Roole Locates Stolen Vehicles Globally via Nodle Network’s On-chain Services

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Vehicle theft is a common concern in Europe and Roole, a French automobile club, announced today their partnership with Nodle to help car owners trace and recover their cars. Nodle is a decentralized network of smartphones that work together to locate and connect smart objects, such as Bluetooth tags embedded within vehicles. Nodle users are rewarded with the NODL cryptocurrency in exchange for helping grow the mobile network and locating stolen vehicles.

Nodle Network’s API Helps Locate Vehicles

Off-the-shelf Bluetooth tags are placed on the vehicle, and when an owner reports a vehicle is stolen, the Nodle Network searches for the tag in question. When a vehicle is discovered, the detection is securely routed to Roole.

The entire process, from contributing to the Nodle network to locating vehicles, is based on privacy-first principles where no direct personal data, such as first or last names, are collected.

Thomas Fournier, CEO of Roole, said:

“We are excited to pilot the Nodle network with our fleet. Multiple, low-cost smart sensors prevent stolen vehicle disassembly, a common practice in Europe where stolen vehicles are sold for parts. If a car is stolen from France, for example, and ends up in another country, there’s a good chance we’ll find it, thanks to our partnership with the Nodle Network”

Micha Benoliel, Nodle Founder and CEO, added:

“Roole represents the first step in moving enterprise asset tracking towards a more secure and private model leveraging a decentralized architecture. On-chain services such as Roole provide a powerful, real-life use case for the network and drive value that anyone with a smartphone can benefit from in the form of the project’s native token, $NODL.”

Using the Nodle Network’s on-chain API to locate vehicles, Roole works anywhere Nodle exists. This means that if a vehicle ends up in another country, the vehicle can still be located. There are no complex roaming agreements, expensive cellular modules, or GPS. With Bluetooth already running on billions of smartphones, Nodle just works.

Garrett Kinsman, a Nodle Co-founder, commented:

“Roole represents a compelling real-world use case for on-chain smart asset tracking. It represents a shift where non-blockchain or Web2 companies are using decentralized technologies to create new experiences for their customers.”

In the automotive industry, the network has many other potential applications. For instance, ridesharing services want to ensure that drivers are using the vehicle declared on their platform and doing their rides instead of sharing it with somebody else. The network can be used to prove that the rider is in the right vehicle, driven by the right driver. Cryptographic proof would be issued without the need for personal data to be shared, tying the vehicle to the driver and the rider.

In the future, vehicles could even natively support Nodle, allowing anti-theft security to be built into vehicle hardware. In this forthcoming solution, Nodle-enabled vehicles would be extremely difficult to steal, deterring thieves.

Nodle connects the physical world to Web3 by using smartphones as edge nodes. The edge nodes read devices and sensors in the physical world using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and connect that information to the blockchain. Creating a geolocation-based layer one that can be used by many unique applications built for the hyper-connected, mobile-oriented world we live in, including real-time asset tracking. The technology creates an economic model that is secure, private, and scalable. Anyone with a smartphone can join the network in return for tokens ($NODL). Nodle provides insights for consumer electronics manufacturers, enterprises, smart cities, the finance industry and beyond. Since its creation in 2017, it has become one of the world’s largest wireless networks by number of base stations.

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