When most people call someone they know, they typically do not remember a person’s number, but rather they simply hit “call Alex.” Naviaddress, a unique blockchain startup, wants to change the way people interact with addresses. The platform allows user to turn their lengthy physical postal address in any language into a short digital address – a string of digits (they call it “naviaddress”).
For Naviaddress, this means creating a decentralized and globally unified address platform for both real and virtual worlds. The implications of implementing this technology means access to addresses in societies with poor urban planning and accessibility issues as a result.
The residential digitalized address system will have a lot of benefits like address standardization and faster navigation to any location. The digital address could be stored and scanned electronically for various service deliveries rather than writing a lengthy address every time. Another benefit is in simplification of internal verification process: every point, every object can be assigned with its own digital address that will be verified just one time. After that, it is considered ‘verified’ and does not require extra time for subsequent validations.
This would reduce the address duplication efforts, resolve confusing addresses, improve internal efficiency of a logistic provider and create better customer experience.
Real Life Use Cases and Applications
- In Costa Rica, it was documented that thousands of people relied on rough distance calculations to explain how to find the location of something. In fact, globally over 4 billion people live without the use of a physical address. This drastically impacts things like medical needs, mail and deliveries, and access to digital services (such as banking) that require a physical address.
- In Tanzinia, where mail is delivered to post office boxes due to the lack of an addressing system. In total, over 173,000 of these post office boxes have been installed, still not enough to meet the current demand. This shortcoming is impacting the socioeconomic development of the country.
- Lastly, even in places where addresses do exist, they can still be problematic. In the UK, one of he most advanced western societies, 0.5% of fall deliveries still fail. This amounts to £831 million lost per year. In the US, 11% of US homes do not have accurate address data. UPS estimated that if they could save their drivers 1 mile per day, it would save them $50 million a year.
In the US, a similar problem has occurred. In 2016, overall Undeliverable-as-Addressed (UAA) mail increased with more than 6.8 billion pieces of mail marked as undeliverable — that’s 4.56% of outbound volume. The cost for the United States Postal Service (USPS) to process all that UAA mail was a staggering $1.3 billion. This is even more alarming, given the fact that overall mail volume decreased last year.
Thankfully, once the addressing system is deployed on the blockchain, Naviaddress will be able to solve these issues across both the developed and developing world.
The Benefits of Blockchain Technology for an Addressing System
Naviaddress is using blockchain technology to ensure the system will not be managed or controlled by a central entity. Blockchain technology has three attributes which make it triply safe and less vulnerable: distribution, decentralization and autonomy. All addresses are distributed and stored across multiple computers in virtual space making it extremely complicated to compromise.
Being decentralized means there is no central body managing the information, so anyone can add useful information which is then verified across the various storage channels. And the blockchain makes it possible for all this information to be stored, called up and modified by a collective user-base, so it is constantly being updated and improved with current data. There’s no single system administrator which means it runs autonomously all the time and is ready and accurate whenever you need it. All these factors ensure verified and reliable addressing information.
A digital address system with verified by transaction trustless ID for any object and location will cut waste and reduce uncertainties and risks in transactions between users, and between users and businesses.
