitous and slowly evolve into full autonomy, the vehicle’s need for information about the external world significantly increases.

While we’re driving, our bodies’ sensory systems (visual, auditory, etc.) are constantly collecting data about the environment in order for our brain to make safe and effective decisions. When autonomous vehicles (AV) take the wheel, they must replicate that data feed and the logic ingrained in our brains during Driver’s Ed courses and reinforced every time we drive.

The graphic below illustrates how a Level 3 autonomous vehicle captures the necessary data to provide ADAS features to the customer. In order to increase the level of autonomy, AV developers are introducing new sensors such as long range infrared sensors and increasing the quantity of existing sensors like the LIDAR sensor currently used for collision avoidance and pedestrian detection.

To handle the increasing amount of data and complexity, most OEMs and suppliers are working to consolidate the number of ECUs for future vehicle platforms and utilize sensor fusion (combining the strengths of each sensor to create a robust system) to maximize the utility of the overall system.

What Your Vehicle Knows about You

Of greatest interest to most users is not what the vehicle knows about itself or its environment, but what it knows about you. In 2019, technology columnist Geoffrey Fowler and an experienced vehicle hacker decided to find out for themselves. Their target was the infotainment system of a 2017 Chevy Bolt due to GM’s long history of connected vehicles.

What they found was information about the user’s location, in-vehicle media, and most concerning: their phone usage. Smartphones have become an integral part of the driving experience with aux cords, standard bluetooth connections, and Apple CarPlay/Android Auto. But when we connect to our vehicles, it’s not just our tunes that are passed along. Fowler found logs of phone calls, contact lists, and enough location data to reconstruct the user’s daily life.

As autonomy, connectivity, and convenience increase, the vehicle’s knowledge about you, the user, will continue to grow. Driver monitoring systems have been deployed by numerous automakers in the event the driver needs to take control of the vehicle from the ADAS system. OEMs such as Ford, GM, BMW, and Subaru have told Consumer Reports their driver monitoring systems are closed loops (i.e. they do not save or share any data collected by the monitoring system).

Tesla, on the other hand, uses steering wheel inputs to determine the driver’s state. Tesla cabins are also equipped with driver facing cameras that require driver opt in. These are not used to warn the customer. Instead, they provide Tesla with images or video of the driver surrounding a safety related incident. If you follow Tesla’s AutoPilot related incidents, they are notorious for blaming crashes on inattentive drivers—and with these cameras, they could have the data to prove it.

Biometric technologies in general are finding a greater number of applications in vehicles. HiPhi X, a premium SUV intended to be a Tesla competitor in China (or imitator), uses facial recognition to authenticate the user before powering open the doors. Available in the US in early 2022, Genesis’ GV60 will offer similar facial recognition authentication with additional “driver profiles” that will adjust the interior of the vehicle based on facial recognition as well. For the European premium segment, Daimler has partnered with Visa to provide in vehicle payments authenticated by your fingerprint.

Your voice is also becoming an increasingly common way to interact with your vehicle. First introduced by Honda in 2004, users can now adjust in-vehicle controls, make calls, and even place orders at restaurants. In 2020, there were an estimated 83.8 million active monthly users of in-vehicle voice assistants, significantly outpacing the use of smart speakers in homes.

Companion apps are another increasingly common way to interact with your vehicle as automakers have been scrambling to improve their digital presence. These apps are our remote gateway into our vehicle, and the automaker’s remote gateway into more information about our lives.

For example, Stellantis’ (formerly Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA)) companion app has a rewards program for miles traveled. This isn’t just miles traveled in your Jeep Wrangler. It includes all miles you travel. Glass half full: this looks like an attempt to incentivize use of greener and healthier transportation methods. Glass half empty: this is just another attempt to grab more of your location data.

These technologies are not without their benefits. ADAS features make vehicles safer. Biometrics aim to make vehicles more secure and more convenient to operate. Infotainment systems keep us heading in the right direction and entertain us during commutes. Voice Assistants help keep our hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Companion apps allow us to connect to our vehicle from anywhere.

But with these benefits comes an increase in your data being collected and a reduction in your privacy.

In our next post, we’ll look into who receives the data, how it’s put to use, and where connected vehicle technology is headed in the future.

One quick note - In the last post of this series, we will look at DIMO's impact on the connected vehicle data industry. If you'd like to get a head start on learning about DIMO's mission to create the mobility platform of the future, you can follow along in the Discord with me here.

Drive on to the next post:

From Crude Oil to Digital Oil

Connected Vehicle Data Series 3 of 7: By now, we know our vehicles collect data. Let’s explore how that data is put to use and who stands to benefit. @wiley_19#7828 (DIMO Media Contributor) So far, we’ve learned what your vehicle knows (data about itself, the environment,

DIMOwiley_19

This post is from a DIMO community member, and opinions are their own. Digital Infrastructure Inc. does not necessarily endorse any of the views herein.

@wiley_19#7828 (DIMO Media Contributor)

Growing environmental concerns about vehicle emissions in the 1970s led to the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and implementation of new regulations such as the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program. In response, automakers developed electrical control systems for the engine since the traditional mechanical control systems were no longer able to meet the increasingly stringent requirements.

In the following decades, commoditization of computing power and sensors led to electrical control systems spreading throughout vehicles. Manufacturers deployed this new control strategy to functions outside of the engine, from steering and braking to locking of doors.

Today, vehicles consist of hundreds of sensors and 70+ electronic control units (ECUs—think mini computers). These sensors capture as many as 175 data points about the vehicle's actions, environment, and user inputs. The ECUs then convert this information into digital data packets and broadcast them onto the vehicle's communication networks. In certain cases, they’re broadcast out to the world as well.

In the next post, we'll dive into these data points to better understand what your vehicle knows about itself, its environment, and you.

Drive on to the next post:

The Anatomy of Connected Vehicles and the Data They Produce

Connected Vehicle Data Series 2 of 5: Just as we use our sensory systems to gather information while driving, our vehicles use sensors to collect over 100 data points on the vehicle itself, the environment, and you, the user.@wiley_19#7828 (DIMO dMedia Contributor) Successful operation requires the…

DIMOwiley_19

This post is from a DIMO community member, and opinions are their own. Digital Infrastructure Inc. does not necessarily endorse any of the views herein.

@wiley_19#7828 (DIMO Media Contributor)

At 25 GB per hour of vehicle use, your vehicle generates and shares enough data to fill the storage of a 120 GB iPhone over the course of a five hour road trip. Not only is that an astounding amount of data (web browsing only produces 0.015 GB per hour), the vast majority of us don’t know our vehicles are collecting and sharing data.

So what does that mean for you as a vehicle owner? What does your vehicle know? How is this data used—and by who? And what, if anything, can you do to access your data and protect your privacy?

In this series of five articles, we will answer these questions and more to get you up to speed on your vehicle data. Check out a sneak peek of topics, each its own post, and stay tuned for the full posts in the near future:

The Evolution from Classic Cars to Computers on Wheels

A quick look at how environmental regulations as well as the commoditization of computing power and sensors have changed vehicles into rich data sources.

The Anatomy of Connected Vehicles and the Data They Produce

Just as we use our sensory systems to gather information while driving, the vehicle sensors are collecting over 100 data points on the vehicle itself, the environment, and you the user.

From Crude Oil to Digital Oil

The primary recipient of your vehicle’s data (if it is a connected vehicle) is the automaker. What are OEM's trying to do with that data?

Opening New Lines of Communication

Let’s dive into a couple ongoing innovations that will create new lines of communication between the vehicle and the world and how these innovations will change driving and vehicle ownership experiences.

The Legal Landscape

An overview of the laws and regulations that affect data access and use in the connected vehicle industry.

Connected Vehicles and You

Building off the regulations discussed in The Legal Landscape, we’ll lay out a few ways to access and manage your vehicle data.

DIMO has Entered the Chat

An introduction to how DIMO will change our relationship with vehicle data for the better—all while helping develop the mobility and infrastructure solutions of the future.

Drive on to the next post:

The Evolution from Classic Cars to Computers on Wheels

Connected Vehicle Data Series 1 of 5: A quick look at how environmental regulations as well as the commoditization of computing power and sensors have changed vehicles into rich data sources.@wiley_19#7828 (DIMO dMedia Contributor) Growing environmental concerns about vehicle emissions in the 1970s…

DIMOwiley_19

This post is from a DIMO community member, and opinions are their own. Digital Infrastructure Inc. does not necessarily endorse any of the views herein.

Launching DIMO Rewards Points

It’s finally here! No, not the $DIMO token...but the first version of the DIMO rewards engine is live and test points are visible in the 1.1.0 mobile app! Users with a connected vehicle will start to see a “test points” balance in the their account. This post

DIMORob Solomon

We’re starting a two-phase test period. Phase 1 will have no rewards. In Phase 2, rewards points map to mainnet tokens delivered through a retroactive airdrop.

Since the project was first announced less than 2 months ago, over 10,000 people have created DIMO accounts and registered vehicles. Beyond that, thousands have preordered the forthcoming DIMO Data Miner and over 3,500 people have joined the DIMO Discord community. We are excited to introduce Drive-to-Earn to the world and get drivers earning $DIMO tokens for vehicle data, but we have a few steps before that.

As this post will explain, token rewards for vehicle data have not yet been activated, and below is our plan, passed in a proposal from the Core Team, for starting the rewards allocation within the community.

Why this approach?

We’re aiming to accomplish three main goals with this approach:

1. Fairness. Maximize fairness of early rewards allocations by ensuring we have a number of ways for drivers to connect their vehicles. While not every interested driver will be able to, by offering at least a few options we can have a larger initial pool of earners.
2. Resilience. Unlike many awesome defi projects that are just smart contracts, DIMO has many other critical moving pieces (that was a pun). Our software is connecting to real objects in the real world, and we have additional development steps to take to make our software secure and resilient.
3. Regulations. Complete regulatory clarity. Some crypto projects can do what they can to avoid the long arm of regulators by going anon or moving overseas. Since we’re tackling the physical world, we have to have a real presence, and this means doing everything we can to ensure the future of the project by abiding by regulations.

You can read more about the $DIMO Token here: https://docs.dimo.zone/dimo-overview/token/what-is-usddimo

Roadmap

Testing Phase 1: Testing Initial Vehicle Connections

Starting January 2022 and continuing through at least February, DIMO users will be able to connect their vehicles via software API connections and the DIMO Hardware Miner to begin collecting their own vehicle data. The purpose of this period is to test connections and diversify the connection methods so that the maximum number of drivers can use DIMO. Once 1,000 cars have been connected, we’ll move into Phase 2.

Testing Phase 2: Rewards prior to Mainnet Launch

Starting in February, we’ll allow users to start accumulating points which will entitle them to a portion of the retroactive distribution of tokens for early users once the token goes live. These off-chain points will not exist on any blockchain, only on our servers (like Reddit Karma). Hypothetically, if a user earns 1% of all points earned by all users in the pre-mainnet phase, they’ll earn 1% of the retroactive airdrop.

Referral bonuses: DIMO will allocate to users up to 100 $DIMO per each new user they sign up, using their referral link. In order to earn the allocation, the users they refer will have to prove that they’re legitimate users of the platform, by connecting their car and actually streaming data. Everyone’s referrals are being tracked and will be visible in the app when point allocation begins in Testing Phase 1.

Summary:

• We’re launching the ability to connect cars via SmartCar, a connected vehicle service.
• Users who have an active subscription with a connected car app and whose OEM is on the compatibility list will be able to connect with the DIMO webapp.
• If you do not have a subscription or your OEM is not on the list, you’ll have to use DIMO hardware.
• Tokens will NOT yet be rewarded for driving. Rewards will launch in late February, with mainnet token rewards slated for Q2. You can read more about the road to the DIMO token here.

Connecting the First Cars to DIMO

At DIMO, we’re enabling people and fleets to collect data from their vehicles in as many useful ways as possible. Onboarding vehicles is the first step towards building a user-owned platform that can support open, safe, and clean mobility applications of the future.

Last month, we announced the ability to add your vehicle by VIN, as well as the DIMO x AutoPi Data Miner, which is a hardware device that plugs directly into a vehicle to collect and store data from nearly any car (although we’re only recommending it for cars less than 10 years old, for now).

Today, we’re excited to announce a new connectivity option that works for some cars — a software-only option that you can hook up for free without getting off the couch!

Users with newer vehicles that have an existing Connected Vehicle account (like FordPass or OnStar) can now connect their car to DIMO via a platform built by our partner Smartcar.

Not all cars are set up to support this option, but we decided to build it because roughly 50% of new cars today are already connected, and 75%+ will be in the next few years! DIMO automatically checks your vehicle’s compatibility and will offer you the ability to connect in the DIMO app if your car is on the list.

SmartCar has done an amazing job of building a tool that abstracts away the complexity of interacting with 15+ connected vehicle platforms that all have varying levels of performance and functionality.

This is a piece of the puzzle, not a perfect solution!

SmartCar will be the first and easiest step of connectivity for many vehicles and users, but there are some limitations that are important to identify upfront.

For privacy-concerned individuals, opting in to an automaker-provided connected vehicle services can result in unwanted data sharing, beyond the control of DIMO (or even you as a user).

While we’re providing you with the SmartCar connectivity option as a way to easily collect and store your own copy of the data from your vehicle, we can’t guarantee that the information will only be stored by DIMO (like we can with our hardware miners).

Because it comes from the onboard connection, data passes through the vehicle OEM (Ford, Tesla, etc), their connected vehicle platform provider (Autonomic, OnStar, etc), and through SmartCar servers on its way to your DIMO data vault.

In the spirit of transparency, we’re linking to SmartCar’s privacy policy here.

Another thing to note about SmartCar connectivity: You can only refresh the data every hour, due to limitations on the SmartCar API. This is true for hitting the “refresh” button in your DIMO Dashboard or re-authenticating with SmartCar.

This is yet another reason the AutoPi upgrade is going to be so phenomenal for users: constant, real-time data without refresh!

To ensure maximum token earnings on launch (and privacy, if you wish to opt-out of any 3rd party services like SmartCar and your OEM’s connected vehicle services), we still recommend that non-Teslas less than 10 years old upgrade to the DIMO x AutoPi device. There is a small amount of preorder supply remaining and we’re working hard to secure more supply for the US, Canada, and Europe in 2022!

Where is this feature headed?

We’re excited to use SmartCar as a connectivity option for users, and to produce aggregated insights into the performance of existing connected vehicle platforms in the market.

As connected vehicle features become increasingly important to consumer experience, safety, and privacy, we can be the first to measure performance of these features across OEMs and provide an additional layer of transparency into this critical digital infrastructure.

We’re going to report out early and often on what stories the data can tell us. We’ll also be building new features and helping release new apps and services that can be built with this data.

Getting Connected

If your car is compatible with SmartCar, in the DIMO app you will see the ability to “Connect this vehicle.”

It’s a very simple process. You will need an active account with your vehicle maker’s connected car service, like Tesla, FordPass, or Toyota Remote Connect.

If you see the green icon and “Connected,” congratulations, you’re all set!

You may see a banner to upgrade to the DIMO x AutoPi miner. While not required, the hardware will confer two major benefits to users: much more data about your own car to consume and store, and higher rewards if you choose to share that data.

Whether you choose to upgrade or not, you’re now set to start gathering your own vehicle data and to Drive-to-Earn in the next few months.

Stick around and help us upgrade the Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects

We’re just getting started. Over the next few months you’ll see a slew of new features and updates from DIMO. We always encourage people to learn more by visiting our blog or reading more in our deep dive documentation. Last but not least, if you’re not already in the DIMO Discord, hop in and join us.

Our ability to solve big problems as a human race is only limited by our ability to collaborate with each other. Everything comes down to coordination and we have the chance to do better.

You might be familiar with the opaque, somewhat arbitrary, and bureaucratic budget routine corporations go through every December. I certainly am — I’ve worked in corporate finance for over a decade. A small team of executives with limited context reviews a spreadsheet to make sure that expenses are only increasing by a little. Afterall, nobody gets fired for approving a mere 4% budget increase.

The traditional corporate operating structure was perfect for manufacturing teapots in 1925, but we’ve outgrown it. The more centralized an organization is the more organized it can be — but only to a point. Structures that rely on a complex chain of command aren’t conducive to innovation and adaptability at a larger scale. Each time information passes from person to person, valuable information is lost before finally reaching a decision maker (if ever). And decision makers lack more and more context as their organization grows larger and more complex. Companies also struggle as the personal incentives of executives fall out of alignment with the whole. It’s why a tiny centrally planned village run by a chief can work great, while a centrally planned nation-state cannot.

If you’re deep into web3, you might also be familiar with the way Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) raise proposals to fund work streams. While they’re at least transparent, they’re far from perfect. Voters almost never deeply understand what they’re voting on and they struggle to monitor the impacts of various voting decisions. Curve and Yearn are both phenomenal projects and have inspired aspects of DIMO’s design, but their proposal to give a combined two million dollars to a group of lawyers to advocate on behalf of the industry is crude compared to a traditional work contract you’d see at a corporation. And the community collaboration and voting process has room to improve. It’s progress, but we’re not there yet.

The more decentralized and flat an organization is, the more scalable and resilient it is — but such systems require robust infrastructure and incentives to combat coordination failure. For example, a decentralized, market-based economy works great for countries. For a self-sufficient village of twenty people, the risk of market failures and the cost of establishing contract laws, court systems, and monetary systems isn’t worth it.

Enter DIMO

DIMO intends to take organization design to the next level. There are many excellent teams building new software for DAOs, and we’ll both use those tools and contribute to their development. However, for now, we expect our contributions to mainly focus on improving human-centered operating processes.

To optimize for effectiveness, alignment, and scalability, we will delegate authority and responsibility broadly; operate with full transparency; use token-based staking, credentialing, and contingent funding systems; and use proactive performance monitoring.

The Process

As explained in our docs and blog, DIMO will be governed by the holders of the $DIMO token. Token holders will either be able to vote on matters directly or will be able to delegate their vote to another person in a liquid democracy.

Any person who has been delegated 10,000,000 or more $DIMO is a DIMO Steward and will automatically be added to [d]Stewards. Stewards, both individually and collectively, have special authorities and responsibilities, including the ability to introduce proposals for full community voting and the responsibility to advise and occasionally intervene with other [d]Teams.

It’s not reasonable to expect voters and even stewards to get into the weeds and vote frequently on small ad hoc decisions. Proposals voted on by the community, called DIMO Improvement Proposals (DIPs), will most often be proposals to delegate resources and authority to a [d]Team. Certain consequential decisions will also need ratification from the full community (e.g., [d]TokenRewards would still need to bring a proposal back to the voters to officially adjust the $DIMO rewards formula).

What is a [d]Team?

A [d]Team is a specialized team that the DAO votes to give resources and/or authority to in order to fulfill a specific purpose. They’re like a department or team in a traditional company. In other DAOs, they’re often called a guild or subDAO.

We’ll have [d]Teams focused on building decentralized data storage architectures, tweaking token incentives, producing content, designing the mobile app, and more. Some may appoint a leader, some may operate using Teal principles, and others might even go as far as to operate as their own DAO, maybe even with their own governance tokens.

In a way, [d]Teams are actually less like departments in a company and more like an external agency contracting with the company. While DIMO may invest in infrastructure to support them (e.g., accounting and HR support), [d]Teams will operate relatively independently so long as they operate within the constraints set forth by the community.

However, unlike external agencies, [d]Teams will have: ownership of DIMO and aligned incentives as made possible by the $DIMO token; specific authority and responsibility; and full visibility into the operations of DIMO (just like everyone else).

Today, our [d]Teams are relatively informal and unstructured, but that is changing. We have employees and contractors working on brand design, back-end, front-end, token design, back-office, etc. but they’re not formally organized, scoped, and funded like [d]Teams (yet). We need to get these teams prepped and ready for the full DIMO community to join in and contribute at scale, and we’ll do so by taking them through the process outlined in the next section. And while teams will work to define their onboarding process, those interested in contributing can easily apply for a contributor role in our Discord.

How is a [d]Team created and funded?

The simplest way a new team can get started is to receive a small grant from [d]Seed for research and pro-typing, get hired by another team that already has funding, or to forgo funding altogether. For others, the following describes how to get funding and authority directly from DIMO.

The DIMO community will fund [d]Teams like an investor funding a startup. This means that teams will present what they do, make an ask, negotiate funding and deliverables, and unlock tranches of resources based on hitting agreed upon milestones.

While voters can adjust this process at any point, our initial design will resemble one that was piloted while I was at ConsenSys. Let’s call it the [d]Team Funding Process for now — and here’s how it’ll work, soup to nuts:

1 A [d]Team will emerge to accomplish a given purpose (e.g., to write DIMO content to raise awareness). Anyone can form a team, but it will require the support of 10,000,000 $DIMO worth of voting power (1% of tokens) to formally initiate the [d]Team Funding Process. Once that threshold is cleared, the applicant will coordinate with [d]Stewards to schedule their pitch to the community.

2 This [d]Team will prepare a written proposal as well as a slide presentation covering their: purpose and mission; realistic operating goals; execution plan; financial plan; key risks; team composition and qualifications; team governance structure (how they make decisions); process for onboarding and offboarding contributors; funding request; and their request for specific authority if applicable (e.g., [d]Hardware may request the power to whitelist new hardware miners). It’s recommended that they seek guidance and feedback from at least a couple of stewards.

3 On a dedicated community call, the team will take one hour to deliver the presentation and another hour to answer questions. During the Q&A, stewards will be invited to ask questions live on the call while anyone else may submit questions via Sli.do, which will be asked in the order of most upvoted. The meeting itself will be recorded and posted for anyone who wants to watch later.

4 Everyone, especially stewards, are welcome to provide feedback openly to the petitioning [d]Team. [d]Stewards will work with the team to incorporate feedback and publish a proposed coordination contract in Discourse where community members can continue to deliberate.

A template coordination contract is viewable here. This document will define:

Scope: Outlining the high-level purpose of what the [d]Team team exists to accomplish;

Funding terms: Including amounts and conditions (such as timelines or development milestones);

Operating commitments: For example, [d]Support committing to providing 24/7 customer support;

Cultural commitments: Clarifying how the [d]Team must act within DIMO (e.g., participate in specific community calls and treat everyone with respect and kindness);

Reporting commitments: Laying out what regular reporting the [d]Team must provide weekly, monthly, and/or quarterly as applicable (e.g., financial detail, site uptime, support tickets, app changelogs);

Authority & domain: Detailing what unique powers and rights the [d]Team has; and

Oversight: Detailing how the team is to be held accountable (more on this in #6 below).

5 After one week of open deliberation, a vote will go live whereby $DIMO holders are able to vote. These votes will be conducted on Snapshot with a seven day voting window.

6 If the vote passes, the [d]Team is then managed and evaluated per the oversight conditions set forth in the agreement. Similar to the way a venture fund checks-in with portfolio companies, an analyst is appointed by [d]Stewards to periodically consolidate all reporting materials, build scorecards detailing how the team did in meeting their various commitments, and conduct reviews with the team to dig deeper into the subjective measures of performance. These outputs will be shared with the community.

But wait… there’s more!

We hope you agree that this type of internal protocol can go a long way in keeping DIMO organized, effective, and aligned. But please know this is only a piece of what we have planned. This post doesn’t go into any real detail on the usage of internal market dynamics, reputation systems, and incentive structures we plan to deploy at DIMO to unlock even more scale, alignment, speed, and collaboration. Check back here, join our Discord, or follow us on Twitter to stay tuned. In the meantime, sign up today so you can start earning $DIMO soon!

Disclaimer: The $DIMO token does not exist yet. This blog post is making no guarantees about the nature of the token or its distribution, which are subject to change based on continued legal, tax, and other design considerations.

DIMO is a user-owned IoT platform that allows users to maximize the value of their connected assets, starting with cars.

Our first product allows drivers to stream vehicle data in exchange for tokens — practically employing Web3 technology to build an open mobility ecosystem.

If you’re a driver who wants to connect your car to DIMO so that you can Drive-to-Earn or benefit from seeing your vehicle data, use this as a guide to understand your connectivity options, and add your car to DIMO as a first step! We’re accepting new users to our beta on a first-come-first-served basis.

If there’s no connection option available today for your vehicle, don’t worry! By adding your VIN (vehicle identification number) you are creating a signal that we need to support your car — we intend to support every vehicle & transportation mode over time.

Keep reading to understand what’s available to drivers today.

Your Connection Options

We’ve been testing the platform ourselves for months, and we’re excited to begin sharing it with the world. There are going to be some excellent apps built on DIMO that we never could have thought of ourselves!

DIMO is designed to work with any vehicle (and eventually any IoT device), but to get started there are two options for drivers.

Broadly, your car can link to DIMO in three broad ways:

1. Adding your VIN, which allows the DIMO platform to ID your car and (eventually) to pull in manufacturing, maintenance, and recall information.
2. Logging in to your auto maker’s existing connectivity service via DIMO’s handy Smartcar integration
3. Via DIMO-enabled hardware plugged into your car which transmits data to the network over an existing cellular connection or other wireless means — for example we’re building support for Helium.

DIMO will offer all 3 means of connecting cars when we launch before rolling out more options over time. Our goal is to provide you with the most complete picture of your vehicle’s health, capabilities, and value — so we want to help you collect all possible data about it!

Getting started with an existing connected vehicle service

If you have a connected car subscription with your auto OEM (e.g., Ford, Tesla, Toyota), you can connect to DIMO using that username and password. To power this, we use Smartcar, which is like Plaid (how most websites will integrate with your bank) but for your car.

It’s a great option because if your car is supported, you can connect it immediately instead of waiting for hardware or physically installing a device. The tradeoff is that you’ll see less data about your car and earn lower rewards. There are also privacy implications that vary based on vehicle OEM (GM, Ford, Toyota, Tesla etc) of using your existing connected vehicle service. We’ll detail these in a later post.

There are two other requirements that might affect your ability to connect:

• Smartcar supports a wide number of cars which total over 72 million vehicles on the road. Even so, not every car can connect with Smartcar. You can check their vehicle compatibility to see if your car is supported or you can just sign up with DIMO and we’ll tell you.
• You must have an account with your automaker’s app. These apps, like FordPass or OnStar, are becoming more and more common — and if you have gotten a new car in the last few years, you may have one.

All in all, this software connection is easy, lets you start earning tokens right away, and it does not disqualify you from upgrading to a hardware option that can earn you more tokens later.

Getting started with DIMO x AutoPi Hardware v1

We’re also launching a hardware option for DIMO. While this connection option yields the highest data collection and rewards functionality, it brings different pros and cons to a driver.

All cars are technically compatible with the DIMO x AutoPi hardware: the device plugs into the universal car data port, known as the OBD2 port, which virtually every car has. You might be familiar with insurance dongles like Progressive Snapshot or Metromile which use this port for siloed “Smart Insurance” applications where you trade your data for cheaper rates on car insurance.

Initially, we are limiting initial access to hardware in two ways while we build the infrastructure and operations to support all vehicles:

1. The car must be located in the US or Canada.
2. The car must be less than ten years old.

It is strongly encouraged (but not required) to add your VIN before ordering an AutoPi, this way we can make sure your car is properly supported, and eventually provide you with an estimate of your expected token rewards and services available when you connect.

We’re working to expand the pool of eligible countries and vehicle types as quickly as we can. If you’re technical, it is also possible to join the DIMO community and receive support for adding your existing vehicles by providing DBC codes for your car — particularly if you’re unlocking that capability for other users. Our goal is to support every vehicle in the world!

A Note on OBD2 Data

Data from the OBD2 port comes off the car encoded, and each car maker encodes data differently. The good news is that many of these codes — called DBC Codes — are available publicly. Communities of car hackers have been decoding cars and publishing these codes open-source. This makes car data more open — it’s no longer something that only the manufacturer or dealer can read and build applications for.

Despite all the great work from communities like OpenDBC, you may still have a car that is not adequately decoded — meaning installing an AutoPi would yield limited or potentially even no data directly from the car (although the device itself always provides some data, as long as it has power). This could impact rewards and functionality.

Drivers who have a car that is eligible for an AutoPi can check in their account and pre-order from shop.dimo.zone.

Roadmap: More connections to come

We’re planning to roll out other connection methods for vehicles in 2022. A few on our roadmap are for Q1 are:

• Dedicated Tesla API Integration: This will give Tesla owners more detail about their vehicle than they get with Smartcar alone. Also, since the Tesla API provides so much data relative to any other automakers, Teslas will not need hardware to earn more rewards.
• Comma.ai Integration: A special Comma.ai integration that will allow people running comma.ai to stream their data to DIMO.

Geography: Rolling out slowly to scale properly

One other variable that may affect how you can connect is where you’re located. There are various technical requirements for data transmission, verification, and storage depending on where a particular vehicle is located. There are also different vehicles and integrations required to stream data from vehicles in different regions.

DIMO will be starting with cars in the US and Canada, and then moving to expand to other regions.

Regardless of where you are in the world, we encourage you to register an account and add your car to indicate interest and make sure you’re aware of when we can support your vehicle. You can also join our dedicated international support channel in discord

Rewards and Compatibility

We have detailed in our documentation how tokens are issued, but it’s worth adding a bit of detail here. Much the same way that Helium rewards vary based on your location, the location of nearby hotspots, and installation factors like your antenna size and placement, DIMO rewards will vary based on a set of factors.

There are two large categories of variables that will affect your rewards:

• Connection method
• Demand variables, set by the “demand signal”

Connection Method

As mentioned above, different connection methods provide different depths of data. Think about the difference between SMS and LTE. Both allow you to send text messages, but one lets you stream video — the other doesn’t. More data is always better, so using a connection method that provides more data is always going to earn a driver more rewards.

Demand Signal: The value of your data will change dynamically

Right now, DIMO is setting aside token rewards out of the initial token issuance for users — and the DAO will help to create the initial demand for that data. More importantly, DIMO is a market-based system, so we’re going to allow developers and enterprises to create their own demand for data. This means that as an economy emerges around the DIMO platform, the rewards for Drive-to-Earn will adjust dynamically with demand-driven market forces.

To illustrate: Today DIMO is rewarding new electric vehicles with a higher share of available rewards. We believe that the data from EVs is particularly valuable since the batteries and battery management systems — which have been developed at the cost of tens of billions by automakers — are so new and so riddled with problems. But as DIMO becomes a market system, those who want different data may choose to incentivize new Drive-to-Earn rewards for different vehicle types.

Learning More

Anyone who wants to learn more can find much more detail about token rewards and technical roadmap in our documentation. As with any open project, you can also contribute your opinion to the DAO, or submit a proposal about modifying the token issuance.

Get Started

You can sign up for a DIMO account and add a vehicle (or vehicles) today. We’ll notify you when we’re ready to help you connect your car, which should only be a few weeks.

If you’re looking to join the DAO and community, you can find us at our Discord Server. We also know that there’s great interest in deciphering and understanding car data — so in addition to those who want to send us vehicle data, we’re building a community around those who want to decode vehicle data. Car hackers and tinkerers around the world who have been working on this for years? There’s a place for you in DIMO, too.

DIMO is a multi-disciplinary project. In order to be successful we’ll need to collaborate with mobility, IoT, Automotive, public sector and web3 communities in as many productive ways as possible.

Recently, a growing group of internet people have gotten excited about what we’re building so we needed to come up with a good way to guide them to the right place.

In (rough) order from least to most time consuming, here is how you can support DIMO and get involved:

☑ Follow us on Twitter (and here on Medium, more social channels will be popping up soon)

🚘 Connect your existing car or fleet to DIMO

🛒 After you connect your car, you can preorder a device (which you’ll soon be able to delegate to one of our verified fleet pools if you don’t have a compatible car)

👋 Join the community on Discord (more on that below) where you can help us decode cars, connect new devices to DIMO

💻 Build (or integrate) a DIMO-compatible product or service. We’re already incubating a bunch of different ideas, and we’ll begin providing developer access to the platform and announcing a grant pool in January 2022.

DIMO is committed to building in the open and incorporating a broad set of viewpoints into the infrastructure we’re building and the products on top of it.

So we created a place for all of that to happen in real-time:

Enter The DIMOverse — The [DIMO] Discord

Like many recent projects, DIMO uses a communication tool called Discord. It can be a bit overwhelming to new contributors, so we try to make the onboarding as simple as possible.

Here’s what you’ll see after clicking this link:

Open Channels

By default, everyone can post in general channels and view content from other public channels. For now, we also do product support in Discord too, so people can get (nearly) immediate assistance on any issues they might have.

We will make a good-faith attempt to engage with anyone who is following the community guidelines.

This is like Reddit, or a public message board. Anyone can post, so the DIMO core team does not necessarily endorse the content or viewpoints expressed.

This is the internet so there are memes

[d]team Verified Contributor Channels

These channels are for getting work done, and people who are contributing their time to the project spend a lot of time here.

While they’re open to anyone, to access them you’ll need to submit this form with as much detail as possible on how you want to dig in.

[d]Team channels like [d]Platform, and [d]Product correspond with general teams, just like you might find in a “normal” company.

We also have channels dedicated to specific activities like 🔮DBC-Decoding (a community-driven effort to make sure we can read data from every car supported by DIMO).

A note on Identity & Privacy

One nice feature of the internet is that nobody knows if you’re a dog (or cat)

In our mission to incorporate the broadest possible group of people, we’re ok with however someone wants to present themselves to the community — whether they use their real name or a pseudonym.

Some web3 projects have recently launched with fully anonymous core teams, and we’ve personally opted not to go that route for a couple of important reasons:

• We’re building technology that interacts with the real world, and there’s an additional layer of trust required to get people to want to use DIMO
• There is real-world reputation and skills that we’re bringing to DIMO from other large companies and projects we’ve worked on in the past. Can’t bring that along without a real name

In the future we’ll have a more detailed post on our Privacy and Identity policy.

Where we’re headed

We want to engage with the mobility, IoT, Automotive, public sector and web3 communities in as many productive ways as possible, so there will be a ton of new ways to collaborate with DIMO in the future (including REAL WORLD events!).

Stay tuned for more, and you can always say hi to [email protected] if you prefer old-fashioned email.

How and why DIMO is rewarding drivers for sharing their vehicle data

The web3 world has seen an exciting explosion in “X-to-Earn,” a model that rewards network users for their participation. The basic idea: by using and providing value to a network, an individual or organization can earn income or even ownership stakes in that network.

This is a revolutionary shift in how users interact with the web. As a web3-native organization, DIMO is founded on the principles fueling this revolutionary shift. We believe that DIMO users should be rewarded for the value they add to the DIMO network — solving the “Platform Problem”.

Which is why we’re excited to introduce the concept of Drive-to-Earn to the world, built on a new implementation of an old idea called Proof-of-Movement.

The Drive-to-Earn implementation of Proof-of-Movement is similar to any other X-to-Earn concept: DIMO enables users to collect and share verified data from IoT devices (their cars) to prove that something happened in the real world. In exchange they can receive the network’s native $DIMO tokens.

Sharing Your Vehicle Data

Getting started is easy. Drivers create an account and add their car to DIMO. This information is securely stored in an encrypted database. In a few weeks DIMO will offer a simple, software connection that allows users to start collecting their vehicle data. We’re also rolling out a hardware-based connection, much like a Helium hotspot, that allows users to collect even richer data directly from their car’s data port (called an OBD2 port).

To those who have not considered automotive data before (which is most people), the value in Drive-to-Earn may not be immediately obvious. The fact is, cars produce a ton of data:

This amount is going up rapidly as cars become crammed with more and more sensors, cameras, and technology like driver assist systems.

This data is immensely valuable (if you can access it and put it to work). Vehicles are the most expensive IoT devices most people own. Understanding the inner workings of the subsystems of the car and what’s happening outside the car (via other sensors and cameras) can produce an incredible amount of insight about the world around us and how people and goods are moving in the world.

Simply put, car data is worth collecting, and it’s critical to make sure people can earn for sharing that data. We’re actively building apps that make it useful.

Market forces will impact Drive-to-Earn

Right now, DIMO is setting aside token rewards out of the initial token issuance for users, and the DAO is helping to create initial demand for that data. More importantly, we’re also building a platform that will allow developers and enterprises to create their own demand for data. This means that as an economy emerges around the DIMO platform, the rewards for Drive-to-Earn will adjust dynamically with demand-driven market forces.

To illustrate: today DIMO is rewarding new, electric vehicles with a higher share of available rewards. We believe that the data from EVs is particularly valuable since the batteries and battery management systems — which have been developed at the cost of tens of billions by automakers — are so new and so riddled with problems. But as DIMO becomes a market system, those who want different data may choose to incentivize new Drive-to-Earn rewards for different vehicle types, like automated trucks, or vehicles operating in peer to peer carsharing/ridehailing networks.

As we think about how big the market system for DIMO can be, we can see that Drive-to-Earn is really a subset of a broader category that DIMO will reintroduce: Proof-of-Movement.

Proof-of-Movement

The world of mobility is much more than cars and it’s expanding faster than ever. It includes vans, trucks, buses, trains, bikes, scooters, drones, and robots for more categories than can be counted, like pizza delivery, or remotely controlled scooters.

All of these devices are designed to move people or goods reliably and those “service oriented” movements are most valuable to understand. If you think about the “trips” that matter in your life — a drive you took, a package you had delivered, or going further back a supply chain trip that brought the goods you ordered to a fulfillment center — you realize that there is no single infrastructure where these trips can be logged and verified. Every company has their own walled garden and all are forced to trust one another that their data is accurate when they need to interoperate. There is a better way.

Beyond just verifying trips, we also need to think about creating trips. Connected devices are a two way street — we can send data both to them and from them. Sending data to a car or drone will likely involve asking it to execute some command: unlock the doors, park itself, or go rendezvous with a different robot to exchange packages.

This is what inspires DIMO: creating a standard platform where Proof-of-Movement can be established and verified on a blockchain.

This will turn the countless walled garden systems that every device maker uses today into an open and composable ecosystem. This new infrastructure — the DIMO Network — will enable innovators around the world to upgrade mobility infrastructure just as defi is upgrading financial architecture.

Once again, this is not a new idea but a new implementation, and we’re looking to other relevant projects to add “Layers” to DIMO Proof-of-Movement NFTs.

Case Study: PoM and Parking

Proof-of-Movement is a concept that will enable a very wide range of applications, but let’s start by tackling one: Automated Parking.

Let’s say you want to enable a car to drop off its driver someplace like an airport and then go find a parking space — without anyone inside.

At least a half-dozen parties need to agree to and coordinate around a shared version of reality for a car to find an appropriate space and navigate safely. For example: Where is the driverless vehicle located? What are the rules of the road? Where is there available parking? Are there any parking fees?

🚙 Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs): Controls systems in the car need to respond to instructions and input from users, 3rd party operators, and external sensors. Errors need to be shared.

📊 Lot Owners: Price and availability is shared properly with current and potential users.

👩‍💻App Developers: Interfaces can be built into existing mobility or travel apps.

🏛 Regulators: Incidents and safety issues need to be shared without compromising privacy.

🅿️ Lot Operators: Realtime state of a lot needs to be communicated to users and owners. Backup controls need to be available to local lot attendants.

🏢 Insurance Company: Receive data on risk to appropriately triage risk and price policies.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Vehicle Owners: Know their vehicle is stored safely and collect it when it returns.

In isolation, this problem may not seem particularly challenging, but at a global scale it’s daunting. Dozens of automakers, hundreds of hardware and software companies, transportation operators, real estate managers, and more need to interoperate to make even a simple application like this globally scalable so that each implementation is not replicating efforts by building from scratch each time.

Proof-of-Movement enables the creation of immutable and open data that is a key building block for any complex mobility application.

We’re also building a number of other applications and use-cases on these primitives, and we’d love to have you join the DIMO movement to accelerate the adoption of a more open and accessible mobility network.

Get Involved with DIMO

You can sign up for a DIMO account and add a vehicle (or vehicles). We’ll notify you when we’re ready to help you connect your car, which should only be a few weeks.

Build with DIMO

If you’re looking to join the DAO and community, you can find us on Discord. We also know that there’s great interest in deciphering and understanding car data — so in addition to those who want to send us vehicle data, we’re building a community around those who want to decode vehicle data. Car hackers and tinkerers around the world who have been working on this for years? There’s a place for you in DIMO, too.

Hop in and join us: https://dimo.zone.

A Helium-inspired Future 5G Partner

DIMO is building a user-owned IoT platform that allows drivers to stream vehicle data in exchange for connected vehicle services and tokens.

Our team has decades of experience operating vehicle fleets for companies like Waymo and Argo.ai, and building connected vehicle software at companies like Transdev and Ford AV.

We’ve been busy putting this experience to work seeding a web3-first platform for moving things around. We run DIMO hardware and software each day in our personal vehicles to make the experience sharp for new users and the growing group of Alpha Fleet users (yes, you do get an NFT for this…).

This endeavor was inspired by Helium and is being built with support from long-time Helium community members. DIMO Data Miners & Wallets used to connect vehicles will be compatible with both the Helium LoRa and 5G Networks in the near future, helping us move closer to a truly decentralized telecom and mobility future.

Build the future with us — add your car now to get early access to the DIMO Alpha fleet. In doing so you could also be eligible to order a DIMO hotspot today.

Helium…for cars?

IoT tech should be managed by communities in an open and transparent way. But charting the path to this future doesn’t mean tearing down existing companies — it means incorporating them into open web3 ecosystems.

We think a neutral & decentralized connectivity platform is necessary to accelerate the adoption of electric and automated vehicles. Breaking that down, drivers can collect, custody, and share (if they choose to) their vehicle data with an open developer ecosystem so that new and improved mobility products and applications can be built for drivers and fleets.

To Helium operators and users, we hope this sounds familiar. Our core team has been Helium miners since the early days of the Network, and we are inspired by what Helium has accomplished in:

1. pioneering a new incentive model for the deployment and maintenance of infrastructure that is faster and more capital efficiency than traditional means; and
2. engaging startups and industry incumbents alike within the ecosystem to create services atop the people-powered network — one that doesn’t sacrifice functionality for decentralization.

While incubating ideas for the DIMO platform, we sought to apply these concepts to our own assessment of key problems in the automotive and mobility world. It’s how we arrived where we are today.

DIMO’s Roadmap: The Path to 5G

Having spent months in R&D, we’re starting to share our technology with the world and build the community that will eventually own the project. In the next month we’ll start allowing users to connect their vehicles to the open network and start earning test-net $DIMO tokens.

We’ll also be establishing key aspects of the infrastructure and governance required to build and maintain the DIMO platform. And with all of that said, there are some particularly exciting parts of our roadmap that involve Helium.

First, one of the many ways in which drivers will stream vehicle data to the DIMO platform is through cellular connections enabled by our DIMO Data Miner.

Think of it like a Helium Hotspot, just installed in your car. While we’re using LTE to stream this data today, DIMO x AutoPi will support the Helium 5G Network in 2022. This will not be the case for v1 hardware, but in subsequent versions we build. Further, we are exploring the potential for our miner to act as a validator & mapper for Helium 5G — which, in theory, creates the possibility for users to earn both $DIMO and $HNT via the device.

Very similar to Helium, $DIMO will have a dual role: to reward data providers and for data consumers to access data. The DIMO token will also have governance rights which enable community members to help shape the direction of DIMO’s products and platform. If you want to dive deep on our roadmap, jump in here.

DIMO Apps

It’s often helpful to imagine what applications can be built using a decentralized and user-owned automotive IoT platform. As with any open ecosystem we hope that there will be many applications we have not yet thought of, but we’re excited to seed the development of a few like:

• 🔋 Battery Intelligence: Realtime ground-truth data on battery performance
• 💳 Vehicle Financing: Vehicle value can and should be data-driven
• 🦎 Smart Insurance: Let’s fix data-driven car insurance
• ⚡️ Energy Utility Integrations: Let’s get the electric grid ready for EVs
• 🚙 User-owned Ride Hailing: Transition some of web2’s biggest networks to web3 platforms with lower take-rates.

Get Involved with DIMO

You can sign up for a DIMO account and add a vehicle (or vehicles). We’ll notify you when we’re ready to help you connect your car, which should only be a few weeks.

If you’re looking to join the DAO and community, you can find us at our Discord Server. We also know that there’s great interest in deciphering and understanding car data — so in addition to those who want to send us vehicle data, we’re building a community around those who want to decode vehicle data. Car hackers and tinkerers around the world who have been working on this for years? There’s a place for you in DIMO, too.

Hop in and join us: https://dimo.zone.

Today we took a big step towards bringing DIMO to the world: you can now preorder a DIMO x AutoPi.io Data Miner and guarantee your position as one of the earliest web3 connected vehicles.

We’ve been testing this hardware in our personal vehicles for months and building the foundation for next-generation mobility apps by:

💻 Working with the AutoPi team to develop custom software and security

📀 Deploying secure data storage infrastructure

📶 Integrating with Streamr for decentralized pub/sub

🔗 Prototyping the Data Union to manage the data we’re collecting (more on this soon)

…and now we’re ready to start onboarding users, with the earliest shipments delivered by December 25th, 2021.

How Can I Order?

Head to App.Dimo.Zone to link your vehicle. Make sure you include the VIN, which you can typically copy off of an insurance card, or directly on your car. Once we’ve confirmed your car is compatible, we’ll reach out with a customized link to Shop.Dimo.Zone.

Why Should I Order Today?

We’re well underway on developing apps that run on DIMO, and hardware device owners will be able to access them first — this includes the ability to mine tokens by sharing verified data and completing real-world missions (more on that soon).

Also… DIMO is designed to give early adopters the ability to earn meaningful ownership stakes in the network as a whole.

Projects like Helium have been able to build large user-owned networks by issuing token rewards. While we’re not able to make any confirmed announcements about plans for the $DIMO token, you can read through some of our thinking here.

What Can The Miner Do?

As we’re building vehicle supply over the next 2–3 months this technology will remain mostly invisible, collecting anonymized stats and using the test fleet to support the decoding process which will make sure that vehicle data is open and accessible to any app developer.

Behind the scenes, we’re working to make your vehicle better each day. That includes setting up secure over-the-air (OTA) updates, which can deliver the latest and greatest functionality to each device.

2022 is going to bring a number of apps built on DIMO that are designed to make the vehicle ownership experience more secure, cheaper, and fun.

What If I Don’t Have a Compatible Car? 
Unfortunately, not every car is compatible with DIMO today. We’re working to expand support over time, and we’ll publish more details on this soon.

Make sure you create an account and link an ETH address anyways! You can earn rewards for referring users who sign up and connect a car, and we’re going to be releasing opportunities for early users to earn collectibles and pre-reserve future hardware versions.

Stay tuned for more and join the community to get involved building the future of mobility!

DIMO allows users earn tokens for connecting vehicles to an open web3 IoT platform. We’re using this to bootstrap the next generation of mobility applications for electric and automated vehicles.

For more detail on what we’re building, you can start here, or connect your car.

This article explains why we think this project is important, and why the right time to build is now. Read on!

The last 30 years has provided a new set of overlays on our physical world:

• 🚧 Reliable Digital maps for every major road
• ⏩ Realtime data feeds for every mode of transport GTFS🚊 🚌, GBFS 🛴🚲 , FDX ✈/ OSN✈
• 🚗🚕 Ubiquitous ridehail & same-day delivery networks in every major city
• 📲 Portable Supercomputers (Phones) with built-in wallets 💳

These efforts have been a result of large, well-funded efforts by tech giants: Apple, Uber/Lyft, Google, and more. Unfortunately, their benefits are limited by existing infrastructure.

Digital innovations like ridehailing networks and google maps are centralized overlays on existing analog physical infrastructure. They haven’t changed the rules of how roads are built, energy is distributed, or traffic is routed.

• Transit and road infrastructure is more expensive per mile than ever.
• Crossing the Atlantic on a commercial flight takes longer than it did in 1985.
• Zero U.S. nuclear power plants have been commissioned in nearly 20 years.
• Traffic is more expensive and vehicle deaths are at the highest rates ever.

… and on top of it all we’re faced with the challenge of a lifetime — a rapidly warming planet.

What’s going on?

Centralized services like google and Amazon trying to optimize for individual user experiences can actually decrease system-level efficiency — traffic in New York got worse after Uber, and autonomous vehicles are likely to make this problem worse as the perceived cost of travel is reduced.

We’re also about to 10X the number of EVs on the road in the next 5 years, and autonomous vehicles are seemingly just around the corner. In the words of Tesla founder JB Straubel:

“It has the feeling to me of kind of like a giant overbooked flight. All these people are like, ‘Oh, this is great. We’re all gonna go to that new place. … Let’s all get on the plane and go’,” without building the aircraft, the runway or the air traffic control system.

It is clear that new a new model for funding and deploying digital infrastructure is needed for humans to realize the benefits of transport technologies like electrification and automation at scale.

Luckily, there is hope

A whole generation of networked, digitally native builders are entering their most productive years. They have been living in interactive, creator-first worlds — places like Roblox, Minecraft, and SimCity, and web3 open source projects like bitcoin and Ethereum.

A bipartisan supported infrastructure spending bill has passed in the U.S. — which means the largest economy in the world is going to spend $1T+ trying to build and buy the cars, bikes, roads and energy resources that give us a chance at a sustainable future.

A new wave of technologies is maturing:

• 🤖Robotic trucks and warehouses are ready for primetime.
• ⚡️Electric vehicles are the default choice for fleets of the future.
• 🛰 Starlink is covering the world with fast, cheap wireless.
• 📶Massive user-owned IoT networks like Helium are being proven out at scale.
• 🗼Traditional telecoms are rolling out 5G.
• 🛫 Drones and EVTOL aircraft (DJI, Lilium, Zipline) are hitting the skies.

Most importantly, models for building, financing, and maintaining public goods on the internet, at scale, are being developed:

It’s easier than ever to will something substantial into existence if you have the right tools.

1. 👯‍♀️👩🏽‍🔬👨🏻‍🎨🙋🏽‍♂️ Gather a group of people with shared goals.
2. 👩🏻‍💻💸👷🏼‍♀️🏗 Pool the cost of developing resources or services using a token.
3. 📲 📈Distribute that to millions of people based on their contributions to a network.

Helium has built a user-owned telecom company with 300,000 (and counting) nodes in less than 2 years. Friends with Benefits has created a thriving community of over 2,000 curated members that mixes digital and in-person programming.

These networks are only limited by their ability to connect the digital and physical world. As a team with deep mobility, IoT, and automotive experience we’ve seen this problem, and we’re out to close this gap — allowing the web3 world to really start moving things around.

Open cyber-physical systems will unlock what we call the Trusted Machine Age, and we’re building towards this future with a shared set of goals & guiding principles:

📲 Users own & delegate access to connected devices, so they work for their owners, not the companies that built them.

🔗 Network participants own meaningful stakes in the platforms they use, coordinated by tokens and economic incentives.

👩‍🏫 Developers can build apps and services that compete on their merits, not on access to gated distribution channels.

🏛 Privacy and regulatory oversight can coexist under transparent rules.

🏗 The physical and digital public goods that support modern connected devices can be properly funded.

So, if we’re going to apply this model to mobility, where to begin? What is the right entry point?

Connected Vehicles

We might be biased because of our team’s industry experience, but we think cars are going to be The Biggest Developer Platform Yet — and therefore the most leveraged place to begin building open mobility infrastructure.

Modern cars produce an astounding amount of data: 2.5GB/hr, or ~1500x as much as web browsing. Automation and electrification will grow this number 100x — and carmakers (OEMs) are trying to build their own “Walled Garden” platforms, turning vehicles into the equivalent of Facebook accounts.

This information is increasingly being used to make safety-critical decisions, begging the question of who should have access to the data and controls, and under what circumstances those things should be shared.

Our team doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but we have worked with these technologies at scale enough to know that a more open model is needed. Trust between hardware, software, infrastructure, operations and the public sector is only built through transparency and a shared understanding of the rules that govern complex systems like mobility.

We’re building DIMO to incorporate the groups that make this possible.

So who are these groups?

Currently developers are prevented from building useful applications for vehicles. This degrades consumer trust as vehicles combust, crash, or otherwise underperform without warning, leaving consumers at the mercy of auto manufacturers.

Open data and car enthusiasts have been organizing around open-source projects like OpenDBC to unlock vehicle data, and the “Right to Repair” movement has cemented their right to collect it. People want to use the data from their vehicles! In our view only the tooling and incentives are missing to scale this up to hundreds of millions of vehicles, and we’re here to do that.

Cities have been asserting their rights to regulate connected mobility services through congestion pricing and new tools like The Mobility Data Standard (MDS).

Web3 technologies like zero-knowledge proofs, combined with decentralized identity standards and verifiable credentials are now capable of addressing privacy objections to centralized regulation of mobility systems. Said in plain english — with the right tools, it’s possible to prove you’re following the rules without compromising your privacy.

Of course, Vehicle Owners need compelling products and services that allow them to move around more quickly, cheaply, and safely.

Our mission at DIMO is to advance how technology helps people connect with and move throughout the world. We’re going to be at this for a long time, and we’d love to have you along.

Ready to dive in?

Sign up to connect your car and join our early-access waitlist today.

Become part of the community

Join our Discord, follow @DIMO_network on twitter and if you’re interested in learning more about what we’re building, you can read the DIMO Deep-Dive.

Welcome to DIMO, where we’re building an open web3 IoT platform. We are focused on enabling:

• Vehicle owners to stream data and earn $DIMO tokens
• Data consumers to access anonymized data related to battery performance, automated driving systems, traffic, weather, and more.
• Developers to build applications for ridesharing, smart insurance, vehicle financing, and much more.

Web3 isn’t just about the metaverse — it’s about the real world, too.

The “metaverse” is the buzzword of the day. A massive amount of effort is being put towards building virtual and fictional worlds.

While there’s a ton of innovation that excites us here, we think building a fantastic virtual reality shouldn’t take priority over improving the world in which we live.

The first step is to connect the next generation of technology, capital, and design principles to the physical world, and there are already some great examples to work with.

Helium has built a user-owned telecom company with 300,000 (and counting) nodes in less than 2 years. Friends with Benefits has created a thriving community of over 2,000 curated members that mixes digital and in-person programming.

These networks are only limited by their ability to connect the digital and physical world. As a team with deep mobility, IoT, and automotive experience we’ve seen this problem, and we’re out to close this gap-allowing the web3 world to really start moving things around.

Open cyber-physical systems will unlock what we call the trusted machine age, and we’re building towards this future with a shared set of goals & guiding principles:

📲 Users own & delegate access to connected devices, so they work for their owners, not the companies that built them.

🔗 Network participants own meaningful stakes in the platforms they use, coordinated by tokens and economic incentives.

👩‍🏫 Developers can build apps and services that compete on their merits, not on access to gated distribution channels.

🏛 Privacy and regulatory oversight can coexist under transparent rules.

🏗 The physical and digital public goods that support modern connected devices can be properly funded.

…Which brings us to DIMO…

DIMO is an IoT data and connectivity protocol built on web3 technologies.

By securely connecting your car, you can become a data provider in the DIMO network. We’ll soon release our mobile app which will allow drivers to connect their devices to our open data marketplace and application development environment.

As the DIMO ecosystem grows, we’ll see new features and applications built for drivers, fleets, and enterprises (and we’re going to help seed these applications).

We’re building the supply and demand of our web3 ecosystem.

We’re building an open connected vehicle ecosystem.

Over the next few months, we’re deploying key building blocks on DIMO . This means the platform will be able to:

• Distribute $DIMO tokens for users providing valuable services to the ecosystem
• Empower vehicle owners to securely connect their cars to DIMO, allowing them to capture, store, and securely share their data
• Super-scale data collection, storage and analysis with our token that aligns platform developers, data consumers, and app builders
• Build next-gen consumer products and enterprise services: JD Power, Kelly BlueBook & Consumer Reports, peer-to-peer car sharing and ride hailing, Smart Insurance, and vehicle finance can all be re-platformed on our open tech stack.

At scale, DIMO has the potential to unlock $1T+ of new value through improvements in customer experience, R&D, coordination cost savings, risk management, and safety. We’re using our token ($DIMO) to bootstrap the network and make sure the platform is user-owned.

This is not a new idea. It’s just a more focused approach with modern tooling.

We’ve been following attempts to bridge the gap between crypto and mobility for years. Way back in 2012, Mike Hearn gave a talk discussing how connected vehicles could combine with cryptocurrency “Smart Contracts” to produce user-owned mobility networks and services. La’zooz conceptualized (and wrote some code to build) a Peer-to-Peer ride hailing network on ethereum in 2017.

All of that said, there’s no better time than now to build the DIMO community. Because today, there’s a comprehensive set of web3 primitives that will allow us to make a decentralized IoT protocol a functioning reality.

Who’s paving the way?

Our team has extensive experience building and bringing products to market in automotive, mobility, IoT, and web3/crypto. We’re building an open community around this idea, and have managed to attract some of the brightest minds in the space.

• Andy Chatham: 10+ years in mobility in product, BD, and ops roles with a focus on AV/EV technology. Most recently ran a team of hundreds working on Waymo AV deployments.
• Yev Khessin: 10+ years building distributed systems with a focus on vehicles. Founded a startup working on dispatch and mobility systems for Argo AI & Ford AV.
• Alex Rawitz: 9+ years at startups including crypto (Chainalysis), IoT, & telecom.
• Rob Solomon 10+ years in finance, (ConsenSys, Vroom)

Get going with DIMO.

The first and best way to get involved with DIMO is to create an account and put your car on the waitlist. In the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more information about our roadmap-including how users will be able to connect their cars to our platform.

Want to become a member of the community?

We’re building in the open. Join our discord and help us build the open and user-owned mobility future.

Originally published at https://dimo.zone.