The problem Gassed-Up solves

Gassed-Up solves the 'trust dilemma' problem of purchasing gas with cash or peer-to-peer electronic cash.

Using cash to fill up our gas tanks is an inefficient process due to trust asymmetries between customers and gas station owners. Gas station owners require customers to pre-pay because they do not trust the customers to pay after pumping. This creates a poor customer experience for individuals who want to top off their tanks because they cannot know exactly how much it will cost.

The current electronic system improves the customer experience by placing a pre-authorization hold on the customer’s card. However, this process is more costly than cash due to the high credit/debit card fees charged by third parties to ensure the funds and settle the transaction.

Gassed-Up also utilizes a pre-authorization to improve the customer experience, but it optimizes the monetary exchange by processing the transaction in a smart contract on the Bitcoin blockchain. This process minimizes costs and maximizes trust for both parties. Gassed-Up also allows customers to pre-authorize a small amount and have the pump automatically stop; a feature that is not commonly used in the current electronic system.

Challenges we ran into

We decided to participate in the sCrypt hackathon to learn about bitcoin's script capabilities using the sCrypt Smart Contract library. The learning curve was steep but got over it by pair programing, the turorials, and documentation.