IM Motors, the high-end intelligent pure electric vehicle brand backed by Chinese largest automaker SAIC and e-commerce giant Alibaba, announces it will officially launch its Drive-to-Earn Reward Scheme while Mileage Mining mode will start on August 7, 2022 for IM Valley, a metaverse built for its car owners to earn digital “Stones” as they drive. It indicates the completion of IM Motors’ Customer Share Option Plan, or CSOP, an initiative to bring the power of data back to its owner with rewards and incentives in real life.
According to the Reward Scheme, IM car owners can use up to 6,800 Stones plus CNY10,000 for an autonomous driving system featuring lidars, radars and OrinX chips for their vehicles.
‘Drive-to-Earn’ in the metaverse
The term ‘Metaverse’ is not new, which in fact showed up 30 years ago in the popular Sci-fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. However, what IM Motors is building in its metaverse, a.k.a. IM Valley, tells another story: How driving could be innovative, interesting, and rewarding.
IM Valley, the virtual place where IM owners can explore new driving experiences, is powered by advanced blockchain technologies. From July 17, IM Motors will launch its IM GO! segment in both its mobile and brick-and-mortar IM Motors Experience Centers across China, rolling out more new features and ways for IM owners to experience the metaverse through driving.
Mileage Mining allows IM owners to drive to earn with 210,000,000 Stones, or 70% of the total supply of 300,000,000, available for mining.
Once launched, Stones will drop in batches every 10 minutes in this mode. The total supply will not increase but halve every four years. Each Stone Drop will be ‘shared’ among participating IM owners. The idea behind this is that the more they drive, the earlier they participate with more contribution in mileage, the more chances they will win more Stones.
Educational Mining was firstly launched on August 21, 2021 on IM APP with 30% of Stones available for this educational blockchain game-like mode. It also adopts a “double token” scheme. IM owners earn Crystals, the ‘in-game token’, through a series of tasks such as signing up, posting articles, community idea sharing and taking part in online/offline events. After collecting enough Crystals, IM owners can enter a Blind Box Lucky Draw to win Stones or Stone Pieces. More than 10,000 IM owners have won nearly six million Stones via Blind Box Lucky Draw so far.
IM GO! is a dedicating segment in IM APP, where IM owners can find more new fun ways to mine Stones. Such new scenarios as MOVING ART, BEST HIGHWAY, CITYLIFE, and TechDay will be rolled out soon. Besides, IM owners can win The Egg Reward in various daily driving scenarios, including uploading Carlog images, using SNAKE MOVE driving mode, wandering designate online galleries and more.
As IM Motors’ innovation in the worlds of Web3 and metaverse continues, its exploration in combining advanced technologies to empower its car owners may provide a new landscape to the entire auto industry: How blockchain technology can push forward the development of data rights validation and mitigating privacy risks.
Self-developed chain for data security and privacy protection
IM Valley Chain is where all stones are generated, which is a self-developed blockchain by IM Motors to protect data rights and values from IM owners. The chain consists of nine nodes with more to add in the future. Adopting a consensus mechanism, each node works independently to each other, protecting data completion while all transactions are compliant.
The chain ensures all transactions of Stones to be recorded on chain with a unique hash rate for each transaction while all nodes are published for validation. The chain confirms each node with a ledger before it packages a certain amount of transactions into a block, which will be connected to the end of IM Valley Chain to confirm the completion of a transaction. Data security, information privacy, and immutability and unforgeability of transactions is all ensured based on Elliptic Curve Algorithm and Hashing Algorithm through the Public Key Cryptographic Algorithm to protect all users’ data rights and equality.
Mileage Mining is powered by a smart contract on IM Valley Chain. For instance, in each batch of Stone Drop, the batch code of mileage mining is used as input while the mileage is as the sub-total. There are N winning cars in each batch of mining. Based on random numbers (including snapshots of key data, hash rates of transactions, etc.) generated by the blockchain, outcomes will then show N series numbers of mileage that win Stones. Such data will be coherently measured before being used as a weight factor for driving data contribution.
Data acquisition and privacy is crucial nowadays. IM Motors publishes IDPP, a data and privacy protection plan, to strictly protect its car owners’ data security, using blockchain technologies. It also claims it will never use biometric technologies (incl. facial, fingerprint and voice metric) for its vehicles.
Embrace technology and innovate for future
Technology brings innovation and also fosters a highly engaged community.
Back in 2021, IM Motors worked with totalab collaborating artist Fei Yining to jointly launch its first NFT “IM Crossing: The New Totem”, a community-generated artwork with IM car owners. The totem of IM Valley community features users’ profile pictures as part of the artwork. IM Motors also plans to collaborate with more emerging artists, designers and its community to launch new digital collectibles in the future. By then, such NFTs will be auctioned or donated for charity purposes such as donating to environmental protection organizations as a bid to promote IM community and attract more people to adopt a green lifestyle. “IM Crossing: The New Totem” is recorded on IM Valley Chain in the form of video as a digital collectible.
In order to promote a green yet rewarding driving experience, IM Motors will expand its Drive-to-Earn Reward Scheme to allow IM owners to redeem various rewards with Stones, including upgrades of hardware, premium services, limited editions, digital collectibles and Experience Day events, etc.
As IM Motors builds a leading public platform for data rights validation powered by blockchain for the Chinese auto industry, it never stops exploring possibilities in embracing new technologies to inspire its community for a greener future.
