Sharing economy is a system in which product and services are shared between individuals.

Nowadays, with the innumerable web and mobile applications it’s very easy to rent anything for one day or even for an hour. It’s very convenient way if you need use brand-new item once, so you must not buy thing that you will never use after. Moreover, for individuals who are ready to share it’s a good way to earn money.

Recently, many tech-savvy companies started creating new platforms that will help individuals in sharing process. Airbnb and Uber are two of the best-known companies in the market.

The size of the system

According to Statista, an online statistics, market research and business intelligence portal, nowadays, in the United States nearly 44.8 mln adults used the sharing economy per year. It is considered that this number will reach 86.5 mln by 2021.

Conde Nast Traveler announced that by 2016 Airbnb already had 200 mln bookings. Uber announced that it has 3 mln drivers and 75 mln clients over the world. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that by 2025 transactions of only five sectors will worth $705 bln.

Blockchain contribution

A lot of entrepreneurs believe that Blockchain technology will shake up the sharing economy and eliminate the obstacles that halt it.

It’s all because that Blockchain system can make transactions much more secure and impossible to be hacked, providing detailed information about participants of the deal that are stored on a database.

Besides, smart contracts can remove third parties, so individuals that participate in sharing economy will not have to give additional commission fees for middleman platforms.

There are also Blockchain start-ups that want to decrease segmentation in the sharing economy. Such a company is ShareRing. It wants to make possible to rent and lease anything the customer want from one platform. Additionally the company has intentions to cut out borders, so a customer will be able to use it wherever he or she is.