Food sharing app Unsung has partnered with decentralized ridesharing service Arcade City to feed the homeless in the city of Austin.
Unsung is an app designed to solve hunger through a liaison between restaurants, the needy, and volunteers. A restaurant uses the app to indicate that excess food is available for donation. A homeless or otherwise needy person can then be located by dropping a pin through the app, and a volunteer will take the food to the needy. Volunteers may be tipped in Bitcoin. The partnership would use Arcade City drivers to deliver the food.
The announcement came via a post on Arcade City’s Facebook page earlier this month, which posted an interview with Christopher David, Arcade City’s CEO, and Jason King of Unsung.
Maximizing the decentralized approach
According to David, this partnership is only possible because the decentralized nature of both apps allows for rapid growth beyond what a centralized structure could accomplish.
“It’s a beautiful thing about decentralized networks that they can take on and accomplish so much at once. It wouldn’t make sense for a conventional ridesharing startup to begin a homeless outreach operation so early in its development. But with Arcade City, we have a decentralized community of many thousands of individuals passionate about making a difference for Austin. Partnering with Unsung provides one more way for our network to provide a needed service in Austin.”
David intends to push this partnership forward in short order, with the goal syncing up the code and the point systems of Unsung and Arcade City. The idea is to gamify the process so that users can “level up” their profiles by donating food, delivering items, or identifying recipients.
Filling the void in Austin since Uber and Lyft left
Since a voter referendum failed to overturn a controversial fingerprinting requirement for ridesharing, Uber and Lyft have ceased operations in Austin. Arcade City took advantage of the reduced competition and began operations in the city shortly after. Even before the Unsung partnership, Arcade City provided assistance to those in need, including the blind, who had previously been unable to secure adequate transportation as a result of the ordinance.